PhronesisWe apply the displacement framework developed across The Phronesis Issues series to compulsive argument-winning: the habitual subordination of truth, mutual understanding, and epistemic integrity to the goal of being found right in a given exchange. We identify the ground state S^0 as calibrated inquiry—intellectual exchange in which the operative goal is truth-tracking and genuine understanding, and in which “winning” is structurally absent as a primary objective.
Compulsive argument-winning constitutes a wrong attractor W maintained by a four-part dominance architecture: the threat-detection trigger, the adversarial framing lock, the rhetorical-dominance repertoire, and the truth-subordination seal. We define displacement D() as signed distance from calibrated inquiry, and accumulated displacement = D()\,dt as the chronic cost of wrong-attractor occupancy.
Nine formal propositions—P1 through P9—cover the identity–position conflation mechanism, basin depth as a function of past winning density, the mutual-understanding foreclosure dynamic, social withdrawal cascades, and return conditions. The mutual-understanding foreclosure basin is characterized geometrically: once sufficiently deep, the agent is unable to receive information that would update their position, because receiving such information would constitute a local defeat.
The paper concludes with the return path—curiosity reactivation, deliberate position-change tracking, and the structural reorientation from dominance to inquiry. This paper is the 824th entry in The Phronesis Issues preprint series on displacement dynamics and wrong attractors.