Huh? That sounds horrible. Wasting electricity to do nothing? Mining in the long term does cause degradation, and this has been known since like 2011.
Maybe you should read it carefully. Its to protect the hardware just in case. This is one of the greatest feature of that miner. A few dollars can save thousands...
And how will a loose of internet connection damage your hardware? In my case, my cards are in extra bulding and in winter i have some windows open and many of my cards run with 10 or 20C° and they are running fine. It is better that the cards don´t work if they have no connection. So can you explain how that will protect your hardware?
Colder is always better for gpu´s!!!!!!!