Sunfish,
I suspect that you have missed the intent of my post.
At no point did I suggest that the weekend warrior or VFR/PPL is a bumbling fool, indeed I used to be one, BUT the point I was trying to make was that the weekend warrior or VFR/PPL is the one with the least amount of support, operating in, for the most part, aeroplanes that are not superbly equipped, in an environment which is conducive to fatigue, stress, and a whole bunch of other things, which will in turn take the focus off looking outside for me in my white jet.
If we look at the above objectively and not emotionally then it will be easier to see where I am coming from.
On a side note I accept that some of us might come across as "sky gods" as you call us, but for the most part almost every airline pilot I know is an enthusiast who loves flying in most, if not all, it's forms and doesn't consider themselves better than the average amateur driver.
The difference between "us and them" as you would have it is this...
Airline pilots are (mostly) professional pilots who eat, live and breath their work. It is what they do. Some do so begrudgingly because they have lost the interest given all the crap that gets piled on, but nevertheless they fly every week, do maybe between 500-1000 hrs a year, sim checks every 6 months etc. you get the picture they are very familiar with their environment and aeroplane.
Amateur pilots have lives outside aviation, most don't fly as regularly as either they want to or should for recency purposes, and very few I would wager have sufficient dough to own their own aeroplanes and have them fitted with the very latest in overhead under hangs, chrome grease nipples and twin fox tails, so by extension they are dipping their hand into their pocket to go flying, so every second and dollar counts. They go flying single pilot, so no help from old mate in the other seat, they are flying a piston single so it is noisy and fatiguing, they can't get a hot coffee at the push of a call button, they can't push the seat back and have a hot meal, they haven't got a fmc with triple IRU's coupled to a cat 3b autopilot so they have to hand fly or at least reasonably closely monitor the autopilot, they can't go down the back and go to the dunny and they typically don't have an effective means of managing cabin temp other than in the coarsest of means - so it can be cold or hot (both of which are stress inducing)
Couple to this they are usually, and this is a generalisation, less experienced in hours (but not necessarily years of flying) than professional pilots (GA, Airline, military, flying doc, coast watch, aero rescue, aeromedical chopper etc) and they have a much lower base to work from, and do so in considerably more trying conditions.
What the above paragraphs means to me is this. The amateur pilot is by virtue of their workload/conditions/experience/recency are subject to a higher workload than the airline pilot.
It is a well known phenomena that when placed under stress cognitive ability reduces. I have trained a lot of airline pilots and you see it when they start their line training. They are overloaded and their brain prioritises what it needs to in order to cope. This includes peripheral vision and hearing.
It is very common for pilots under initial training to have tunnel vision and not see and hear (or if they hear not be able to process) visual and aural messages/warnings/radio calls/crew member communications. As they progress through their training their cognition improves and they take in more and more and their awareness of their surroundings becomes broader and more complete.
Whilst I admit I have not flown a piston powered aeroplane in over 25 years, I can't help but feel that the same applies to the amateur pilot, in some way shape or form. Some people would be able to cope with the lack of recency and use it to sharpen their edge, but others wouldn't be able to.
So, the point of my post was that if we take away the alerted part of traffic awareness and simply rely on see and avoid, we are taking away an element of the system that gives the person who is working with a heap of competing priorities a nudge to go looking for the traffic.
If you operate in an environment where you don't see a lot of traffic up close you will become used to not looking too closely for it, as it has never been there. So it will come as a big surprise the day the traffic is there!
However if you have a radio call that says (and I am paraphrasing AIP here! " ready or not here I come!" Then the guy/gal who sees very little traffic when flying, who is working single pilot with the least amount of support, in the more hostile environment (compared to an airline flight deck) BUT who has the more manoeuvrable aeroplane with typically the better opportunity to see the big white jet (by virtue of not having bits of the aeroplane in the way), then they will have the best opportunity to see and avoid you.
This doesn't absolve the airline pilot of liability and nor should it, and infact liability isn't something I put my mind to on a regular basis as the reality is if I hit something like a GA aeroplane it is likely to be my estate that has to deal with the question of liability and culpability not me.
As I previously mentioned, I don't have a lot of visibility out of the front of my steed, a bit more to one side (but not the other) and bugger all behind, so I can't help much..
I have had a jet a couple of thousand feet below me about 10-15 miles in front and reducing for some considerable time and only saw them just before they vanished under the nose at about 4-5 miles in front. I knew they were there, they were on TCAS, I was looking but couldn't for the life of me see them (neither could my offsider) so that says to me that alerted see and avoid is difficult enough, take away the "alerted" bit and you have even less effective chance of seeing the oncoming traffic before you become a noise abatement issue.
So I don't want one of the legs of the stool pulled out from underneath me.
Hope that clarifies what I was saying