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brazil84 comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 2: Atkins Redux - Less Wrong
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That may be; it ties in with the hypothesis advanced by another poster -- that everyone has experience with eating so there is a tendency to overconfidence.
Anyway, Paul Graham had some interesting thoughts on what kinds of issues generate controversy; basically it has to do with peoples' self-defined identities:
http://paulgraham.com/identity.html
That maxim seems far too cautious. It would, for instance, suggest that you can't have a "fruitful discussion" about installing wheelchair ramps with people who identify as disabled; nor can you have a "fruitful discussion" about neurodiversity with people who identify as autistic, ADHD, etc.; and so on.
I would suggest a less-cautious variant: you can't have a fruitful discussion about a topic when any one party to the discussion presumes that another party's purpose in entering the discussion is illegitimate.
Also —
— Robert Anton Wilson, "Sleep-Walking and Hypnotism", from Natural Law, or Don't Put a Rubber On Your Willy.
I would say that self-identifying as disabled is not quite the same thing as self-identifying with a group which believes in / advocates for rights for disabled people. Getting back to the religion analogy, one can ask about having a discussion of religion with a Jew -- in such a situation it would help to know if the individual is Jewish like Albert Einstein or Jewish like Moshe Feiglin.
Perhaps, but what if that's just a side effect of the heat generated by a controversial issue?
Well, I don't understand mere conceptual proximity to imply engagement in Graham's sense. Neurodiversity for example implies a particular approach to neurological issues; you can identity as ADHD etc. without identifying as a neurodiverse individual or being identity-entangled with any particular attitude toward that model. If you are talking to someone who identifies as neurodiverse, though, or who's adopted an identity directly excluding that identity, then I think Graham's caution applies.
That's not to say that talking with such a person on such a topic is necessarily a waste of time, though; one or both of you might learn something about the arguments being used, or about facts to apply. And you might find your opinion shifting, if you don't have an identity in the game. What you can't expect is to shift an entangled opinion without first breaking down the identity it's entangled with -- and trying, or even being perceived as such, is a good way to send the discussion straight to hell.
I do agree that a presumption of bad faith would exclude fruitful discussion in a much stronger sense.