[throwawayaway]

Interesting comment. I don't care where it leads, it's a personal thing.

I don't feel the need to hold a position that applies to everyone. Taking it to something I understand better, like coding standards. I could care less what people decide the rules are, they seem completely arbitrary to me. I'm happy to go with what's gone before, and if people want to fight about new ones I'll leave them to it.

[marbletiles]

But you accept that people can fight and decide what the rules are? That you can have a meaningful discussion about which coding standard is the best, and why, and reach a conclusion you all agree on?

Because metaethical moral relativism wouldn't accept that. It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on.

[throwawayaway]

well you changed a word out there. the first question is you accept that people can fight. the second question is you can have a meaningful. i accept that people and can fight but i don't accept their discussion is meaningful and i don't accept that they can reach a conclusion i agree on.

i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion.

> It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on.

that seems pretty close to how i feel about it.

[marbletiles]

> i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion.

"Fight" is probably the misleading point. People can and will fight about meaningless things, yes. Perhaps "debate" would be better, because that implies meaning in the discussion.

I think you can reasonably debate, compare and judge coding styles -- "which is more readable?", "which aids understanding better?", etc -- in a way you can't reasonably debate "which is the best colour?".

[throwawayaway]

if you say so, although we are now at a meta point of debating the value of debate and i'm out.