Sadly, our school systems don't encourage experimentation. You get penalized for mistakes, and you don't get rewarded much if you go outside of the boundaries.
That never stopped me. Only a few times did it cause me problems. Sometimes it got some looks and questions by teachers and such. Several times it proved beneficial to me (I got to do things I wanted but wouldn't normally have permission to do, or have access/ability to) and the schools/faculty (free work, new things to use, my knowledge/experience). I was also an atypical student, as I spent most of my lunch time and other "free" time in the library or talking to teachers. I also made a lot of extra free time for myself.
Naturally a state of any kind tends to be handled by control freaks on every level, so individualism, creativity and experimentation are out of the question since those aspects are inherently subversive.
Yeah, that hasn't stopped me either. Something I will be doing soon involves something that is illegal. (I was going to try to make use of some legal loopholes, or just contact the police so they can either give me permission or tell me how to avoid breaking the law. In the end I decided the best bet is to just keep my mouth shut and avoid drawing attention. In the extremely unlikely event that cops show up and it makes it to a court I have a couple laws I can point to. I guess it isn't outright illegal, just in a very grey area that isn't on the books.) There are also many insignificant little things that most people don't care about that are technically illegal, and it just comes down to whether those control freaks want to waste their time with it.
There's so many things I would have missed out on if I hadn't indulged my curiosity about things. I wouldn't be half as happy as I am now either.
Strangely, for me it is the things that aren't "stupid" or "weird" that cause me all sorts of problems. Those same things have also had the largest negative impact on my happiness.
I have been watching a squirrel that is messing around with a stump and rootball from a tree that fell down last year. Even after investigating I can't figure out how it is navigating inside it. I have also been considering volunteering to take in an orphan or injured crow (because intelligent), but that was vetoed. While looking into it I found out all sorts of interesting things about the birds, but also about laws related to them (for native ones I would need paperwork giving me legal permission to keep them, but for non-native ones their aren't as many restrictions). I will probably try to feed crows in the area so they hang around my house. These are just a couple recent examples of me being stupid.
On an unrelated topic, one of my cats has an ear hematoma. We are trying to decide if we should try to drain it ourselves or take him to the doctor.