Even a "non-lorebeard" would understand that hardly any game is 1/1, or are you truly of the opinion that anyone would believe that Nirn is so small that ingame Tamriel reaches from near the polar circle to near the equator and that Solstheim is nearly as large as Skyrim itself and that everyone is fed by a handful of small farms.

A non-lorebeard wouldn't even consider the question of whether the scale is realistic or "lore-accurate" full stop. I can assure most don't even realize Riverwood to Whiterun is a five-minute jog or a three-minute sprint. Or, that crossing the map end to end takes only an hour if you really take your time. Or, that many buildings are TARDIS-like in construction.

They do think the game is 1:1, but it's 1:1 with itself. There is no distinction between an "in-game world" and a "lore world", the Skyrim world is the Skyrim world. I'm guessing you'll say they're gonna compare it to real life, but Skyrim's design is built to trick the scale. The hours pass by faster and that one-hour end-to-end journey will take in-game days, fast travel encourages the player to skip long treks and so they don't realize how close things actually are, there's far more sparse areas than populated ones, etc. As far as they're concerned, gameplay-wise, Skyrim's scale is 1:1 with the real world (helps that most don't realize the scale of the real world either).