The Limitations of Experience
Friday, September 13, 2013 at 10:12AM | Neill Archer Roan | Permalink tagged Arrogance, pipe-smoking experience | in Information, Pipe Culture, Pipe Forums, Pipe History, Successful Smoking, Tobacco History 
As related to pipe-smoking, few things annoy me so much as the arrogant certainty of some pipe smokers who believe, because they have smoked a pipe for some 30 to 40 years or more, that they know all there is to know on the subject.
Invariably, these people accredit their opinions by their long experience, implying that knowledge and wisdom are conveyed by virtue of having passed time with a pipe in their kisser. They trumpet, “I’ve smoked a pipe for over 40 years, and blah, blah, blah (insert opinion-of-the-day here)….”
Bullshit. Many have smoked a pipe for 1 year and repeated that single year 39 times.
Decades of jamming Prince Albert into a cob pipe will make you conversant with cobs and Prince Albert, but it certainly doesn’t substitute for active inquiry and experimentation with scores of different pipe makers and tobacco blenders over that same 40 years. By making this comparison, I am not denigrating Prince Albert or cobs, both of which are what they are, I am declaring that if that is all you have done, then you haven’t done much. This would be just as true for someone who has smoked Balkan Sobranie in an S. Bang. That experience would be just as limited.
