If a person reads a lot of theory about how to swim, different types of techniques, other people’s written experiences etc., can they swim if thrown in a deep swimming pool? Or, at least, be able to swim enough to reach the steep end and save themselves from drowning?
By “a lot”, I mean spending over 6 months to a year, gaining theoretical knowledge. And when we throw them in the pool, they are willing to try it, as in, “I have learnt enough, and I am willing to try it out.”
There’s a difference between already developing motor skills and then trying to improve those motor skills by learning from the skills of others.
And having not developed those motor skills and then trying to learn them from the experiences of others.
If you have never crawled or walked your entire life, you can’t learn how to crawl or walk just by reading about it. The neural pathways literally don’t exist for you to be able to balance and move. You would need to actually do the physical actions to develop those neural connections for those motor skills to develop.
A significant part of our brain is dedicated to controlling our body, not just to knowledge and thinking. Those portions of our brain largely develop alongside us actually moving and practicing motor skills.
You could learn technique and what you’re not supposed to do as long as you have all the prerequisite motor skills relate to that information. If you are missing the prerequisite motor skills then you will not be able to.
That last part is where many of these “Absolutely not” answers are grounded.
Someone who is able to walk around and control their breathing already has those prerequisite motor skills.