Would have p.p.

Hello, everyone,

“Face-to-face interaction, then, is a uniquely powerful ? and sometimes the only ? way to share many kinds of knowledge, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. It is one of the best ways to stimulate new thinking and ideas, too. Most of us would have had difficulty learning how to tie a shoelace only from pictures, or how to do arithmetic from a book.”

We may have two possible ways to parse “would have p.p.” above as either an indicative mood or the 3rd conditional as follows;

1) it is highly probable that most of us had difficulty learning how to tie a shoelace only from pictures.

2) If we had learned how to tie a shoelace only from pictures, most of us would have had difficulty learning it. In fact, most of us didn’t have difficulty learning it.

Considering the whole context, I feel ‘most of us had difficulty learning how to tie a shoelace only from pictures, and then, face-to-face interaction is a uniquely powerful’. So, I’m inclined to 1).

However, I would appreciate, if you kindly share your valuable opinions.

* source;

https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=J_PNjExLVcoC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=%22Most+of+us+would+have+had+difficulty+learning+how+to+tie%22&source=bl&ots=D1LfiMq8n9&sig=ACfU3U3U-Bs6P_qiDckA8mVW7E6Mp1Kijw&hl=ko&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPrLPb8YH3AhUqE6YKHcuYCUoQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Most%20of%20us%20would%20have%20had%20difficulty%20learning%20how%20to%20tie%22&f=false