I may be blinkered by my mathematical training, but to me this seems like the obvious thing to do. Here's an attempt to justify it based on common sense, no math stuff required. Suppose you do something like
if(all(requirements)) { proceed; }
If there are no requirements that need to be satisfied, then you should be able to proceed.
Another way to make it seem more intuitive: "all of these are true" is the same as "none of these are false" (assuming values must be booleans), and clearly nothing in an empty list is false.
Yes, precisely the point of the article. We mostly find it natural to think like moderns today, but civilization went along for thousands of years thinking differently.
