Author: exl5464

Remember in the beginning of the year when we talked about artificial intelligence all class? We spoke about whether we thought it would be useful or harmful, good or bad for jobs, and other things of the nature. Well recently, I was talking to my friend who is an Art major. After a back and forth about whether we thought AI would be useful or harmful in the future, he provided me with some new insight that I had not thought of before.

The conversation began with me bringing up some fun tech facts around him as I usually do since I am passionate in my field of study (cybersecurity). This turned into a conversation on AI where I expressed that I am excited for what the future has to bring. We talked about how some people have been calling for a temporary ban on the advancement of AI until more research is done. I disagreed with this while he agreed with it.

I had multiple reasons for disagreeing with a temporary halt to AI advancement. For starters, other countries would not follow suit and surely would advance past us. I also firmly believe that AI is and will continue to be a very valuable resource to humans. People feared the search engine at first, but now cannot go half a day without “googling” something. In my opinion, this is the natural progression of technology. It always starts with rejection and fear from the majority of the public.

My friend explained that he feels that AI is advancing too fast and might destroy many jobs. He agreed with many of my points but feared for the entire industry that relies on creativity. Writers, singers, artists, and entertainers’ jobs are at stake if AI continues to advance. There are AI models that can make art, music, and even movie scripts. He feels that if it keeps progressing down this path that humans will resort to AI for their entertainment because it is cheaper and more accessible, leaving tons of humans out of jobs. He sees AI as different than every previous technological advancement, as this one can almost “think for itself”.

This discourse helped both of us see new views on artificial intelligence. It followed a common theme of my blog where I reach a partial agreement in the end. This blog was a look into my argumentative life and is supposed to show you that not all arguments are over life-changing things like abortion laws or voters rights. Arguments and rhetoric are used every single day, especially by someone like me.  Many discourses will end with a clear “winner” and many will end with an “agree to disagree”. What is important is that both parties can walk away feeling like they got something out of the talk.  The best way to do this is to empathize with the person you are speaking with, even if it is over a friendly topic. Putting yourself in the other shoes will help make sure you always gain something in any sort of argument. If I can leave you with one thing, it is to make sure to challenge everything! Not in an obnoxious or rude way, but always have the voice in your head ready to question or challenge something that you do not agree with. Arguments are a key part of growth, just make sure to always be respectful!

Lately I have been very into the mobile game Brawl Stars. It is such an addicting way to pass time. There are several different game modes including Brawl Ball, Basket Brawl, Gem Grab, Heist, and Duo or Solo Showdown. Winning in any of these game modes gives you trophies to rank up and become the best Brawl Stars player you can be. There are 78 different characters you can use. They come in all different rarities meaning some of them are harder to get than others. Unfortunately, I do not have even close to all of them, so when my friend and I were debating over the best Brawl Stars character, we realized that since we only have about 15/78 each, the scope of the debate was limited. Regardless, there are many factors that go into a Brawl Stars character. They can be ranged, close, tanky, healer, etc. Each character has a unique way of dealing damage and a unique ultimate ability that charges up, called an ult. This ability might do a ton of concentrated damage, or heal, or spread a wide array of damage, just to name a few.

When playing the other day with my friend, we both started talking about our favorite characters. Mine is currently El Primo, and his is Poco.  Below is a picture of both of them.

El Primo

Poco

 

For starters, El Primo is a tank who deals damage in close combat, while Poco is a ranged combatant. El Primo’s ult is to jump super far and land on his enemies, dealing a great amount of damage. Poco’s ult is to heal his allys.

Then, we discussed the noises these characters make as a reason for them to be the best. When selected, El Primo does his famous dialogue. In a booming and strong voice, he yells “Elllll PRIMOOOOO”. He also grunts and roars to convey his alpha like tendencies. In contrast, Poco has an upbeat and happy voice, saying “Let’s use the power of music!” In the game, Primo punches people while saying “Primo punch!” and “Fists of steel!”, giving a fun feel to his combat. Poco attacks with his guitar, which makes strumming noises on attack.

As you can see, these two are opposites in just about every way. So, how will we determine who is the best? Would it be in a 1v1 between the two characters? Or maybe see who the top ranked Brawl Stars players use? Well, as it turned out, neither. There was no way to determine who’s was better, but we eventually decided to use the two of them together. We queued into a duo Showdown, and absolutely crushed it. As it turned out, these two Latin superstars paired perfectly together. Their contrasting nature ended up being just what we needed to get 300 trophies in one sitting. El Primo would be the tank and fight the enemies first, while Poco would attack from a distance. Then, when El Primo got low, Poco would heal. These two are now our “match made in heaven”.

