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12: Making Experience An Asset

Scott asserts that experience is the only way by which men truly learn: the beliefs they hold in theory may guide them, but it is not until they are applied and confirmed in practice that they are accepted as fact rather than speculation. In this sense, experience is the only way by which anything is truly learned.

The common phrase that "experience in the best teacher" is therefore true if one considers "best" to mean "most effective." It is by no means the "best" teacher in the sense of always teaching men the right things - as it can be very effective at teaching men the wrong things, causing them to be certain of things that are not simply not true.

As such, the lessons learned of experience are only as valuable as the experience itself, and not all of those lessons are good ones. Judgment must be applied to assess the quality of the lesson, so that the lessons that are valuable are learned, and those that are not are forgotten.

And further, not all experience is good experience. Some of it is quite bad, and weakens a man rather than strengthening him. But this should not be taken as a dismissal of the value of experience as a whole, merely to indicate a need for discernment of past experience, and a method for determining what prospects for experience are to be pursued in future.

So the question the author will pursue in this chapter is: How can the most valuable experiences be pursued and utilized?

General Conditions Giving Value to Experience

In preparation to seeking the answer to his question, the author means to consider some of the general conditions that affect the value of experience.

Physical and Mental Condition

It is commonly observed that a man is most observant and attentive in a rested state: a student who comes tired to class learns little, or at least remembers little, and tends to fail to be attentive to the right things.

Within the course of a day, men are most attentive in the morning when their minds and bodies are freshly rested. As the day wears on, they become less energetic and less attentive.

Over the course of multiple days, constant exertion, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and the like may fatigue a man - such that even after a night's sleep and a hearty breakfast, he has not restored from the deficit of several days before and remains exhaustion.

And in a broader sense, there are issues of a man's condition that affect his attentiveness. His age and general health may cause him to be habitually more or less vigorous.

Level of Interest

Man does not give interest to everything he perceives. Mere existence means that in any given moment our senses perceive a multitude of things - far more at a glance (not to mention the other senses) than we are capable of giving attention. As such it is a necessary practice to ignore most of what we perceive and pay attention to very little. We pay attention to that which is of interest.

Our primary interest in things derives from our motivations at the time. A man who is cold pays great attention to sources of warmth because they present a solution to his problem. A man who is seeking to build his fortune gives great interest to commerce because it presents a means to achieve his goal.

A secondary source of interest is intellectual. Some men are inclined to be curious about certain subjects, even if the knowledge has no immediate practical use. A student who is interested in mathematics tends to learn more and fare better in math class than he does in another class that teaches a subject in which he has no intellectual curiosity.

As such, we give greatest attentiveness to the things which interest us, and tend to ignore the rest.

Personal Attitude

The value of an experience depends on a personal attitude that is sustained during the experience itself. The notion of sustenance is important because attitude changes - what at first seemed quite interesting becomes entirely boring, or what at first seemed onerous becomes engaging. The nature of the experience did not change, but man's attitude toward the experience changed.

Not all attitudes are productive to gaining knowledge from experience. There are negative attitudes that can detract and positive ones that can enhance. In terms of positive attitude, the author identifies three in particular:

  1. Submissive - The submissive attitude is shown by a man who brings no interest and takes no initiative in the experience, but is attentive to what he experiences. He observes with some degree of curiosity and considers what he sees, and is not "hampered" by preconceptions, but is otherwise indifferent.
  2. Self-Attentive - This attitude is shown by a man who likewise takes no initiative, but recognizes that the experience has an impact to him, and is attentive to the way in which what he is observing will affect him. That is to say, he merely recognizes the impact, but takes no initiative to change it.
  3. Objective - This attitude is shown by a man who wishes to influence the outcome of an event to protect or further his interests (EN: "objective" is meant in the sense that he has a goal, an "object," not in the sense of objective vs. subjective).

(EN: Regarding this as "attitude" seems a bit inaccurate - as it has to do with the degree to which a person is engaged due to the impact it will have to himself. In general, we are interested in events that propose a meaningful outcome - the greater the impact and the greater the importance, the more attentive we are. This returns to simple survival skills and the pursuit of threat or opportunity.)

Similarity to Previous Experience

Scott posits that people are more attentive to experiences that are similar to their desired experience. When something is altogether different, the amount of "new" information to be recognized and processed is significant and it taxes the mind - but when something is similar to previous experience, an individual needs to give only to those few aspects that are different, and the mind can efficiently observe those few differences.

