The point being made is to pick your battles.

The author’s point is that, even if you are correct 100% of the time, fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you.

They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.

Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.

Sweating intensifies…

I agree. Despite ending on a note of self-improvement, I wasn't really convinced that the author has any self-awareness to speak of. For example:

> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.

Oh, they're going to acknowledge that there are emotional reasons for their addiction to arguing.

> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people

Oh, never mind.

> The author assumes they’re always right

If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place

It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.

Yes, my thought exactly.. In my experience it is always how you behave when arguing. If you "blame" the other will become defensive and nothing is accomplished. If you generalize and and talk in a helpful supportive way they will see their fault themselves and correct the fault. I usually get most on my side. We openly discuss and I genuinely look for faults in my own arguments too.

> They never mention they could’ve been wrong.

I noticed that as well. He's oblivious to why he enjoys correcting people in the first place, the emotion that compels him to do it.

The black and white, right or wrong thinking is also a fallacy.

It also reeks of an engineer with no real appreciation of how to run a business, who's never had to fire someone, or make tough financial decisions

This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.

One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"

One thing I genuinely try to do is fully grasp the other persons points, and eventually I back away from an argument because some people will not change their minds, but I do try to have a take away. I also admit if I'm wrong, I hate when people don't do this just to spite you during an argument. I don't care about being proven wrong, especially if we're discussing tech, please show me why I'm wrong, otherwise, if you're wrong, don't take it personal.

Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.

I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.

This could work with someone you don’t know well and should be the default approach. But you also need to trust your instinct and know when debating it’s not worth pursuing. It could be a coworker you have known for years who has certain toxic attitude. Humans are complex beings, we don’t know what’s going on with other people’s lives and minds. It takes years of dedicated study and experience to attempt to understand other people’s issues. You are not going to suddenly become a psychologist or behavioral therapist by just listening and kindly discussing. Some of these attitudes have an underlying problem that has nothing to do with work, it could be upbringing or mental health, or a combination. It just happens that Software Engineers may be more likely to suffer from these problems than people in other professions, just by the nature of it.

Isn't that what they mean by "changing yourself"?

There's no mention of anything slightly anecdotal so we could produce our own opinions, so we have to take everything at face value. But even then, if if the author we're completely right technically, he is completely wrong and still is, because it's much more important for the author to change minds than it is to stick with his duty. It's just someone unaware of their own ego thinking there is no ego just because he feels like he is right all the time.

I think you are spot on. Also if you are actively listening you may learn that the fault is in how you are communicating your ideas instead of the ideas themselves being flawed

> I could well be wrong about this :)

Exactly. You assume and imply for most of your comment that the OP is wrong about his premise.

But people aren’t equally wrong about things. Some people are more right more often. So how should your POV change if you accept his premise that he’s usually right in these situations? Then could you make a fair reading of his post?

I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.

It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.

Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.

ironically, you wont get a reply from the author...

His point is, it didn't matter if he was wrong or right about the topic because he admitted he was wrong about the reason: his ego.

You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.

I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.

Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).

I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.

I'd love to know what one of those conversations looked like.

"Using this construct in this part of the code increases it's performance by half of a percent. Obviously, this should be changed."

"That code isn't in a hot loop and doing it that way makes it much less clear about what's going on there."

(rolling their eyes) "Using this construct..."

>They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right

Everybody assumes they're right when they argue, else they wouldn't be arguing their points.

So for the point this post makes whether they're right or wrong during those times, doesn't matter. Even if they 100% were (by some freak natural phenomenon) always right, the points they make about not arguing would still be valid.

>They never mention they could’ve been wrong

As thrw045 has pointed out, they do precisely this toward the end of the post.

Or maybe they are rational and just let go of their mistakes once they have seen sufficient data to prove them otherwise?

I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…

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