I think you’re just fundamentally misunderstanding me. Remembering how to do something like ‘hold one of the many keys your left thumb can reach down’ followed by hjkl is more difficult for me than just hjkl or moving my right hand a little bit. Remembering keyboard chords is almost like a dyslexia for me. I get them mixed up all the time and it doesn’t work for me (I know this because I tried to use Emacs before using vi). I can only memorize a few of the most important combinations for applications I use. Everything else is through the GUI.
Not everyone has the capacity to think in the same way you do.
I'm not trying to be prescriptive, here. Do what works for you; it does not bother me one bit that someone uses the computer differently from me. I'm simply trying to explain my point of view.
I would say, however, that it's not really about capacity to think a certain way. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you learned vi after learning some other editing paradigm, which you also had to learn how to do. In both cases, it's not a matter of capacity to think in a certain way, it's simply a matter of learning and then practicing.
Again, I am not suggesting that you should even do that. I would not suggest learning vi to most people, either, even though I think it's a better way to edit text. But I do think it's a better way to use a keyboard, so I will say so.
I gave a good faith effort to learn MS-DOS (my first operating system). I am proficient in DOS. I gave a good faith effort to learn UNIX. I am proficient in UNIX. I gave a good faith effort to learn vi. I am proficient in vi. I gave a good faith effort to learn C. I am proficient in C. I gave a good faith effort in to learn Java. I am not good at Java. I gave a good faith effort to learn how to use tablets. I am not good with tablets. I gave a good faith effort to learn how to use Emacs. I am not good with Emacs.
It's tempting to blame the tools, but it's more rational to blame myself. I'm not certain how to describe what the problem is, but I think capacity to think in whatever paradigm the application expects is good enough to express the point.
Not everyone has the capacity to think in the same way you do.