I think you can. Especially when you can browse the tree which is similar to asking your teacher "what if" questions.

Many players I know learned how to play pretty well on 9x9 by playing a computer program.

I'd argue you can even learn much faster playing a program, because for high level players many sequences were based purely on memorization (including point values) but now seeing different results quickly you can understand it better.

And the level where your play is based on high level abstractions like influence and group strength is not that hard to reach and it wouldn't take much to reason them out just from the games.