When I had a 4-track...I dreamed of an 8 track, but then jumped all the way to a 16-track tape deck, which was like heaven at the time.
However, I soon found mysled wishing I had a 24-track deck.
FFW to the arrival of DAW availability for most anyone...and of course, the track count possibilities tripled and quadrupled quickly.
I tend to stick with most of my productions in the 24-36 count range...starting on the 24-track deck, and then moving to the DAW...but just because the DAW has endless possibilities, I've never had a reason to churn out 50-80-100 tracks, though for some types of music production that capability is important.
If you are doing sound design stuff...you're not dealing with non-stop live recorded tracks...you're dealing with countless small pieces of sound, so you end up with a lot of tracks, though many of the tracks have only one or two bits of audio on them. The large tracks availability makes for easier organizations and visualization.
That's really what it is about...your production perspective, what you hear in your head and how you got about getting there...and generally, more options make creativity more flexible, but you have to always hold on to reality, like I mentioned in the closed thread.
If your production mentality can't/won't see/look past 4 tracks, then you won't use/need more than 4 tracks...though IMHO, unless you are specifically looking to do 2-track stereo recording of "live" performances where there is no editing or little mixing after the fact...most people who are seriously into recording are not missing the fact that more tracks offer greater production options, and therefore more creativity.
Some guys want to stick to the "lo-fi" thing, and intentionally limit themselves to 4-8 tracks...but that's a specific mentality, very raw and often with little processing/mixing options. Which can sound good in some cases, for some music styles.
That said...I think for some folks, there is also a comfort zone that comes with having only a few tracks to deal with....and often, it's like that when folks are new to recording, though most will eventually broaden their views as the reality of creative options kicks in, and then more tracks starts to make more sense.
I mean...if you can't hear anything past an acoustic guitar and vocal...then you're never going to see the point for 20-30 or more tracks.
I often think back to the classical composers...and imagine how a Mozart would have reacted to someone telling him he had "too many notes".