I think the more specific description would be that "not writing tests allows shipping fast today, writing tests allows shipping fast tomorrow and afterwards".

It wasn't too long ago that I wrote tests for something that was shipped years ago without any automated tests. Figured it was easier doing that than hoping we won't break it.

Yeah, but in my experience it really is a literal today vs tomorrow thing.

Your tests pay for themselves the moment you want to ship a second feature without fear of breaking the first.