I'm a pruner too but I'm not overly dogmatic about it. If you don't want to prune your plants don't prune them.
If your canopy is so dense that red and blue light isn't getting to lower leaves, those lower leaves aren't doing photosynthesis. They are just a waste. The stoma will literally close until blue light hits them again.
If your foliage is dense and leaves are resting on one another they can form a vapor lock that causes the plant to stop taking up calcium. This happens because it blocks air movement.
I trim my lower foliage pretty aggressively and have found it to work very well. I never did it another way because this is the way I was taught so I certainly can't say it's better than the alternative. That's why I'm not very dogmatic about it
I primarily focus my pruning on eliminating foliage that isn't getting light and I always trim foliage that is near the ground because I have never had foliage near the ground that didn't get early blight if I left it there.