Think just how hard it is to cook competently from recipes if you're a newbie.

I'm not sure this is a good example because I've had great success cooking out of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. However, this does not negate your point about difficulty, because kitchen cooking is not necessarily representative of the difficulty of things in general.

I think we do owe them respect for this

Yes, this is one of those other points that I'm not disputing.