I would imagine there are alot of shake and bake or HI pseudo reducers that had no understanding of what the hell they were doing when they learned from a friend: how to "heat this up with that" or "throw all this in a soda bottle for 30 mins" and then how to generate HCl gas. It may not have been until they had some experience and exposure to the formal terminology and knowledge that they actually understood what was happening when they added these things together. A form of reverse engineering if you will.
I started teaching myself from text books a long time ago. I wasn't able to practice any experiments or watch any videos. You can do all of this on paper in theory but it just isn't the same until you apply it. Now that I am able to practice techniques and experiment with tangible objects and substances in front of me, learning is a breeze combined with study. Having built that foundation a long time ago makes it much easier to recognize and remember - "Oh I remember reading about this". Or to be able to imagine carrying out a synth that I have never tried, and to be able to say "OK this is what they were talking about" etc.
I can't stress it enough, anyone who wants to be a cook, to read, study, practice and start small and SAFELY! You might be able to see a meth recipe and pull it off without any knowledge or much experience but that's probably as far as it will go, and it will probably end badly for you eventually. Please realize you are taking a risk everytime you throw all these things together if you have no understanding of what exactly you are dealing with and trying to do. If you have no chemistry knowledge, how would you know if a recipe is making drugs, or poison or explosives? Educate yourself!