People will not learn a lesson unless they try to experience the worst thing happened in their life that's why we see a lot of people fail on things they do especially on gambling where they think the money is fast. They always think about its easy for them to get rich that's why they got a wrong information installed in their mind and when they face the real scenarios happening there they lose so much and can't control their self anymore since they want to gamble more so they can recover back their losses and to earn huge because they think if they are consistent they became a good gambler later on.
And then they failed and get hook to much that's why its good to have good platforms where we can go if we want to seek some help and also the support of family is really important so that we can get away with this addiction then get back to our normal life.
Yes, that is the reality of life that if you tell people to avoid certain things, they won't listen to you but when they themselves get the losses from such acts, only then they will realize their mistake. This is also very common in gambling. You keep on telling the gamblers to be responsible and not be greedy but the gamblers won't listen. They will only realize that we were right when they will face the loss and learn that whatever was told to them was right.
Anyways we need platforms like QuitGamble etc so that people keep reminding themselves of the dark side of it and remain in balance while gambling.
When it comes to humans, the most difficult thing is to advise them outside their own life experiences and as such it has to do with a lot of time and what comes their way as individuals what they choose to believe in and whatever, most times the individuals chose to believe whatever they chose to and at the same time we must choose what choices and what are their possible outcomes.
All this need to be considered while making decisions on what we take as risk and what to expect along the line, for sure personal face hand experience is far more better than telling someone because of third-party experiences it doesn't work that way and as far as I know everyone needs to make a choice based of the information that they have gained.
If I understand you correctly, then I would have to say that first hand experiences arent always the best way to learn, first hand experience have put some people in their early grave, they never had what we can term as a second Chance, second chance is expensive, not every one is given the grace to have it, this is why we must learn to learn from other people's experiences, and not wait until something happens to us before we learn.
It is commonly said that, a wise person learns from the experiences of others people, he does not wait for something to happen to him before he learns, he simply draws knowledge and wisdom from what he have seen or heard happen to other people, this is something I think I've talked about here countless of times.
In gambling, it's important to pay attention to other people's experiences, for there is a lot of lesson to learn from there, we should not wait until something (maybe bad) happens to us before we learn, for doing so could be dangerous, like I said before, not everyone who waited to learn from first hand experiences had the opportunity of correcting themselves after the first first hand experience came.