Glad you intimately know how my perception of lighting in games works better than I do - though I'm curious how you do.

I can see the difference in all of those. I can even see the difference between 120hz and 240hz, and now I play on 240hz.

Ray tracing looks almost indistinguishable from really good rasterized lighting in MOST conditions. In scenes with high amounts of gloss and reflections, it's a little more pronounced. A little.

From my perspective, you're getting, like, a 5% improvement in only one specific aspect of graphics in exchange for a 200% cost.

It's just not worth it.

There’s an important distinction between being able to see the difference and caring about it. I can tell the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz but it makes no difference to my enjoyment of the game. (What can I say - I’m a 90s kid and 30fps was a luxury when I was growing up.) Similarly, I can tell the difference between ray traced reflections and screen space reflections because I know what to look for. But if I’m looking, that can only be because the game itself isn’t very engaging.