Why is "striking a chord" what matters? Shouldn't being right matter? Gut feelings may be what matters to some people, but that doesn't make those people right and it doesn't make rational people wrong. People are very capable of valuing things wrongly. This mindset you seem to be advocating here has a disturbing similarity to Stephen Colbert's famous idea of "truthiness."
And that brings us to tonight’s word: Truthiness. Now I’m sure some of the word police, the “Wordinistas,” over at Websters are going to say, “Hey, that’s not a word.” Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn’t true or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. […]
Do you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody’s going to say, “I did look that up, and it’s wrong.” Well, mister, that’s ‘cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did, and my gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.
Now, I know some of you may not trust your gut — yet. But with my help, you will. The truthiness is that anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.
You're raising an interesting question that drifts to being off-topic but I'll post a reply anyway.
My point was that you can't attack a perception or an idea with rational tools made for splitting things to right and wrong. You can only either resonate with his idea or not. Those who do resonate, are able to explore the idea further. Those who apply the rational tools will obviously reach a rational conclusion but that per se still can't give them decision of whether they're in or out as for the idea. It's an idea of Yegge's and simply, it's out there. It's not right or wrong, it's just there for some people to maybe make something out of it.
When you ask if being right shouldn't matter, you're assuming quite a lot about what's right and wrong and what can be known about right or wrong. The world as we know it rarely works out with facts; the problem is that facts are only facts within some commonly agreed context, and they're only true and untrue within that context.
I don't know the origin or context of the text you quoted but the author seems to play with the idea of what can you know really. For example, how much of human history is factually 100% proven to be absolutely correct? If it's not absolutely, undeniably correct then it doesn't matter whether it's 95% correct or completely false; what's left is only what we decide to (collectively) think about it.
The history of the same event, such as a war, as described in two opposing nations can be very different—which one is correct? It's foolish to think there's only one and only description that is correct and even more foolish to think it must be the one which is "ours". The event affected both nations and how it hit them both is both correct. If we want to remove subjectiveness of the nations themselves and we assume there was a third, objective observer to that event, then his would be the third truth, not the one and only one.
So, to come back to Yegge's idea—or to just reduce it to the old static typing vs. dynamic typing divide—how can you determine which one is right? How can dynamic typing be more right than static typing? How can you determine whether liberalism vs. conservatism applied to programmers is right or wrong? You can only argue for a specific point, such as whether frowning at macros makes Clojure conservative or not, but you can't extrapolate from that to make a decision of whether Yegge is right or wrong. It will come down to whether it resonates with you, or "strikes a chord", or not. If it does, then you don't care about the details and if it doesn't, then you're just arguing for nothing since you're not into his idea anyway.
You know, I got my brain into a serious knot trying to understand that quote while assuming "thruthiness" was related to the "truthy" of implicit boolean conversions as in Javascript...
And that brings us to tonight’s word: Truthiness. Now I’m sure some of the word police, the “Wordinistas,” over at Websters are going to say, “Hey, that’s not a word.” Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn’t true or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. […]
Do you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head? Look it up. Now, somebody’s going to say, “I did look that up, and it’s wrong.” Well, mister, that’s ‘cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut. I did, and my gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.
Now, I know some of you may not trust your gut — yet. But with my help, you will. The truthiness is that anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.