[gronglo]

Imagine a list of 10 items that gets shuffled so that the order is completely rearranged. With no animation, it would take a lot of additional cognitive load to find where each item went. With animation, your brain would track the general movement of each item much more easily.

Basically, animation provides additional information about object state. Removing that extra information increases cognitive load.

This isn't to say all animations are useful. Many animations are excessive or completely unnecessary, which is probably what has given you a negative view of them.