Had a friend who bitched about some racers in a road race we were watching were "cheating" by hopping the gatorbacks with 2 wheels in corners and then told me I dont know anything even though I've been road racing since 1987. He's never turned a wheel in anger EVER and knows I race. Even funnier when he tried to tell me drafting doesnt work road racing.

Yes, it's why I don't claim to be an authority on anything.

Experience vs education doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

With zero experience your education has no context and you will struggle to recognize when it’s appropriate to apply what.

That being said, education can make experience go much further than experience with no education. If you have a lot of experience doing something poorly, you’re pretty well entrenched into bad habits and have to unlearn them.

Use the context of what this site is about. Shooting.

Imagine just giving a total newb an AR, 10000 rounds, and zero instruction (they’re not allowed to look up anything either). How good of a shooter do you think they’ll be after going through all that ammo?

Now give someone quality instruction by someone who’s good at teaching and only 1000 rounds.

Who do you think will be better at shooting after finishing their ammo allowance?

ETA: in this example education and no experience would be a total newb following an expert shooter for 3 days and having everything shown to them, but not being allowed to even touch the gun. At the end of it they get handed a 10 round mag and told to shoot a group.

Dunning-Kruger effect is real.  

What about them?

Why do these poll results run counter to what you regularly see in GD?

Every aviation thread since 2001 has been overwhelmed and ruined by comments from fake wannabe history channel/computer flight sim “pilots”.

We also have at least 20-40 active members who make a living aviating, so there is a wealth of information; but a person looking for knowledge would have a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff.  

Whatever do you mean?

I guess he means the plague of know-it-alls that argue with SMEs and in some cases, run the SMEs off.

Oh. That happens here?

Experience is invaluable. A good example would be anthropology. An educated person who goes into the field and ingratiate himself with a new culture-has very little experience with how his bias affects his observations and interactions. However once gaining that knowledge it becomes a comparison which strengthens biases. This is probably true for most fields.

Its been awhile since I checked out an aviation thread. I will go find one.

Experience certainly counts.
BUT, it often only means something when you have the basis (education in the theory) to understand what it means.  Otherwise, you get a hell of a lot of, "That's just way we have always done it."
Sometimes that is good, sometimes that is bad.

It depends.

People learn differently , some folks learn slow or don't learn well unless they have hands on experience.

It is also very different depending on the task.

I can watch and listen to Jerry Mitchlik all day long and while it might improve my shooting skills somewhat I will need to actually try some of those skills to see how I do.  Regardless, I will not be shooting like Jerry!


In my pistol classes some folks listen to my description of how to shoot some drill and can visualize what I want them to do (or not do) and then actually do that skill.

Other folks listen and say yup,yup yes , and when asked to demonstrate that drill or skill they do everything but the correct skill

There was a segment on Fox Business News yesterday that stated many businesses are now valuing experience over degrees and diplomas.

I was referring to his last paragraph.

Like the should I reuse my oil filter thread from the other day?