Wisdom.

John Baker

John Baker

Final Approach
Joined
Oct 4, 2008
Messages
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Location
San Diego, California
Display Name
John Baker
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KMYF
This has been posted before, but what the heck, consider it a bi annual review.

WISDOM FROM TRAINING MANUALS
​



'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword, obviously never encountered automatic weapons.'
- General MacArthur -





'Tracers work both ways.'
-Army Ordnance Manual-





'Five second fuses last about three seconds.'




- Infantry Journal -





'Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.'
- Naval Ops Manual -





'Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.'
-Unknown Infantry Recruit-





'If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up to him.'
- Infantry Journal-





'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.'
- Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-





'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.'
- Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-





'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
-Unknown Author-





'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.'
-Fixed Wing Pilot-





'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane,you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.'
-Multi-Engine Training Manual-





'Without ammunition, the Air Force is just an expensive flying club.'
-Unknown Author-





'If you hear me yell;"Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos.' If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because by then you'll be the pilot.'
-Pre-flight Briefing from a Canadian F104 Pilot-





'What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots?
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; but If ATC screws up, .... the pilot dies.'
-Sign over Control Tower Door-






'Never trade luck for skill.'
-Author Unknown-





The three most common expressions (or famous last words)in military aviation are: 'Did you feel that?'' What's that noise?' and'Oh S...!'
-Authors Unknown-





'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.'
-Basic Flight Training Manual-





'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it..'
-Emergency Checklist-





'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.'
- Attributed to Max Stanley ( Northrop test pilot)-





'There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime.'
-Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB , AZ-





'You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.'- Lead-in Fighter Training Manual -





As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft, having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives. The rescuer sees the bloodied pilot and asks,'What happened?'
The pilot's reply: 'I don't know, I just got here myself!'
 
steingar said:
Wisdom is truly the capacity to see beyond the lens of one's own experience.
Click to expand...

Impossible. Proven by multiple behavioral scientists, really.

The fix is more experience, since you can't do the impossible. Not platitudes about seeing beyond your experience.
 
denverpilot said:
Impossible. Proven by multiple behavioral scientists, really.

The fix is more experience, since you can't do the impossible. Not platitudes about seeing beyond your experience.
Click to expand...

So then there's no learning from the mistakes of others, you have to make your own? No passing on institutional knowledge through common culture or learned behavior?

I'd like to see your cites of these behavioral scientists.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
So then there's no learning from the mistakes of others, you have to make your own? No passing on institutional knowledge through common culture or learned behavior?
Click to expand...

Not sure. See, we all get indoctrinated young to listen to things like "don't touch the hot stove" from our parents and we still do a few of them, until we learn to trust them.

Then we extend that trust for unknown reasons to folks who tell us intellectually that E=MC^2. Personally, I'll never have the skillset to prove or disprove Relativity for example, but...

See where I'm going here? I already had the "trust people to tell you things" goggles on.

Somewhere early on we also learn and add another set of goggles after finding out that not everyone tells us the truth.

So how do you find someone who doesn't have any "experience" in learning from others to determine if they can without those "goggles"? Learning is a tough one.

Chip Sylverne said:
I'd like to see your cites of these behavioral scientists.
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Mostly just thinking of various Behavioral Economists, which is an utterly fascinating field, if you ask me. Numerous studies that seem to indicate we're not as rational as we are molded by social norms... which are the "goggles" we have placed on us very early on, passed down from generation to generation in a culture... and even more studies that show that in many fiscal matters, culture makes a huge difference in the outcome of similar "value" tests.

So, you may be right in some ways... one can learn facts, but often we really don't believe them until we've tried to apply them.

Flying is certainly that way... you can read Stick and Rudder and warnings in "I Learned About Flying From That" and still go make the exact same mistake, even though you might even "see" yourself doing it, and know rationally you're making the mistake you read about.

So did you really "learn" not to make the mistake, or just to recognize it?
 
denverpilot said:
Then we extend that trust for unknown reasons to folks who tell us intellectually that E=MC^2. Personally, I'll never have the skillset to prove or disprove Relativity for example, but...
Click to expand...
The derivation of that is reasonably straightforward. You can find a copy of Einstein's book on relativity on line - a surprisingly easy read.
 
I love the Malcolm Gladwell books too. The illustrations of the convention wisdom being neither conventional nor wisdom are epic stuff.

I think cultural advancement through learning by nature comes through the acceptance of the research of those who broke new ground in knowledge.. As one of my profs would put it, "standing on the shoulders of those who came before". Isn't that what the scientific method is all about? Replication of the experiment and gaining the same result every time? Once the hypothesis has been proved scientifically, it can be accepted as fact, and the process moves on. One need not build the wright flyer to understand and learn from the science of aerodynamics.

Now, if you're talking about Skinnerian stimulus/ response theory, then you may be on to something. Bat at that level, we're not really talking about wisdom. Wisdom is a humanist construct, which I believe comes thought the synthesis of many years of learning from our own experience, as well as observing the experience of others. Some gain it at an early age, some never do at all.
 
denverpilot said:
Not sure. See, we all get indoctrinated young to listen to things like "don't touch the hot stove" from our parents and we still do a few of them, until we learn to trust them.
Click to expand...

One of the few things I have leaned during a life that has been longer than I ever anticipated, is that the "DONTs" always become "DOs" and the "DOs" always become "DONTs"

We have all touched that hot stove. We may have listened while being told, but at some point in our lives, we made sure we touched that hot stove.

John
 
John Baker said:
One of the few things I have leaned during a life that has been longer than I ever anticipated, is that the "DONTs" always become "DOs" and the "DOs" always become "DONTs"

We have all touched that hot stove. We may have listened while being told, but at some point in our lives, we made sure we touched that hot stove.

John
Click to expand...

I dunno. "don't stall on the turn to final" is one I hope I can learn from without doing....
 
Chip Sylverne said:
I dunno. "don't stall on the turn to final" is one I hope I can learn from without doing....
Click to expand...

I was gonna say good luck with that, but then I think those biggies that can do a lot more than produce a little pain in our finger are the pieces of advise we tend to take to heart, but not all of us, all of the time.

I don't think a year has gone by since I started flying when someone, somewhere, doesn't die in a stall induced crash, yet we've all been told, haven't we?

John
 
John Baker said:
Wisdom comes from having lived long enough so that you no longer have to learn things the hard way.


John
Click to expand...
IME, wisdom comes from having been lucky enough to survive without it. And wisdom doesn't necessarily follow surviving an "experience" said survival opens the door but you still have to go through it.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
I dunno. "don't stall on the turn to final" is one I hope I can learn from without doing....
Click to expand...

But if you thought you'd survive it, you'd go try it... wouldn't you? :)

[Edit: And ALL of us try it... we just do it at altitude, read that altimeter and think... yup, I'd be dead...]
 
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