do you really disagree with the idea that writing code, like writing prose, should strive for human clarity? that you should be able to easily understand it without mental gymnastics? that the writer should revise, rewrite and edit the code, and take pride in succinct clarity? because the computer doesn't give a poop, but people do (including your future self)?
you seem to be making ancillary points while being deliberately obtuse about the central one.
Clarity is great. Clarity is really most awesome. Myself, I write clean readable code because the person who has to read it the most is me. Where I utterly disagree with the SICP drivel is its only incidentally nod to efficiency. What fatuous gratuitous twaddle.
Programs are meant to be used and only incidentally for people to read. Some programs, we'll call them closed source, can't even be read, not even by Richard Stallman.
BTW, SICP was a required text in 61A when I took it. Required but then like many bibles, never assigned and never read. A few years later, I tried to but couldn't and so I sold my copy on Amazon. Got $25 for it.
And regardless of the intention, code are read many, many more times than it is written, especially when you work in a company with multiple teams and that is spread out on multiple sites. And in my experience, badly written code causes bugs because the original intention is not clear.
you seem to be making ancillary points while being deliberately obtuse about the central one.