> And I wonder if a person free of cognitive distortions would even be referred to as human, as the quote goes:

There's a difference between emotional intuition and emotional reasoning (the cognitive distortion in OP's example).

Emotions are extremely valuable for decision-making (e.g. this house ticks all my boxes but do i love it?) and making judgements (e.g. this situation does not feel right to me).

Emotional reasoning is when people distort reality in favor of their (often self-destructive) emotional impulses, discarding physical evidence in favor of their emotions.