https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle "Science progresses one funeral at a time" basically says that people, even very smart people, can't unlearn, so the only way humanity as a whole can unlearn is via people dying off. Maybe it's a problem we should give more attention before tackling aging.
You seem to be assuming that people (as a whole) actually learn from the past and their mistakes. You know the saying, though: "history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme." We just keep making a lot of the same mistakes as a species, over and over again. :/
I used to be pretty decent in high school math, chemistry and physics... Now I only vaguely can recall that stuff. Show me some problem or something and I might not be sure what to apply or where to start anymore.