(EN: It should also be pointed out that similarity may lead to inattentiveness. If we fail to notice those differences, we may disregard the experience as being no different to our existing knowledge. In effect, similarity to experience inclines us to notice something, but the difference from experience inclines us to give attention.)

However, the degree of similarity is arguable: a lumberjack who is adept at felling trees with an axe may not take interest in the operation of a sawmill. While both phenomena deal with processing trees into wood, the mill's task of cutting logs to boards with a saw is significantly different to his experience of felling trees with an axe. He profits little to nothing by observing and learning from the activity he observes in a mill.

We may also pay attention to something not because of the quality of the activity, but that of the outcome. The activity represents an alternative way to accomplish a goal we wish to achieve, and we are attentive to learn whether what we are witnessing might be a better way to get what we want than the method we customarily employ.

Methodology is another means of similarity: a student who has learned the scientific method of investigation in school may be interested in an investigative process in criminal justice because the two processes seem in some ways similar to him.

Virtues or ideals may cause us to give attention to an experience. An individual who values qualities such as promptness, neatness, or accuracy may be attentive to an experience the demonstrates those qualities, even if the goal and method are different.

Judging Which Experiences are Valuable

An experience may be quickly forgotten, or it may be remembered - and an experience remembered may not have any impact on our behavior, or it may be used to change our behavior. The most valuable experiences are therefore those that are noticed, remembered, and which have a positive effect on our future behavior.

Habit Formation

Most of human behavior is done out of habit. We seldom pause to ruminate over what action to take, but instead act with little thought when our perception triggers a habitual response. This notion will be considered in greater detail in the next chapter, but for now Scott wishes to list some of the beneficial qualities of habituation:

(EN: Scott does not mention the negative qualities, which are the consequence of some of the positive ones. Namely, a habit is often triggered incorrectly - because the individual has not analyzed the situation at hand sufficiently to recognized differences that would make the "habit" counterproductive. In that way man becomes like a machine, doing what it is programmed to do without paying attention to the current conditions.)

Practical judgments

By "practical" experience Scott means experience that is based on previous practice, in which an individual judges the outcome of a former attempt to have been satisfactory and repeats the same process with the expectation it will achieve the same results.

A practical judgment requires consideration and evaluation of the previous iteration, but no consideration or evaluation of the present one - which is also its chief weakness in that a practical judgment may fail to notice differences in present conditions that would prevent the same outcome from being achieved.

Practical judgment is also limited to an individual's previous experience - as it is experience alone that guides him in deciding to take a given course of action, and if he has no similar experience in the past he has no pattern to follow. He is also left without a template if his previous experience in a similar undertaking produced unsatisfactory results.

In that sense, practical judgment is the mindful imitation of oneself at a past time - mindful only in the ability to recognize the past experience and match it to the present one.

Reflective judgments

A reflective judgment is of a similar nature - the difference being that practical judgments recall a specific incident and attempt to reproduce the same behavior, whereas a reflective judgment takes more of an abstract perspective, amalgamating several past incidents, and attempts to form a general pattern rather than a specific one.

For example, if a manager of a knitting factory visits one other factory and decides to implement the exact process he witnessed, this is a practical judgment. If he visits five others, notices similarities in their practices, borrowing certain elements from one and certain from another to arrive at a process for his own workers, then he has made a reflective judgment.

Reflective judgment enters into the realm of theory and enables us to borrow upon knowledge that is similar but not precisely the same. A farmer who witnesses that fertilizing of a bean field produces a superior crop may reckon that fertilization will improve his own output, even if he happens to grow corn. (EN: Though there is the weakness in the assumption that the same fertilizer that is effective for beans will also be effective for corn.)

As such reflection develops generalizations, abstractions, principles, and other theoretical components to be put to practical application in a multitude of novel situations provided there is sufficient similarity.

Expert judgments

Expert judgments are based entirely on theory - the "expertise" of an individual in a given area of study lends itself to various situations that match the principles, abstractions, generalizations, and such that have been gained not from experience or observation, but merely academic study. In effect, the intellect of a man of expertise is developed into a model in the laboratory of his mind, and then put to practical application.

An engineer, for example, may apply his expert judgment if tasked to build his first bridge. If he has only built bridges to bear trains and is then called upon to build a bridge to bear automobiles, he can likely leverage his knowledge of materials and shapes and their load-bearing capabilities to successfully imagine a bridge of a kind he has never been called upon to build.

