My intuition is that its all about risk/reward, and I think there is huge asymmetry there which is unlikely to be satisfied.

Suppose there was a button on the wall and when you pressed it it dropped 15 potato chips out of it. Only issue is that randomly, one out of every 1000 potato chips was poisoned. The poisoned chip was impossible to tell from the regular: same taste, smell, shape...only it killed you immediately. Would you press the button?

The point being that even very small incidence of risk can become unacceptable if the outcome is dire enough. Thats basically how I feel about Bitcoin change proposals.

Not sure I would say I think the outcomes are as dire as "bitcoin dies", but simply the risk of something serious going wrong is more worrying than the promise of the cool-thing offered.

The risk doesn't even need to be "some serious bug is introduced". The risk could simply be the resulting fight itself. Imagine a world where 25% of network refuses to run new Bitcoin core CTV+ code and runs pre-CTV "knots" (or whatever) code. Imagine its a big public fight....is that worth it? Would you run "covenant code" to pass your bitcoin down to your heirs if you felt like 25% of the current miners -- and perhaps more future miners -- may refuse to process your transaction?