I think it&#x27;s an age-old custom. There are two things that are off-topic for casual conversations with non-family-members - political and religious beliefs. People tend to tie them to their egos, and it pretty much always results in resentment. It&#x27;s a general population equivalent of inexperienced developers arguing about merits of programming languages or text editors.<p>&#x27;pg actually wrote an essay about it once.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;identity.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;identity.html</a>