Agree. I always use this behavior as a red flag for myself... whenever I look back on my behavior for the day/week and find myself being captious, petty or not

Agree. I always use this behavior as a red flag for myself... whenever I look back on my behavior for the day/week and find myself being captious, petty or not, it tends to be a reminder to check my motives and examine if I have unresolved (generally negative) feelings toward the topic / people at hand that needs to be resolved. Sometimes it's just stress leaking out from other areas of life. The smarter one is in a given arena, the more easily we can delude ourselves with smart-sounding rationalizations/objections, especially if we haven't examined our motives.