> The soundness of an argument, in my world, isn't the only important thing. In my world - which I admit has its limitations - the sincerity of the other person and my trust in that other person are also important.

Not knowing what 'your world' is, I can only make generic observations here.

The point you're making is absolutely a valid one. I'm a freelance software developer, which means my social interactions run a very large gamut of experiences. One the one hand, I'm very much a technical person, on the other, I deal with a lot of business/management types, and the way they view the world is vastly different (with good reason).

I came across an observation once years ago that really solidified in words things I had started to implicitly understand. That observation went something like this:

A business leader can walk into a meeting and sway the entire direction of the meeting through the sheer force of his personality. But a developer, no matter how they try, cannot fix that bug in the software through personality alone.

This difference often times causes a vast disconnect when the worlds meet. Obviously these are two extremes. Developers do exist in social contexts, and business leaders need to understand reality, but the needs are very different and what they value is different as a result.

It is not merely about the person wanting to be a dick, it's about what that person values. If they're a more technical person, they're going to value trying to find problems because if they don't, it means a bridge that collapses with people on it, or a 2am phone call because some server went belly up (I'm being hyperbolic here to make a point).

BUT At the end of the day, regardless of what the person values, if they did actually poke holes in your argument, you yourself should be self-reflective enough to be able to examine why that is. Perhaps it's the context, and perhaps it's because you're wrong.

After all, that developer still needs to understand soft skills such as social awareness, and that business leader still needs to be able to navigate reality correctly.