2,450 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote:
"“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”
Basically, he was saying two things: As concerns memory, use it or lose it. With respect to learning, if we memorize something and think we've learned it, we're fooling ourselves.
Stuffing our head with knowledge is not as useful as hands on experience.
The more hands on we are: play our systems, tweak, adjust, setup, teardown, and/or rebuild, the more expert we become at this amazing passion of ours called HiFi.
Read all you like. Get as much advice as you can absorb.
But, at the end of the day, it's the hands on experience that gives us the gift of earned knowledge.
