There are lots of topics on the Dope where a little book learnin’ gives someone a good grounding in the conversation.
Then there are the other times when a lack of actual, practical experience makes the advice or opinion not particularly useful.
For me, examples of the former include discussions of ethics, history, science, etc.
While examples of the latter (again for me) include discussion of child-rearing, sex, and marriage.
When, if ever, do you find yourself thinking “You have no experience with X so you have no idea what you’re talking about”?
Whenever someone who isn’t a writer/editor tries to tell me how to do my job. Probably not exactly what you were looking for, but it’s the first thing that came to mind.
More along the lines of what I think the OP intended is when nonmusicians try to talk to me about band dynamics and/or what it’s like to be in a band (or choir, orchestra, etc.). Unless you’ve been in such a group, you can’t really know what you’re talking about.
I can only think of times where I’ve felt like the ignorant party, knowing I didn’t have the experience to relate to what I was hearing about. Couple of examples:
A gay person coming out of the closet
A person dealing with having been abused
A person dealing with having been assaulted
A person dealing with addiction
I haven’t lived through any of those things myself, and though I can lend an ear when someone else matching the above needs to talk, I can’t really identify with their perspectives.
Dealing with mental health issues such as depression or bipolar disorder. Many people who have no experience are quick to label others as being just lazy or needing to “just snap out of it.”
Even someone with one disorder can find it difficult to fully understand what it’s like to have another one.
There are a lot of times when I didn’t discover how ignorant I was about something (like the death of a loved one someone mentioned) until it happened. Then I understood that I had been so ignorant.
And, in turn, dealing on an intimate level (immediate family/marriage/SO) with someone who has a mental disorder is an experience unto itself that almost nothing can prepare you for. I can tell you firsthand that loving someone who is legitimately suicidal is an incredibly exhausting and taxing experience.
This might not be what you’re looking for, but I would say that first hand experience of living in a communist country (Cuba in my case), can not be substituted with reading about it. While I am sure that someone reading about the experience can empathize with the situation, the reality of living it is miles away.
Indeed.
[turning this into a hijack] Years ago, there was an SDMB mental illness support group, but I can’t find it. If anyone remembers it, or has ideas on how to start one up, that’d be cool[/ttiah]
While I agree with you on talking about scientific principles, talking about doing science is another case where those who have never done it seem to have serious misconceptions.
I guess this is what the apprentice system was all about - getting someone to guide you through the experiences you need to have to learn something. When we had our first kid my wife’s mother and aunt were great in showing us how to do stuff. My father showed me how to cook, and my wife is doing the same for our kids.
My freshman year at Tulane there was some frat party called “Saturate” and each room of the large house had a different theme. There was a tiki bar room with real sand brought in, there was a christmas room, there was a playboy grotto, and there was a farm room among many others. Somehow the boys had gotten about three live chickens and two goats for the farm room.
Needless to say, at the end of the night, all five animals were gone. The next day I am going into my dorm which is a disgusting 12 floor tower built in the 60s by someone with a demented definition of personal space. Anyways, Also entering the building were a few boys with a box with one of the chickens. They place it gingerly in the elevator and press every button up to 12 and then take off up the stairwell as they’ve all placed bets as to which floor it will get off on. Well I take the second elevator to the 8th floor (my floor) as I do not want to have to make awkward conversation with the chicken as we stop at every floor in the building.
Well I get out on the 8th floor and hang around int he common area for a minute when the second elevator opens and the chicken nonchalantly walks out onto the floor, looks around without fear, and then takes a massive white poop on the floor.
A commotion was starting to fire up and this is what set off the chicken’s nerves. It starts running like hell up and down the hallway. The boys with the box are chasing it and making dives trying to capture it. Those mother fuckers can RUN.
Then with confidence and grace, our resident Kentuckian raised-on-a-farm girl comes out and marches and declares “you have to gray-ub it under its WANGS” [wings] She marches right up to the chicken and gets it. Whatever experience she had gave her the ability to do what about 15 rich kids couldn’t: capture a running chicken.
While not related to the OP, the goats showed up in the next several days as well. Apparantly the frat had rented them from some petting zoo and needed to get their deposits back. One night I see a boy in a wifebeater and santa hat (its september) chasing a running goat down the sidewalk across campus screaming “THAT GOAT IS MY LIFE”
I saw a local police man with a rope tied to each horn of a goat walking around campus yelling out cajun accent and all “BOY COME GET THIS GOAT”
Living somewhere that nobody, or next to nobody, speaks your language. If you haven’t done it, it’s impossible to express how frustrating and helpless the feeling is.
Seconded. Hell’s bells, just living with someone who was flirting with suicide was exhausting. I can’t imagine how I’d have felt if I were in love with him. That experience colors everything I think, see and view about the topic of suicide, even when I know it’s completely irrelevant to the situation at hand.
