Whilst I appreciate the pair of you demonstrating an intellectual vivacity and facility for debate that is rarely found on reddit, perhaps I might share a bit of my own wisdom, gleaned from decades spent in online communities.

Namely, know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em; there is no shame in agreeing to disagree. Especially when the subject of disagreement is something so minor.

It may not be possible to formulate a scientifically complete theory of the psychological effects of making edits and downvotes to Lemmy comments and posts. And thus, it seems possible for two smart people to have different perspectives on the issue.

There are situations where someone is clearly incorrect and spending paragraph after paragraph to demonstrate that is warranted, or at least justifiable. But I don't think this particular conversation really needed to be like that.

The thing about being rational and smart is that you constantly have to balance applying those traits to the external world and applying them to your own behavior. In this case, you two were so caught up in the particulars of the topic at hand that you were forgetting the context of the conversation, and thus leaving your rationality in question from a different angle. If either of you had been able to recognize this angle without my help, you could have effectively "won" the argument by merely accepting that it was possible to disagree on this topic without admitting to being wrong.