Disputes among engineers, on the subject of their expertise, are wonderful because they are so short.
E.g.1:
W: I'm working on a wonderful new carbon composite.
X: I'm surprised that works at all. Everything I know suggests it wouldn't.
W: Nope, we've got it in the lab.
X: Hm, I'll have to do some more reading. Who's your advisor?
W: Professor V.
X: I'll have to look up his publications on carbon.
W: The library also has the old edition of V's textbook -- it's easier to read.
[In this case, X starts out intending to dismiss the project a priori. By the end of the exchange, X implicitly admits that V is widely believed to be an authority on what is possible with carbon. V might still be wrong; his authority might be overturned by a challenge -- but now X will not dismiss the issue out of hand.]
E.g.2:
X: Doctor, our project still doesn't work and I'm afraid it will never work.
Y: Don't worry, student Z is working on it and I'm helping him.
[two days later]
Y: Student Z has the correct data and I want you to re-write the abstract.
X: Doctor, that's wonderful! I was wrong to have ever doubted you.
[In this case, there is a very specific grounds for dispute -- some data needs to be present. Until the apparatus produces that data, X will doubt (and he will quit if the problem goes on too long). But as soon as the apparatus produces that data, X will tell potential stakeholders (e.g. industrial manufacturers, government funding agencies) that the project works. Note that the lack of theoretical controversy shelters X from arguing about the philosophy of science. Narrow questions produce shorter controversies than broad ones like "Is relativity reconcilable with quantum physics?"]
E.g. 3:
V: You've got to help me with this grant application. No one besides me at this school knows about carbon.
Y: Well, I don't know carbon either, and even if I trust you, you're scarcely unbiased.
V: But no one else in my specialty is publishing their experiments!
Y: Of course not, they'd lose a lot of money. Don't cite the scholarly literature, cite the geopolitical budgets. Threatland and Freeland are spending more than 50 billion euros each on carbon composites. Just tell our government that if they don't spend a lot, they'll have a carbon-gap.
V: But you hate Threatland and Freeland! You stand to gain by stirring up paranoia! Your argument is wrong because you have a conflict of interest!
Y:We're only required to report financial conflicts of interest, not geopolitical ones. And we report to our government science foundation, not to some supposedly neutral judge like the U.N. And even if you do report it, the government knows countries don't have identical interests -- otherwise we would have one world government.
[The point of this example is to show that people who argue conventionally try to appear unbiased, but in fact everyone has motivations of some kind. Conflict of interest is hard to avoid, and neutral judges are hard to find. My claim is that while conflict of interest should be minimized, it's hard to get perfect neutrality.]
Now take a situation in which it is harder for engineers to find common ground, because the question is broad and outside the bounds of engineering.
E.g.4:
A is an atheist;
B follows the Bhagavad-Gita;
C is a Christian.
In all other respects, A,B,and C are similar engineers.
B: Hold this idiot while I punch him! He thinks Christians didn't kill Swamiji Lakshmianananda Saraswati.
A: Who is Swamiji Whats-his-name?
C: Some Hindu holy man got killed by Maoists in Orissa and this Hindu says my coreligionists did it.
A: This serves to prove that religion is an uncivilized superstition, fit only for Stone Age savages. Both of you are attempting to live within a semi-ascetic system which supposedly bestows spiritual growth -- of course, there's no such thing as spirit. Your inherently self-contradictory axioms cause you to abandon logic --
B: Wait a minute, as much as I have been wronged by Christians, I must admit that they aspire to a conception of spirit essentially similar to mine. Their axioms aren't the problem...
C: And as much as my coreligionists are false accused by Hindus, I must admit that great Christian leaders such as Bede Griffiths have learned from Hindu asceticism.
B: Okay, change of plan. Hold this atheist idiot while I punch him!
C: No, you hold him, I want to do the punching!
A: No, wait! I'm an atheist capitalist! Even if Maoists happen to be atheists, you can't punish Maoists by attacking random atheists!
[This example illustrates a relatively well-defined controversy. If they had been trying to argue about "what is spirit" there probably would have been no common ground at all, and lots of "talking past" each other. This example also illustrates that even if common ground is found, it may lead to actions other than orderly debate.]
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