Prizes such as the Nobel, Fields medal and the Turing award for individuals not only would have never made sense for any time period in human history, but especially right now since all notable discoveries are made by multiple people.
For example, the 2017 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to 3 people (max number per prize) for the LIGO and Virgo detections of gravitational waves, even though the full list of contributors is in the triple digits and can be found here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26918975/>>528083>>528141Yau was indeed wrong, which is why the medal was offered to Perleman in the first place.
Academia in general is a pretty clique-ish place filled with prestige-seeking & careerist narcissists who are only looking for glory for themselves or their friends, and getting the prize for your respective field is considered the highest career goal.
Whether Perleman has the same reasons as you and me for opposing this practice, it doesn't really matter since he still decided to not play the game after seeing how petty and stupid it is.
Also just a reminder that "muh country" nationalism when it comes to this shit is too a part of the problem.