Let's take a real example to show how this works.
August 19, 2025. My wife called me in to help her decide what to do about a dentist that she thought was ripping her off. A couple of quick suggestions later, and she went to being mad at me about not having heard the problem through before trying to fix it badly. As soon as she was mad, I immediately connected with how stupid what I did was, and that this never goes well. But, of course, it was now too late.
Not a mistake I was going to make for a while. But, given my history, a mistake I was bound to make again.
I changed that. This time I stuck this into my spaced repetition system. Each time the prompt comes up, I remember that scene, holding in mind how it important it is to emotionally engage, not offer quick suggestions, and be sure to listen to the full problem in detail. It takes me less than 30 seconds. Reviewing this prompt, for my whole lifetime, will take less than 15 minutes of work. Just typing this up this time takes more work than I'll spend on it in the next several years.
This mistake hasn't happened since. Not once. And I believe it won't again in my life.
I have literally changed dozens of such behaviors. My wife says that it is like there is a whole new me. She can't believe the transformation.
All it took is looking at spaced repetition as general purpose structured reinforcement, and not as just a way to study flashcards.
Choosing to be right, is choosing to be alone.
Whatever you choose to put above trying to get along with others, limits who can be part of your group. In the extreme, you will feel absolutely justified. And yet be absolutely alone.
As an example, language communities that focus on being able to find the ideal way to program (eg Lisp) tend to splinter. The languages that achieve broad acceptance (eg Python) do things that most people recognize as bad.
This doesn't mean that we should always choose to get along, rather than being right. But failing to address emotions up front has damaged so many parts of my life, that I firmly wish that I hadn't stood for so long on how right my behavior was.
I hope that your choices are working better for you than my past choices did for me.
> But apparently we live in this bizarre world where emotions are always right.
No, but we do live in a world where emotions are always important. So much so that highly productive and well-beloved people commit suicide sometimes, in the extreme cases.
Emotions matter, certainly, or at least yours do - to you. When others' emotions also matter to you, you move beyond infant-like narcissism, and become a potentially productive member of society. Not productive in the sense of number of lines of code written, but in the sense that you are treasured, looked after, and sought out by others simply for yourself.