It's not about typing speed. It's more about comfort and accuracy. Also the cognitive load is really not a thing once you're used to it. Maybe you should learn to accept that some people might be more mentally flexible or skilled than you are rather than assuming people are lying to themselves.
I type pretty fast (100 wpm or so), but when programming typing speed is rarely the bottleneck. I suspect people just rationalize fashion to themselves by pretending it’s also better, but everyone is different so maybe some people actually prefer the complexity.