Experience

:This article discusses the general concept of experience. For the concept in roleplaying games, see experience point.

Types of experience

The word "experience" may refer (somewhat ambiguously) both to mentally unprocessed immediately-perceived events as well as to the purported wisdom gained in subsequent reflection on those events or interpretation of them.

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Most wisdom-experience accumulates over a period of time, though one can also experience (and gain general wisdom-experience from) a single specific momentary event.

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One may also differentiate between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience(s).

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Immediacy of experience

Someone able to recount an event they witnessed or took part has "first-hand experience". First-hand experience of the "you had to be there" variety can seem especially valuable and privileged, but it often remains potentially subject to errors in sense-perception and in personal interpretation.

Related Topics:
First-hand - Sense - Perception - Interpretation

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Second-hand experience can offer richer resources: recorded and/or summarised from first-hand observers or experiencers or from instruments and potentially expressing multiple points of view.

Related Topics:
Second-hand - Points of view

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Third-hand experience, based on indirect and possibly unreliable rumour or hearsay, can potentially stray perilously close to blind honouring of authority.

Related Topics:
Rumour - Hearsay - Authority

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