Ah, I thought this was about AI.
Remains true for AI though. It has no idea what swimming is.
Humans learn by doing. All the books and white papers are a reference to be used while you're building something. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised to hear people have been doing anything else!
This is very true. I know lots of people that spend months reading new tutorials about a topic (like seo, creating a business, etc) and never actually spend the time to try it out.
I used to be guilty of it too.