An interesting question might be if the automation system can be evaluated against the human perceptual system, or amalgamation of systems. This seems like an exceedingly difficult premise to evaluate though, given the varied and dynamic nature of the real-world driving environment.
Your argument that human processing is superior to Tesla processing seems orthogonal (that's about how the data is handled, not about what input data is available).
I think I would concede the argument that it's "just processing" once someone has recreated the processing in an automation system. That seems unlikely. Or when an automation system outperforms a human in every situation one might encounter in a chaotic driving environment.
Your analogy is a bad-faith definition of orthogonal.
That's all I meant to say.
> ... Teslas have at least as good a visual input system as humans, so that alone can't be a reason they're worse drivers.
I don't think that's an accurate description of the original claim. At this point I do wish it had been. This perpetuates the discarding of how past experience affects perception, which seems like part of the "visual input system" of humans to me.