Quotes About Learning

I have two ways of learning from history: from the past, by reading the elders; and from the future, thanks to my Monte Carlo toy.

we are simply not wise enough to be trusted with knowledge.

The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.

And one needs to be rational in not making trial and error completely random.

though being forced to read for lack of other activities is not as enjoyable as

what I was given to study in school I have forgotten; what I decided to read on my own, I still remember.

There are traps built into any kind of knowledge gained from observation

in a trial and error mode, you exercise rationality by not looking in the same place twice.

The overlap between newspapers was so large that you would get less and less information the more you read.

Scranton showed that we have been building and using jet engines in a completely trial-and-error experiential manner, without anyone truly understanding the theory. Builders

Education has benefits aside from stabilizing family incomes. Education makes individuals more polished dinner partners, for instance, something non-negligible. But the idea of educating people to improve the economy is rather novel. The British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising values, making good citizens, and "learning," not economic growth

Trial and error is freedom.

to how deep the author wants to go into a topic

You may not know in your mind where you are going, but you know it by doing.

It was a barbell—play it safe at school and read on your own, have zero expectation from school.

In other words, history teaches us that things that never happened before do happen. It can teach us a lot outside of the narrowly defined time series; the broader the look, the better the lesson. In other words, history teaches us to avoid the brand of naive empiricism that consists of learning from casual historical

And of course you learn from the errors of others. You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.

Further, the random element in trial and error is not quite random, if it is carried out rationally, using error as a source of information. if every trial provides you with information about what does not work, you start zooming in on a solution - so every attempt becomes more valuable, more like an expense than an error. And of course you make discoveries along the way.

I disbelieve in structured learning—actually I believe that one can be an intellectual without being a nerd, provided one has a private library instead of a classroom

That was my best investment—risk turned out to be the topic I know the best.

No author should be considered as having failed until he starts teaching others about writing.

It is not your skills that are to blame.

My biggest problem with the educational system lies precisely in that it forces students to squeeze explanations out of subject matters and shames them for withholding judgment, for uttering the "I don't know.

People don't walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did.