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My goal in an argument is not to win or lose.

My goal is to come out with a plan that works best. That almost always involves taking criticism and advice into consideration, and sometimes involves not doing things my way. Sometimes I'm even completely wrong. But sometimes I'm completely right. There's no way to know before having the "argument".

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Even more pithily: my goal in an argument/debate is not to be right at the beginning, but to be right at the end.

That's not an argument though, that's a discussion.

A good argument is nothing but a discussion.

I just mean that having a technical discussion is not an argument. There will be disagreements, but that doesn't make it an argument unless someone involved is taking things too far.

There is another sense of the word argument where it simply means a well reasoned defence of something. This is the sense in which it is used within Philosophy and Mathematics.

fair enough.

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