Labelling the keys on the keys was the mistake. The labels should have been written on a cardboard yo put between your keyboard and your screen.

Not exactly beginner friendly though.

This thread is an amazing case study in the wide range of natural ability people have at using their hands.

I think I'd take an entire year to be able to use that!

Maybe going the opposite way would be more effective, a mirror in front of you so you can see the keys with your peripheral vision without moving your eyes.

Similar to how you can always see your fingers when typing on a phone. I can type without actively staring at the keyboard on my phone pretty well, although that may because thumbs only is just fewer points to process than ten fingers, for those of us who have trouble paying attention to multiple points at once.

"you seriously believe, without any doubt, that with a clearly labelled dvorak keyboard and no typing lessons you would not have learned to hunt-and-peck at increasingly higher speeds as you did with QWERTY, but instead put your fingers "on the home row" and used your pinkies?"

Yes.

Before I further argue with you, a simple question. I've learned Dvorak and been using it for years. Have you tried anything other than QWERTY for long enough to learn it? I am a hunt and peck QWERTY user and I touch type Dvorak. I've spent WAY more time formally trying to touch type QWERTY; I spent basically zero with Dvorak. (Obviously a lot of time to learn the layout. But I made zero extra effort to "touch type".)

What you believe to be a fundamental aspect of typing may be merely an accident of a keyboard layout that penalizes "proper" typing. To type "properly" with QWERTY takes work. To hunt and peck with Dvorak would take equal work, if not more. It is not natural with Dvorak. Why would your hands leave the home row? Only when the keys mean something other than letters entirely, like a WASD game.