>learning from others
or
>experiencing things and forming your own thoughts
I don't know which is better. Are you "tainted" or "lazy" if you read books? Aren't you better off by forming your own opinions on things instead of reading the opinion of someone else and regurgitating it?
This is something that has been bugging me. I want to go to university, but it feels like a path of comfortable mediocrity and not going the other way of forming your own thoughts and writing them down. I don't think you get multiple chances at stuff like this.
Think about it like this:
I'm 22. People typically reach their intellectual zenith at around 25 +- 2 years before very very slowly declining for the next several decades until they eventually start getting major problems in old age. Whatever you're going to do, the best of it will statistically be in your mid-twenties. This goes for scientists, painters, mathematicians, musicians and producers, athletes, whatever. Typically, your most CELEBRATED work in life, will have been accomplished around your mid-twenties.