Most arguments are about ego, not ideas

You can be correct, but on different axis.

You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.

You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.

I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.

This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.

I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.

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The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.

This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.

So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?

I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.

No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.

But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.

If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.

So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.

What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.

Boom.

I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.