When it comes to human interaction and dealing with each other, I have had the conclusion for awhile that if we are too fixated on winning a debate, argument, discussion and "being right" we can in fact LOSE. We may not know we lost, but due to already being certain we know a thing we LOSE the opportunity to LEARN.
I've mentioned in my time on steemit that the most valuable debates, discussions, arguments (good kind) you can have are when they are civil and they are with people that disagree with you. This is only true if you are open to being wrong.
It is also important to know that being wrong doesn't have to be complete. You can be wrong about some things and still right about others. In fact, truly the ultimate and perfect discussion debate would be an encounter where each participant was right about some things and wrong about others. Why do I say that? In such a case if the participants are open to being wrong and questioning their beliefs then they ALL LEARN. That to me is the closest to WINNING we will ever get.
If you actually are right and you don't learn anything new, and the person you are talking to is open and learns from you then that is not a bad outcome. That is more of a neutral outcome. One person learned, the other did not.
The losing propositions are when none of the participants learn anything. This is what will happen when the participants all are already certain they have the answers so they don't really listen or consider what other people are saying. That is a loss. That is a waste of time for all parties. It was an opportunity lost. This occurs far more often than it should.
Another danger is to start looking at a discussion and assuming someone is not open. Your job is not to focus on whether your opponent (other participants) are open or not. You can't read their mind. Instead you need to monitor yourself and say "Am I open to the possibility there is something here?" It can also include questions such as "I may not agree with that completely, but are there some parts that do seem to mean something?" If you truly want to WIN then you should be asking "How can I turn this conversation into a learning experience for myself?" In reality, you can only know what you think, and therefore that is what you can actually control and monitor. Focusing on telling the other person what they think and making assumptions about things can spiral into hostile unproductive moments. Most people don't like other people assuming how they think, or worse telling them what they are thinking.
There are a few things that can come up in discussions as well.
Appealing to Emotions. "X shows they don't care about other humans" as a justification for something. This is appealing to emotion and opinion rather than actual evidence. Such things are common. Yet they prove nothing and they take away from a discussion in an attempt to virtue signal and/or express how you are right and the people that don't care are wrong. It also assumes you can read their minds, know their motivations, and know everything about what they do and why. This is unrealistic.
Deflection. People can deflect away from a topic and aim it somewhere else. This does happen. Yet we should not immediately assume someone is deflecting. Perhaps it is relating to the topic and we simply need to give them a chance to show the relation. Remember we should focus on how we can learn, rather than being so fixated on whether we are right or not. If we are defensive and not open to seeing the relation, and if we are looking for things to poke at then we can be shutting the door on learning opportunities.
There are many other factors that come into play, but I believe I've said enough for now. This is something I occasionally feel like writing about. I hope it is of some value and offers some things to consider to all of you. I look forward to learning more from all of you.