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There are different kinds of knowledge, and advice targeted at different kinds of mistakes.

Errors of technique, like you describe, certainly can be learned from without needing to experience them yourself - though the lesson might not be learned as well, it may be learned well enough to avoid the problem.

But other kinds of knowledge, particularly relating to emotional maturity or social interaction, are very hard to acquire from a book, as it were. You need to live the experience to properly appreciate the lesson.




But perhaps if you have the knowledge of other guys' mistakes, you can spot your own mistakes earlier. Instead of having to repeat them a hundred times before it dawns on you.

Also learning from mistakes--your own and those of other people--enables you to make different mistakes.




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