That's an interesting way to look at it. I would argue that not all
sets of apparently-conflicting wishes are requirements. Some
compromise will be necessary, and some wishes will be found to be too
ambitious, or too peripheral. However by grouping the wishes together
to see how they apparently conflict we might be able to take a first
stab at writing "design goals" that try to capture the kinds of
compromise that seem appropriate. (I still hesitate to use the word
"requirements" because I've too often seen that word be a hinderance to
that kind of compromise.)
If we find such pairs of wishes which seem to "conflict" on a first
glance, we should be happy, because that's the stuff which
"requirements" are made of.
:-)
So we should take care to precisely list all these pairs of
"conflicting" wishes, because we will lateron need this list to
give reasons for why we have designed something that way and not this
way.