Given three real, symmetric matrices $A\succ0$ and $B$, $C⪰ 0$.
How can it be shown that: $$\det(A^2+AB+AC) \leq \det(A^2 +BA +AC+BC) ? \qquad (\star)$$
Where $A^2$ is symmetric and positive definite. Eigenvalues of $BA$, $AC$, and $BC$ are all $> 0$, but symmetry is lost.
Thank you!
Because the original question has changed so much, I am writing a new answer.
The key point to recognize is that you are trying to prove a submodularity property. Indeed, we see that we may equivalently prove \begin{equation*} \log\det(A) + \log\det(A+B+C) \le \log\det(A+B) +\log\det(A+C). \end{equation*} One common way to verify submodularity is to prove the diminishing marginals property: in our case, it amounts to showing that for a fixed $B \succeq 0$, the function \begin{equation*} f(A) := \log\det(A+B)-\log\det(A) \end{equation*} is monotonically decreasing (since we are dealing with hermitian positive definite matrices, this means $f(A) \le f(C)$ if $C \succeq A$ in the semidefinite order).
To verify this, simply check if $\nabla f(A) \preceq 0$ for all $A$. But this is easy since
\begin{equation*} \nabla f(A) = (A+B)^{-1} - A^{-1} \preceq 0, \end{equation*} where the latter inequality follows as the map $X \mapsto X^{-1}$ is well-known to be (operator) decreasing.
None of the conjectured inequalities hold.
This answer contains three counterexamples. The first one is to $(\star)$, while the second and third ones (below the line) refer to previous inequalities conjectured by the OP.
\begin{equation*} A=\begin{bmatrix} 5 & 5\\\\ 5 & 5\end{bmatrix},\quad B=\begin{bmatrix} 8 &4 \\\\ 4 & 2\end{bmatrix},\quad C=\begin{bmatrix} 8 &6 \\\\ 6 & 5\end{bmatrix}. \end{equation*}
Then $A^2+AB+AC$ is a rank-1 matrix, so its determinant is zero, while $A^2+AB+AC+BC=\begin{bmatrix}268 & 203\\\\ 224 & 169\end{bmatrix}$, so its determinant is $-180$.
The structure of this counterexample and of the other ones below is to setup matrices so that the left hand side becomes a rank-1 matrix, which will have determinant zero. Then, one can adjust the other terms to violate inequalities in any direction.
EDIT I'm adding explicit matrices where $A,B,C \succ 0$, but still we have a counterexample to quell the OP's insistence ;-)
\begin{equation*} A=\begin{bmatrix}11&12&7\\\\ 12 & 14 & 8\\\\ 7 & 8 & 11\end{bmatrix},\ B=\begin{bmatrix}19 &14&7\\\\ 14& 14&6\\\\ 7&6&3\end{bmatrix},\ C=\begin{bmatrix}17&17&16\\\\ 17&19&17\\\\ 16&17&17\end{bmatrix} \end{equation*}
For these matrices, $\det(A^2+AB+AC) \approx 2.35\times 10^5$, while $\det(A^2+AB+AC+BC) \approx 4.67 \times 10^4$.
A particularly cute counterexample for your last question (edit: where $\det(A+B) \ge \det(A)+\det(B)$ holds for non symmetric matrices with positive eigenvalues) is the following:
\begin{equation*} A = \begin{bmatrix} 0.5 & 0 & 0& 0\\\\ 1 & 0.5 & 0 & 0\\\\ 1 & 1 & 0.5 & 0\\\\ 1 & 1 & 1 & 0.5 \end{bmatrix},\quad B = A^T. \end{equation*}
Then, $\det(A+B)=0$, but $\det(A)+\det(B) = 1/8$.
The updated question, whether $\det(XY+YZ) \ge \det(XY)+\det(YZ)$ holds is also false. Here is a nice counterexample.
\begin{eqnarray*} X = \begin{bmatrix} 2 & 2\\\\ 2 & 2 \end{bmatrix},\quad Y = \begin{bmatrix} 5 & 5\\\\ 5 & 10 \end{bmatrix},\quad Z = \begin{bmatrix} 10 & 4\\\\ 4 & 2 \end{bmatrix}. \end{eqnarray*} With this choice, $\det(XY+YZ) = -300$, while $\det(XY)+\det(YZ)=100$.
