Having had to deal with Sayre's law in practice, the cause is not insignificance, but that most of the time this is the only thing you can actual fight about. In a university the average academic has no control over anything of importance, so the only thing you can fight about is trivia.

Or not fight about anything?

The will to power (over anything) is a great source of energy.

Another relevant entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

I guess it's worth mentioning Parkinson's law of triviality here, given it's relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality

I'm sure this law has been a source of heated debate.

Ironically, the Talk page is rather sparse...

The Origin of the Terms Big-Endian and Little-Endian: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2003/ling538/Lecnot...

aha! a generalisation of Wadler's law: https://wiki.haskell.org/Wadler's_Law

Not all laws are created equal.

Church denominational politics too.