if it worked this way, we could get good at golf by watching TV, writing songs by listening to the radio, or doing math by watching 3b1b. but it doesn't - we don't learn that way, for better or worse.

That's not a great comparison. People absolutely do learn by watching, especially when they do so actively.

Your counter-examples have the property that most of the things you need to learn are absent from the media being watched, leading to an observation which is "obviously" true, but they ignore the impact of media on a journey properly incorporating other pieces of information. To compare to the mental models being discussed, you'd have to actually consider effects you're writing off as negligible, and when it comes to something like a world model which we've only learned by observation and which doesn't have a lot of additional specialized knowledge those effects might be much more impactful.

I agree with rogerrogerr, and your comparisons don’t make sense to me. Getting good at complex motions and understanding theory is far different than building a simple model of cause and effect in the real world.

Most people can’t explain the physics they see, but they can deduce enough to be able to predict the effects of physical actions most of the time.

But you do get good at driving by playing realistic driving games.