With fly-by-wire you're not really moving the control surfaces directly. You're requesting that the plane move a certain way and the computer figures out the controls to make it happen.

For experienced pilots, making the controls look like what they're used to makes sense. But if you're not even using your hands, there's no reason to preserve the joystick metaphor.

That could be a lot of fun, trying to figure out new metaphors for flight control once you break free of the old ones.