I never understood this argument. I can't read more than one post at a time anyways and images are not immediately visible in the list view. What makes you want 18 posts visible at once?
So you can select the post you want to actually look at instead of having to scroll and scroll to find one that interests you. Like in a classical forum post, essentially.
Agreed. It makes the posts you don't want to see much easier to ignore. Even my favorite subreddits have posts I don't care about, like r/fantasy posts praising Mistnorn for the billionth time.
I don't want giant images in my face right away, either, without warning of what they contain, especially if browsing unfamiliar or large subreddits.
About a decade ago, Logitech had this awesome mouse with a freewheel spinning middle mouse. It allowed for a long spin after release and was excellent for up and down scrolling on a large page. Sadly they don't seem to be made anymore. They were really fun.