You learn an order of magnitude better when you're making decisions.

When you're making decisions, you're forced to collapse the wave function.

Instead of just following along and predicting what will happen, you have to also be in a "change the world" mindset.

If you're watching from afar and just predicting, you can just idly predict.

If you get distracted for a bit, nothing changes, everything keeps going as before.

So you're paying attention, but you're not "in the loop" with it.

That's what makes being "in the loop" or "in the arena" helps you absorb significantly more knowhow.