I feel like it doesn't apply to just software projects, but it's a phenomenon that affects life more generally.
It's so much easier to bring our focus on and talk about what we understand that we might just dismiss what's truly important but requires effortful thinking.
Universal shared experiences are easy to talk about. That includes topics like code formatting, verbosity vs magic, configuration vs convention, differences in the community cultures, scandals, tech interviews, industry gossip, macro trends and design opinions.
It's so much easier to bring our focus on and talk about what we understand that we might just dismiss what's truly important but requires effortful thinking.