I don't really understand how the lossy vs lossless argument turned into a chest-beating contest about whose ears are the best.

The point of lossless audio compression is archiving - knowing that you can make a first-generation encoding of the audio you have stored for any new device or format in future.

If you want to listen to your FLAC files, great, you're not losing anything by doing that - just don't try and tell me that it's an aesthetic choice that makes the slightest bit of difference to the experience.