And you've highlighted the often-overlooked truth: Arguments are very rarely won with rationality.

Depends on your definition of winning. Is your goal to get the other side to capitulate, or is your goal for the onlookers and interested parties to come away with a view of the world that’s actually useful? If you’re a public intellectual or participant in the internet, you’re not arguing in isolation. People are watching, and it absolutely has an impact even if you don’t directly observe it. This bit of internet “wisdom” is maybe one of the most destructive and misapplied factoids to emerge in recent years, because while true in its narrowest sense, is utterly useless if ones aim is to contribute to the wider world of discourse.

> Depends on your definition of winning.

At the risk of being Schopenhauered, I would say that any argument has a target and an audience, and that the goal of any argument is to convince the audience, rather than the target (though these can be the same person).

As others have identified - arguments are rarely, if ever, won on rationality. Rationality is a tool in arguing, like any other argumentative tool, but it rarely convinces those who do not hold it as a virtue in life.

Does contributing to a wider world of discourse actually change anything? My sense is that at most people feel vaguely more enlightened and continue on with what they were going to do originally.

Schopenhauer became disillusioned early in life. He quickly came to think that people, in general, are not rational and appeals to their rationality is a mistake, if you are looking to convince them.

His book is more a passive aggressive denunciation of this.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist

Well, reason is seen more as weapon than path to truth: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to... (https://archive.ph/cvWMc)