Also, how people are able to practice and improve at something, like practicing guitar and eventually being able to hit every note, or being able to never leave their wallet behind, or stopping at every stop sign and never forgetting which pedal is the gas.
The fact that people are capable of developing true "skills", where they can do every detail of something, every time, rather than just the vague familiarity a modern programmer needs to get by, just amazes me.
I don't think I've ever truly acquired a new skill in the sense people usually talk about. I can't draw, paint, carve, drive, juggle, dance, etc. I can't cook without a timer, unless I stay in the room and don't do anything else.
If something has a way to fake it with more tech, I'm pretty good at that. As long as I can hide behind the screen with my undo button, where my ability with my own hands is irrelevant, I'm fine.
But there's nothing I can just do without thinking.
I never know where I am. I run into tables all the time. It must be super cool to be able to just do stuff without planning every moment, and still succeed most of the time.
Practicing and actually getting better just by doing something, rather than through research and accumulating a library of patterns, is a totally foreign idea.