People have different preferences, but moreover people have different needs. Configuration shouldn't be thought of as optional. If, as the parent comment says,

People have different preferences, but moreover people have different needs. Configuration shouldn't be thought of as optional. If, as the parent comment says, settings are design failures, they arise from the fact that it's not possible to design software that works for everyone. To fix this problem you wouldn't have to design better software, you'd have to design a better human! Just to state the obvious examples, i18n is exposed through configuration, accessibility features are configurations. These aren't optional parts of a program that can simply be designed around. To be clear, I agree with you that human preferences are valid as such, just clarifying that your parent comment is profoundly wrong even if you think that all people ought to have the same preferences.