I think a lot of people are sympathetic to that perspective while still wanting control over their privacy.

It's the difference between someone inviting you to come into their home for a visit, and you breaking in whenever you feel like to take notes on what they're doing.

It's strange to you people care more about their autonomy than your convenience?

Telemetry can tell you what users are doing. It doesn't tell you why.

I'm saying as someone who works in software I empathize with the idea of spending lots of time implementing a feature, tearing hair out over some technical issue, etc. only to realize no one uses that feature.

I'd rather people be able to opt-in, but conceptually I'm not really upset that people can see my usage patterns, etc.

I think most of us work in software. Asking for consent isn't hard.

Telemetry won't tell you nobody wants a feature you haven't implemented yet. User research might.