Why did Naval say, "Judgment accumulates through experience and learning"?

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Why Does Naval Ravikant Say "Judgment Is Built Through Experience and Learning"?

Great question—I'm glad we can explore this! Many of Naval’s insights are like buried treasure; the deeper you dig, the more you uncover. I believe this quote about judgment is a cornerstone of his wisdom framework.

Let's break it down to understand it more clearly.

So, What Exactly Is Judgment?

Think of judgment like standing at a complex crossroads with no GPS or road signs, yet you're somehow able to choose the path best suited for you—the one most likely to get you where you want to go.

It’s not like solving a math problem with a single "right" answer. Judgment is the ability to make high-quality decisions amid incomplete information and uncertainty. For example:

Should I change jobs?
Is this business idea viable?
How should I handle this situation in a relationship?

These don’t have definitive answers—they rely on judgment.

So, how do you develop this advanced skill? Naval points to two pathways: experience and learning.

1. Experience: Your "Real-Life Database"

Think of experience as "playing the game firsthand."

Imagine a cooking novice next to an expert chef:

The Novice: Follows recipes strictly—measuring salt to the gram, timing every stir—terrified to deviate. If the flame flares or ingredients vary slightly, panic ensues.
The Chef: Glances at ingredients, hefts the wok, smells the aroma, and knows when it’s perfectly cooked or seasoned. No exact numbers—just "feel."

How does that "feel" emerge? From thousands of tosses, tastings, and mistakes: failed dishes (burnt, oversalted) and successes. All those moments create a vast, living "real-life database" in their mind.

This is the power of experience. You lived through it—stumbled, won, lost—and it crystallizes into intuition. When similar situations arise, your brain auto-selects from this database: "Heads up—last time this backfired!" or "This looks promising, like that successful project!"

But is experience enough? Not quite. If you only swim in the same pond, you'll never navigate the ocean. Experience can become limiting—even misleading.

That’s when "learning" breaks through the ceiling.

2. Learning: Your "Mental Toolkit"

If experience hands you concrete "data points," then learning equips you with "mental frameworks" and "underlying logic" to analyze them.

Back to our chef:

The Experienced Chef Who Never Studies: Masters one cuisine, like Chinese, but freezes when asked to cook French. Their expertise is confined.
The Chef Who Studies and Practices: Learns culinary theory, food science, global cuisines. Faced with an unfamiliar ingredient, they think from first principles: What’s its composition? Suited to high heat? What flavors complement it?

This is learning’s role: offering a macro perspective and foundational tools. Naval strongly advocates studying fundamental sciences (math, physics), philosophy, economics—they build universal "mental models."

Learning reveals the "why" behind what happens.
Learning connects knowledge across domains for "analogical thinking."
Learning identifies "cognitive biases" in your experience, preventing repetitive errors.

3. Experience + Learning = True Judgment

Now, combine both—something transformative happens—a virtuous cycle:

You learn a mental model (e.g., "opportunity cost" in economics).
You apply this model in practice (experience), consciously calculating the "opportunity cost" when deciding whether to switch jobs.
The outcome becomes new experience, enriching your database.
You then return to study and reflect: Why did this decision succeed/fail? Is my grasp of "opportunity cost" truly solid?
This loop repeats, and your judgment snowballs.

Simply put:

Only experience, no learning → You're the old sailor who knows one route but gets lost off-course.
Only learning, no experience → You're the map-quoting "armchair sailor"—full of theory but seasick at the first wave.
Experience + learning → You become the captain navigating by star and chart and weathering any storm.

When Naval says judgment grows through "experience and learning," he's revealing a profound truth: Growth happens by bravely trying and erring (building experience) while never ceasing to read and think deeply (committing to learning). Bit by bit, this lets you choose wisely at life’s many crossroads.