Maybe they are referring to remote meetings where you can mute yourself.

Yea I mindlessly plunk around on it while muted.

why don't you just leave the meeting if you aren't paying attention anyway?

In most companies that's not an option. You sound lucky to not have to go through this, but waiting through hour-long meetings while waiting for an interesting topic or hearing your name is part of daily work for many office workers.

Well I dutifully take part to a 30min daily meeting and a one 30min weekly one, from which I still sometimes excuse myself due to other obligations knowing that I will be contacted directly afterwards if a specific topic requires me, but these are short enough for me to fodus on them.

Any other meeting need to have a precise agenda for me to attend it, especially if it means 1h of an engineer time might be wasted. If you are invited to a meeting and there is nothing in the agenda that concern you, you should mention it to the person sending the invite. A meeting has to be prepared to be effective anyway, you should know prior to the meeting what kind of input you are expected to bring. If all they give you is a vague title you should refuse until the scope is more precisely expressed otherwise people are wasting your company's precious money.