I think everyone has potential for learning from their own mistakes.
Agreed, Dean.
But after more than half a century on this planet I got enough evidence that this is wrong.
... and I the opposite, after the same length of time.
How can this be? Simple - I feel we're observing two, and yet one-and-the-same phenomena.
I see folks who choose not to learn, where you see those same folks as not having the ability to do so, from their mistakes. I'm sure we've both seen more than our fair share of peeps for whom the only reasonable judgement would seem to be that it's simply impossible for them to learn from their mistakes. I know mate. "Impossible" people have played a huge role in destroying my life... many times!
Still, in spite of the apparent evidence, my take is that these folks choose not to learn from said mistakes; it's not that they cannot, IMHO. There's a clear distinction there.
Believe me, my life experience has seen my being exposed to the worst of the worst of what humanity has to offer. No matter the degree of recalcitrance or lack of personal accountability on offer, I contend that every individual is "designed", "blessed" or however you'd prefer to put it, with the innate ability to learn from his or her mistakes.
At its most basic level, the fact that an individual lives to see adulthood is in and of itself proof not only that he / she has this capacity, but that it has been put into practice. Had he / she not paid attention to the various requisite challenges in life that see all of us come unstuck at some point or another, such as near-misses crossing roads, food poisoning through ignoring foul smells, clips across the ear (or worse) for belligerent behaviour, utility services' being cut off due to the non-payment of bills, driving licences having been revoked for various reasons, being late for appointments or critical (food) shopping trips due to not having allowed sufficient time to "get ready", failing to tread more-carefully across smooth, wet surfaces, cutting corners down passageways to the repeated detriment of one's shoulder tendons, placing one's fingers into boiling fat or water on a stove or touching oven glass, jumping into a shower before the hot or cold water has had time to reach and mix with the other, and so on. Literally countless examples come to mind that IMHO, prove that no individual would likely make it to adulthood, let alone beyond that (chronologically-speaking, of course!), had he or she not possessed the innate capacity to learn from mistakes.
Just clarifying that IMHO, we're talking about a choice here, and not a predetermined limitation. Sure, discipline is applied at an individual's discretion, and this is where the meat and potatoes are to be found; it's a matter of prioritisation of said skill - we all fall somewhere between a perfectly-even application of it across the board and an extremely-narrow implementation that's highly-focussed and constant-titty-tutes, or more-accurately, re-prehensile-titty-presents a bias or set thereof, of... convenience.
It was predicted in a well-known book, thousands of years ago, that these times we live in shall be characterised by an explosion of the number of folks who, to paraphrase the text, "give themselves over to reprobate minds and choose to do only that which is convenient".
That's it. Sermon over. You've now proved that you're not of the latter ilk, having endured the egg-stream-titty-leak (extremely) pointy-titty-fabrications (pontifications) of the Monkster!
I congratulate you, Sir or Madam! 
