I don't really miss at all the office, let alone my co-workers. Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.
I acknowledge that you and many others derive personal satisfaction from productivity. I do too. However, I strongly believe we should move away from productivity as the measure of whether we should work from home. Primarily because it individualizes productivity and turns any deficits into a moral failing. It is incumbent on our employers to create the conditions which align productivity with our well-being as people, and balance those. Else, we are being exploited.
Put another way, and framing it opposite from what you said:
"Working remote is not what I need because I am less productive" should not be an argument against working from home. You may not need working remotely for other reasons -- social being one of them -- but it's important not to prioritize productivity to the occlusion of all other factors.
If I have a productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM. If I have a non-productive day, I sign off between 4-5 PM.
If I happen to be more productive it does not mean I get more hours to do stuff in my personal time / get more personal time.
Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and depend on together to do a good job because I feel like that's showing those other people basic dignity.
I think you're creating a universal here where there is none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a coworker's company and work without having to be friends with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge, that's something that people impose on a situation that is alienating to people who don't share your politics, or your tastes, or even like the way you treat people (I'm referring to the hypothetical "you" here.)
I have really enjoyed working with people who I'd never want to know outside of work, and have a huge amount of respect for those people whose work ethic and trustworthiness showed a real thoughtfulness and concern about what they were doing and for their coworkers' time and development. That's good enough for me, we don't have to share musical tastes or hobbies. On the other side, I've certainly made friends with people at work, but some of the people I made friends with I hated working with. The two things are barely connected.
How do you avoid forming many negative opinions about a person just because you don’t see them as socially interesting?
Me too, but I met my wife through work (we didn't work together, but I met her through a lady I did work with). I think a lot of young people - not just men - are hoping to interact with potential romantic partners through work.
Now that the texture of being a person in the world is mainly to be on Zoom calls, I think it would be cruel. Zoom school, Zoom friends, Zoom job, Zoom dates, only to produce yet another human who can attend Zoom school. What kind of life is that to being a child into?
We’ll still have books! That might be worth it on its own. And places take a while to decay. Maybe we can wander the remnants of places, from back when places were a thing. Maybe there will still be enough weirdos to sustain some kind of live performance tradition in unusual and expensive places. Maybe some especially backwards communities, after they have sold the school buildings, will retain the athletic fields. But I dunno. A world where the default condition is to sit alone on the internet from your nowhere-sprawl house, cradle to grave, is pretty fucking bleak.