> It's naive of you to believe you can learn from our past naivety.

Firmly disagree. You absolutely can learn from others' past mistakes - that doesn't mean you'll make no mistakes, but you absolutely can make less mistakes and recognize and correct them faster.

> You will have to do your own mistakes and learn from them.

True. But the more you can listen to and apply good guidance from people who've been there, the better chance you get there faster, more easily, and with less pain.

I wish someone had taught me to lift weights with lower weight and perfect form instead of trying to be superman - from that, I tore some cartilage in my knee doing squats with too much weight and bad form. I've showed a couple people how to lift since then, given them a stern admonition not to try to look powerful, but to focus on steady, safe gains. As far as I know, everyone getting this stern admonition with relevant stories about physical therapy and assorted misery listens to them and lifts weights in a safer, more healthy way. You can learn from others' mistakes, often refrain or minimize the mistake-making in your life, and be much better off for doing so.

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.

I'm sorry but you're talking about trivial life issue.

Do you think one could teach you how to deal with the loss of a loved one, disease, poverty, finding out who you really are, being a good friend or a good father?

That's what matters.

Perhaps not, but I think I've learned from mistakes faster when people have warned me beforehand about them.

Sorry but Oscar Wilde was the original troll. If you've spent any time reading him you'd be extremely reluctant to quote him on something like this.

I think that he just wasn't very literal. In this case he's right: you have to learn everything yourself, you can't really be taught; "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

One of my favorite quotes is from Oscar Wilde, "Life is too important to be taken seriously".

If you're a rational person, you can learn a lot from other people's mistakes.

Too bad we're not rational

Speak for yourself.

Unless your brain isn't the product of evolution by natural selection, it's not optional:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases