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Taught By Experience: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:xkcd242_7013.png|link=Xkcd
{{quote|''"A learning experience is one that tells you, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'"''|'''[[Douglas Adams]]'''}}
Some people [[Badass Bookworm|learn by reading]]. Some people [[Awesome By Analysis|learn by observation]]. Some people [[Taught
The human mind is an interesting thing. When we put our hand on a hot burner or put a penny in a lightsocket, what's left of us tends to not want to do that anymore. We learn from our mistakes.
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* The first season of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' was a fairly ridiculous case: Nanoha became a mage when she was handed her [[Empathic Weapon]] and defeated the first [[Monster of the Week]]. She does this ''after school'', and without ''any'' training, she's stronger than another talented mage that had been training for his entire life ''within a week''. Then within a few weeks, she's an elite [[Rank Inflation|A rank]] mage firing a [[Wave Motion Gun]] from her staff. The manga actually provided a [[Hand Wave]] that she used said weapon to go through [[Training From Hell]] at all hours of the day.
** Also, it helps that she's crazy talented. Specifically, she's naturally ''powerful'', which means that she can make up for her lack of skill via sheer brute force when she needs to, [[Heroic RROD|though she would pay for doing that too much in time]].
* In ''[[Pokémon (
** Ironic as he kept using Pikachu on Team Rocket, despite them using something that's shock proof (which they've done since, what, the fifth time he faced them? Out of [[Over Nine Thousand]]?) As Meowth pointed out in one episode, "You'd think he'd learn by now".
* ''Vagabond'' is about how [[Miyamoto Musashi]] goes from a naturally gifted [[Hot-Blooded|hothead]] to a true [[Badass]] ''after'' he gains experience, being humbled before overcoming the challenge; when he's going {{spoiler|to fight all of the remaining Yoshioka}}, he actually thanks them (silently and by himself with a silent prayer) for giving him the past year to learn, develop and grow.
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* In ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]'', the entire point of {{spoiler|setting up Shoichi Irie as the main enemy of the Future Arc, and having the Vongola storm Merone Base}} was so that they would gain more strength in order to defeat the ''true'' [[Big Bad]], {{spoiler|Byakuran}}.
* Yuu from ''[[Holyland]]'' does this most of the time fighting on the street. Sometimes he has to be manually taught by others, but mostly he figures it out by this. For example, he used what he learned fighting a judoka to know what to look out for against another grappler and started using more kicks after he found that he was damaging his hand from over-reliance on his fists.
* In ''[[
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* ''Platoon'' has Charlie Sheen's character develop from a shell shocked recruit fresh from basic training into a capable soldier...unfortunately.
* ''[[Star Wars]]'': Luke Skywalker's advancement in [[The Force]] can be attributed to this. Without the classic training of the monk-like Jedi, he learned by improvisation and [[Artificial Limbs|sometimes hard lessons.]]
* ''[[Iron Man (
** Whereas {{spoiler|Stane can't hit the broad side of a barn once his targeting computers are... "disabled". }}
{{quote| '''Stark:''' {{spoiler|"[[Are These Wires Important|Oooh, this looks important!]]" ''(rrriip)''}}}}
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{{quote| {{spoiler|'''Stane:''' "Icing problem?" ''(suit goes ka-put)''}}<br />
'''Stark:''' {{spoiler|"Might want to look into it!"}} }}
** Carried into ''[[The Avengers (
* Despite having "teaching machines" they could use, in ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' the humans decided to just learn to fly jets through experience. And they do it well enough to actually pose a reasonable challenge to the Psyclos.
* ''[[The Elite Squad]]'' (aka ''Tropa de Elite'') combined this with [[Training From Hell]]: The latter half of a room-clearing obstacle course is actually a part of a real slum with real assault-rifle-toting criminals.
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{{quote| "Four years of pre-med, four years of med school, and tons of unpaid loans have made me realize one thing... I don't know jack."}}
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': Interestingly enough, even the centuries-old Doctor.
* Inverted with a character on ''[[House (TV series)|House]]''. An applicant for House's diagnostic team was revealed to not have actually gone to med school. He worked as a janitor at the college and audited every class multiple times, and so had a large understanding of the textbooks and medical theory. But he never actually worked with patients or was actually trained to do certain procedures, not to mention didn't even have a medical license. Sneaking around that limitation is what led to House figuring out his secret.
** That's not what leads to House firing him, though. He liked the guy. It's just that the janitor had the same ideas as House and thought pretty much along the same lines. And that is not what House wants in an assistant.
** The whole "janitor as doctor" thing is likely a callback to an earlier episode where House tries to pass a janitor as a doctor to a patient.
** It could even be a call back to House's own origin where he once observed a hospital janitor in Japan who, while being a social minority and despised for it, was deferred to by his social better because he was so knowledgeable about medicine he garnered their respect. It' unlikely the man every attended a medical school, leaving the trope as the most likely explanation of his expertise.
* ''[[Stargate SG
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''Any'' game based on strategy. You can read all the "How to Play Chess" books you want, but you'll never really understand the game until you actually play it and get your butt kicked repeatedly.
* ''[[
* Continuum's skill system is explicitly built on this, with points accruing each time the skill is rolled if players don't decide to [[Time Travel|take a short cut]]
* [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|Sykers]] in ''[[Deadlands]]: Hell on Earth'' took years to train [[After the End|Before The End]], with new [[Psychic Powers]] being added to a [[Super Soldier]]'s repertoire once every year or so, on average. It's possible for [[Player Character|Player Characters]] to ''become'' sykers much more quickly, to say nothing of adding new abilities. What's the difference? [[Word of God|Experience.]] Keeping your melon intact while the horrors of [[The End of the World
* When making a unit in [[
* It's an unofficial but often-suggested rule in ''[[
* Happens a lot with experimental equipment in ''[[Paranoia]]''. Just because you have security clearance to test the equipment doesn't mean you have security clearance to ''read the instructions''.
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* In [[Monster Hunter]], there are no [[Experience Points]] to speak of... the experience belongs to the '''player'''. An experienced player with horrible newbie gear can and will be more successful than a newbie with great gear.
* Much like Monster Hunter above, [[Demons Souls]] and [[Dark Souls]] drill the players not just how to fight, but remember enemy placement, trap placement, enemy aggression range, weapon moveset, etc. An experienced player can tell what another players' rough stats are from what he/she equips and then deduce what needs to be done to counter it, usually in order of seconds. There are more than enough anecdotes of seasoned players zipping through the game in a fraction of the time they required to do it the first time around.
* A case of a boss who does this in-game: Mr Freeze in [[Batman: Arkham City]] seems at first like a typical "impervious unless attacked in a certain way, but never learns to cover that weakness" sort of boss. Turns out he isn't; each sneaky trick Batman can use on him [[It Only Works Once|will only work once]] because he will alter his attack pattern to cover that particular weakness, forcing the player to do the same: [[Creepy Monotone|"I can adapt my strategies, Batman. Can you?"]]
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'': The entire show covers a little under one year, yet Aang learned three other bending practices, Sokka became a <s> skilled</s> passable swordsman, Zuko increases his firebending and Katara has become a virtual waterbending goddess. Sozin's comet gives them added incentive. On another note, this is the reason Toph learned metalbending - because she ''really'' wanted to get out of a metal box.)
* The ''[[Batman:
** ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' sees Bruce's then-protege Terry go through a long process to learn how to properly be Batman. Early on he is dependent on [[Clothes Make the Superman|his batsuit]] to survive; later episodes sees him learning from the constant hazards to the point that he's perfectly capable without it.
* Subverted by Ed in ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'' with his inability to grasp the concept of a fridge light despite a whole night of experiments:
** Ed: ''Hello light...Hello light...Hello light...''
*** In fairness, his was the question of whether the light turns off when you shut the door. It's just that his "experiment" (opening and closing the door) had no way of working and he was too stupid to devise something else.
* ''[[Superman:
* In the first sesion of ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' the title character has little control of his powers and has trouble taking on the weakest of his enemies. After three sesions of fighting, he is able to hold his own against the ghost gods.
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* [[Myth Busters|Adam Savage's]] mantra: "failure is always an option", which he explains as meaning that even a failure is data that we can learn from.
* Why every middle- or highly-placed job demands a certain number of years of experience in a relevant field.
* [[Quentin Tarantino]] never went to film school - everything he learned came from making a film with his friends when he worked at a film archive, as well as [[Taught
* The famous Edison quote: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
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