Are observable differences not the basis of empirical science?
Pretty much everything else isn't as clear cut. We know that more men than women go into STEM - but we don't know if it is because men fundamentally like those jobs better, or if it is because our culture makes it less acceptable for women to go into STEM. Often culture things are subtle and people will say things that do not match their actions.
> Between 30 and 50 percent of programmers were women in the 1950s, and it was seen as a natural career for them, as evidenced by a 1967 Cosmopolitan feature about “Computer Girls.” [1]
[1] https://timeline.com/women-pioneered-computer-programming-th...
Feminists made big advances at the same time and so it is hard to separate which factor (or something I can't think of) is important and which an irrelevant coincidence.
I won't be so uncivil as to suggest that your perspective is "bullshit". I suppose the 'successful' qualification is sufficiently ill-defined to give a lot of wiggle room, but if I take that to mean financially successful, a minority of the programmers I know would describe themselves as lifelong machine lovers. Certainly some do, but I'd say more are the sort to get cross with you if you try to "talk shop" outside of work; they have interests and hobbies unrelated to computers and use work with computers to fund those interests and hobbies. And those that do have programming as a hobby rarely work on hobby projects that resemble the work they're paid for.
As an aside, if the industry really were filled with technophiles as you suggest, I think I'd enjoy it a lot more. As it stands, relatively few around me seem to share my interests. I've found the best way to find people who share my technophile inclinations is to look for groups and clubs that form around technical hobbies. And what I've found in doing so is that many lifelong technophiles don't work in tech at all, and of those that do work in tech, most don't get paid to work on the sort of tech they're actually passionate about.