Could not agree more with SAS, Crab,GM. Ther were a couple of factors in play here, historically ( maybe more than a couple? ). A lot of the “old heads “ considered SAS. AFCS etc as unnecessary, expensive, claptrap. Then, as those features appeared anyway, the ground school teaching syllabi and flight manual information was purposefully dumbed down to the extent that pilots understanding of how the systems worked was impossible. “ Oh, the pilots don’t need to know that “ was a phrase I heard, not infrequently. But they do, and if the subject is presented properly, it can be made both understandable and interesting. Just an opinion.