I just thought of a better analogy.
The goal of almost any aeronautical engineer is to build a plane
that has good positive stability; you let go the stick and it
reverts to stable, level flight.
The reality of the power system more resembles the V22 Osprey, or
the Shuttle 'flying' on final approach. One minor wrong move and
you soon become a pile of burning composite on the ground. Both
"fly" at all because they have significant flight control
hardware+software to ..mimic.. that stability. But mimic is the
best as you can get. Newer, better mimickry is still mimickry.