I think there's a lot we can learn from the other side, if we can break down the preconceptions that exist on each. That said,
I think you are underestimating how difficult that is for a lot of people.
Right, but the question is why. That 'why' is the essence of understanding what I'm saying. Do you think that some humans are just fundamentally "not cut out for it" from birth?
Humans are remarkably adaptable.
I have a theory of mental plasticity that goes something like this:
Observation A> Humans need a model of reality to function. They can't generally work on "raw data." Examples provided upon request, but you can probably synthesize them. Think of driving-if you try to reduce it to analysis of steering wheel angles, pedal pressures in nm, closure angles, traction percentage etc, much like a computer might, you wouldn't be able to get to the grocery store. (Even automated vehicles need models)
Observation B> Humans (like many species) are born receptive to information about the world around them. As they grow, they have to continually adjust their model of reality to fit available data. That is computationally expensive, and it takes work. Adapting your model leaves you vulnerable, because you haven't compiled the parameters into instant action/reactions. ("muscle memory"). It's slower and less efficient. An elite hockey player stays in a flow state of read/react, based on how they train. Their cognition is operating nearly independently from their body.
As humans become more efficient at things, they start to build that muscle memory, including cognitive process. That's "the model." Once we achieve a state where we're just responding to everything by read/react, we start locking down the model, because it's proven to work for us. We've determined this to be an accurate and efficient way to exist in our current environment. We do the things we do, we understand the things that come in. The world "makes sense."
In short:
When humans are young, they change their model to fit available data.
As humans grow, they reach a point where they start altering the incoming data to fit their model.
Once humans have a model that adequately explains the world around them, and allows them to operate efficiently therein, that model becomes almost immutable, and they question anything that doesn't fit it. To challenge that model is to challenge their existence, and what has become their fundamental self.
When people say "the brain is still growing until 13/16/18/20/24/25/28", it's actually just a reductive conflation of correlation and causation, and I believe the above demonstrates some of the causative factors. The brain is plastic as long as you're expanding it to new ideas. As soon as you lock that model down and determine that no, X is Y, and that's just common sense, you begin losing the ability to grow. It takes you less time and energy to think, but you start to solidify those pathways.
The muscles atrophy as comfort ("common sense") grows.
The problem with common sense is, as the saying goes, that it's not common. But people fundamentally misunderstand that statement--it doesn't mean "it's not common" as in "most people don't have it," it means "it's not common" as in "it's not shared between people."
When you teach people something that doesn't rely on that "common sense," like flying, you have to figure out where they are on the adaptivity scale, and sometimes you have to break into the model. And they have to voluntarily open that model for you, or they'll just keep bouncing off the new concepts and ideas. That doesn't mean everyone will actually be able/willing to open that model, and most instructors won't go through the effort to do so because they are (understandably) not devoted solely to that student's learning process. They have better things to do than spend many hours psychoanalyzing their students, and the students won't want to pay for that anyway. This is not an ideal world, and some compromises have to be made.
And there are some people who have developed maladaptive responses to external pressures, and at times those maladaptive responses can be highly inappropriate in aviation. (Atlas, Houston) Does that mean the individual can't be a pilot? Not necessarily, but the foundational issues must be addressed and can't be ignored. If those foundational issues are uncorrectable, then, and only then, have you found a candidate that isn't suited to the profession. CA might have been one of those due to extreme impulsivity, but more likely the instructors along the way passed the buck by just meeting the minimum standard at the exact right time to "cooperate and graduate."
Anyway, if anyone has read this far, thanks for giving up half your day to read my inane ramblings.
TL;DR: Humans are remarkably adaptable and capable of learning, in my observation, but once they lock in their model of reality as "truth," it becomes impossible to natively teach new concepts. They can assimilate new concepts only by adapting them to fit their model, rather than adapting their model to fit the concepts.
Exactly none of which is relevant ot the titular accident, but is at least tangentally relevant to the discussion at hand.
