Some of that subjective influence with ≥ and ≠ especially is how much time you've spent in math courses or reading math papers. For some of us those have always been the "real" operators and >= and != the fallback replacements that look "close enough" in easy to type ASCII. We were sort of doing the opposite all along, translating the ASCII breakdowns into the math notation in our heads, and ligatures can feel like a bit of a relief because now you see the "real thing".