SLFandProud. Your analogies are superb....But you shouldn't be sidetracked by the occasional retired 'Skygod' sitting at their computer, tapping away feverishly at their keyboards about how brilliant they were in the 80's!
The problem is that ordinary pilots believe that the direction cockpit design took as technology 'enabled' enhanced safety, was to an extent the wrong one.
To remove the human input from cockpit automation, to dismiss ergonomics and human-machine interface design so comprehensively.
Things will always go wrong environmentally. It's called bad weather. It will always outfox a drone pilot or the most sophisticated automation technology. But when an Airbus has the equivalent of a 'kernel exception error' because it's probes have frozen up or it's Angle of Attack probes are jammed, it takes a pilot to know beyond the rudimentary basics of flight using only rudimentary instruments that remain. That requires training and that costs money.
This is not about ego. We all want 100% safety. It just requires making pilots more skilful to achieve that aim. Don't confuse those who moan about that lack of training as Egotistical!