If that sounds cynical it is admittedly so...a close friend of mine remarked to me Friday, too many confuse opinion with actual knowledge these days
I'll offer that too many confuse knowledge with understanding. It's sort of like the difference between a buck MBA at the age of 25, and a buck sergeant (also 25) who's working on his fourth Anbar deploy and understands the harsh economic forces at work in a COIN environment.

To echo further on what Tom said, understanding what you see has been discussed in warfighting circles as the coup d'oeil, or "stroke of the eye." To borrow from Major Dominic J. Caraccilo and Major John L. Pothin, Clausewitz called this quick recognition of the truth the commander’s coup d’oeil or intuition. Call it situational awareness too, but reading through the depth of literature about small wars, or economics, or fashion, will always pay dividends in the future.

Where the past does not necessarily inform is in those cases when service parochialism drives thoughts to the point that we develop mantras, like "death before dismount".