Even watching someone else walk around a city with headphones/earbuds in is something that makes me uncomfortable by proxy. It's like someone deciding that walking around with beer goggles is a good idea
You don't have to share my experience, but the difference is that you deny mine can exist, whereas I am perfectly fine understanding e.g. the autistic person who also posted about how they wear earbuds to use ANC because noise disturbs them. You are not granting the same consideration about how other people experience things differently.
> 15-20k steps every day
You don't know what you doing know, after all.
I mean, noise cancelling works by producing more noise, not less; and there will be plenty of times when what's outside with destructively interfere with what you're listening to, or vice versa.
This may be hard to do in a city, but a good test is to go outside on a quiet night, wearing only on one ear, and then turn your head back and forth to alternate ears while trying to listen to specific distant sounds. It'll really highlight just how many things are still being filtered out.
Or it'll demonstrate how much more deaf you might be in one ear :P