For me personally, I can see a white board better at 15-20' than I can see a monitor 30" away.
There are ways to digitally cope... But it's just that. It's far less natural if an interaction. I can understand the anxiety and autistic resistance to it. But that's relatively easy to with through.
How literal is this? That sounds like you need glasses or to fix the light balance in the room with the screen.
Fortunately, most of the apps I use can adjust zoom (mostly vs code, browser, visio, etc).
That's a good exmple for GP's point: deliberate, premeditated interaction works just fine remotely. But everything else falls away. That talk amongst the almost random subset of meeting A that happens to be also in meeting B and walks from A to B together, things like that. Occasional random peerings are powerful and a company chatroulette would be an awkward substitute.
As I'm always open to learning new things and changing my opinion, could you please elaborate on how the direct contact makes mentoring so much better?