Expertise is limited to the content of a man's mind: he must have gained some insight into the theories and principles that apply to a given situation beforehand. Expertise tends to be concentrated in specific areas of knowledge, as men cannot be experts in all things but tend to have expertise in only a few.

Conditions Favorable to Experience

Scott has described the four basic methods of applying expertise, and will now consider the conditions under which the requisite bases for these forms of expertise can be most conveniently and effectively gained.

Conditions Favorable to Habit Formation

The essential condition for forming habits is repetition: an activity is repeated over and over in the same manner becomes habitual.

Habits may be consciously adopted, but they may also arise without conscious thought: a man tasked with no training, given a hammer and asked to strike a plate, will be cautious and unsteady for the first few strokes - but within minutes he will fall into a steady rhythm, repeating the activity in the same manner, even without considering his technique.

The drawback to unconscious habit is that little thought is put into the motion: a person's habits may be inefficient, ineffective, or even counterproductive yet he repeats them mindlessly - and once a habit becomes ingrained, it requires concentration and self-control to adopt any other manner of doing a task.

The habituated man is in that way like a machine, which performs an action repeatedly with great efficiency, but without regard to conditions of consequences.

Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Practical judgments

As with habits, practical judgment requires previous exposure to the same situation and previous success with a given course of action, such that the action may be repeated under similar circumstances to effect the same outcome. A practical judgment is more conscious than habit, and the activity in question is less regular - a task done once an hour may form a habit, whereas a task done once a week may lend itself to practical judgment.

Recency is supportive of practical judgment because the judgment relies on memory. It is easier to recall something, in detail, if it occurred two days ago rather than two weeks ago. There may be three different ways of accomplishing something, but a person who employs practical judgment will refer to the one he used the last time rather than considering the other two options at all.

Frequency is another supporting factor: if we have seen a task done ten times, and eight of those iterations were done in the same manner, we will gravitate toward that method without considering whether one of the two "odd" solutions might be more effective. As such, practical judgment draws on common practices, rather than best practices.

Intensity is a third factor. Just as we are strongly dissuaded to avoid actions that had unfortunate practical or emotional consequences (we will avoid an option that caused us pain or embarrassment in the past), so are we most strongly inclined to undertake actions that had fortunate consequences to the degree to which we experienced strong positive emotional reactions.

Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Reflective judgments

Reflective judgments require exposure to experience or examples in the past as a basis for making choices in the future. We must have done or observed a task enough times to make comparisons, find similarities, draw conclusions about the general properties and outcomes, on which to reflect before choosing to act.

Theoretical knowledge also supports reflective judgment. While the judgment itself is based on experience and observation, having a theoretical understanding enables us to identify those conditions that are most likely to be causally related to the outcome.

Suggestions from others also help to form reflective judgments. While the common laborer may recognize that a given method of performing a task seems to be most efficient, a remark from his foreman underscores his notion that he is doing things correctly, especially if the foreman makes a specific comment about which behaviors led to success. A salesman may find a given phrase is persuasive with clients, but when a psychologists explains the reason that phrase works, his confidence in the method increases.

The ability to explain a process verbally also assists in reflective judgments. There are many things we observe that simply "seem" right for reasons we cannot explain - but if we are able to verbalize cause and effect, we have greater confidence in our own understanding.

As an aside, this is the reason teaching a skill to someone else improves our own performance: in putting practice into words, we are caused to think about the practice and form an argument in support of the method we are suggesting to others. In many instances a practitioner cannot articulate why he does things a certain way, but when forced to articulate he may come to understand his own reasons.

Verbalization is also useful in the process of reflective judgment because we tend to think in words. While it is also possible to "envision" an action, it is more common to speak through it with one's inner voice, an in working out a problem the ability to form thoughts into words is more convincing than simply having a gut feeling about it.

Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Expert Judgments

Scott has only one sentence to offer: "There are no clearly defined special conditions for increasing one's capacity to apply expert judgments."

(EN: Since expertise is based on theoretical knowledge, it is likely that the "conditions" are merely an intense interest in a given academic area which leads one to devote time to study and observation that develop expertise.)

Conditions Favorable to the Formation of All Judgments

There are certain general conditions that promote the formation of all kinds of judgment, which are:

(EN: The notion of "formation" is important - particularly for habituation, we can practice a method of judgment while being distracted, albeit inefficiently, but may be severely impeded in forming the basis for future judgments.)

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