gatt writes:

I would submit that getting the training required to earn a license
makes you safer than somebody who bought an airplane and took it flying.

Learning makes you a good pilot; getting training does not.

But, who knows. He might have had hundreds of hours of endorsed solo
flight and simply never taken the checkride, and flown hundreds of
unregulated hours snce then.

Yup. Like all those unlicensed pilots in Alaska.