It’s movie night! My friends and I came together in my dorm to watch one of the best movies ever made: The Departed. We were talking about how stoked we were to watch it all day. Finally, the time came to put it on, and we realized it was only “free” on Apple TV, a streaming service that none of us had. This exact scenario happens so often, especially in recent years with the increase in streaming services.

Gone are the days of Netflix having every movie you could ever want to watch. Now, there are dozens of different subscriptions that all have a few of the best content, along with their own original movies and shows. There is no single best service to have anymore and purchasing them all would cost a fortune. This is so frustrating because it felt like just a few years ago, we got rid of the need to rent movies because they would all be on one streaming service. Now, if a case like the one described above with the Departed happens, we are forced to either rent the movie, subscribe to Apple TV, or pick a new movie. This is when I proposed my next genius idea: the Super Streaming Service (SSS).

The SSS would combine all of the current streaming services into one. You might be thinking, there is no way these companies would ever agree to such a thing. Plus, this would surely be classified as a monopoly, right? To that I would say, you are absolutely right. That is why my idea entails the government forcing the streaming services to band together into one and operate as a government regulated monopoly. This monopoly will have a fixed price that can only increase with inflation. This would ensure that the monopoly will not raise prices once consumers have nowhere else to go. There will also be price levels (ads, no ads, premium, live TV), to help everyone afford at least the lowest level.

A few of my friends agreed with my idea. However, a few argued against this idea. Aside from this being very idealistic, they had one major criticism. Passing legislature that allows this is a slippery slope. This would set the precedent for the government to do this in tons of other areas. For example, gasoline. There are dozens of major gas companies, and the prices of them are above what it should be to profit a normal amount. However, the competition of multiple different companies helps drive the price of gas down. If the government were to take over this industry, who knows what would happen to the price of gas.

I argued that combining all of the streaming services will be similar to the government controlling the electricity monopoly. Electric a resource that can be cheaper if they are guaranteed a certain number of customers. This means that operating as a monopoly is not bad, so long as they do not raise prices. For this reason, the government stepped in and capped their prices. In my eyes, this is a win for consumers and the companies. I believe that the government can control streaming services in a similar fashion, creating a win for both parties.

This debate took place a few days ago with my friend, let’s call him Bob. For a little bit of context, Bob is an Eagles fan, and I am a Jets fan. In week 6 this year, these two teams faced off. It was a crazy game, the Eagles led for nearly all four quarters until the jets swooped in and won the game. Side note, getting to watch my team win in front of my smug friend was one of the best feelings ever. Anyways, this created some fun arguments at the time, but the real debate did not emerge until this week when we were rewatching the highlights from the game. In the fourth quarter there is a point where the Eagles are on 3rd down, with 14 yards to go to get a first down. The game was winding down and the Eagles just needed to stay on offense to win the game. The Eagles quarterback passes the ball and throws an interception (meaning the Jets now have the ball). To sum up, the dialogue went a little something like this:

Me: Man, we are so much better than you guys (sarcastically)

Bob: Why would we ever throw that? If I was the coach, I would be running the ball.

Me: Well, you’re not the coach. I guarantee that they know more than you and this is how it turned out.

Bob: Yeah well, I think I actually could do a better job as the coach.

This statement shocked me, and instantly launched us into a back and forth around this claim. Just to clarify, we are talking about Bob being coach just for this one game. Let’s dig in.

Bob claimed that if he had some time to study NFL plays, that even without background experience of playing football, he could coach a team. He explained that he understands the stats and would have run the ball against the Jets way more than the Eagles did. To back this up, he added the fact that teams this season have run the ball far better against the Jets than passed. He explained that even if they did not get the first down, that punting the ball across the field to a weak Jets offense would be fine since they are pretty bad and likely wouldn’t score. This decision shows a lack of faith in his team’s offense but a lot of faith in the team’s defense.  It definitely is a strategy, but let’s dig into my arguments.

My counterargument was that an NFL coach most certainly knows more than him. These guys get paid to eat, sleep, and breathe football. Not to mention, they have full teams of trained coaches in a booth watching the game to help the head coach make his calls. This means that Bob is not just claiming to know more than the coach, but to know more than the entire offensive coaching staff. I said that at best, the decision to pass the ball instead of running it was 50/50. This means that the coach went with whatever decision he felt like but could not really go wrong. However, Bob still claimed that not just was his decision the correct one, but that it was clear as day. This thought process baffled me, and sort of ended our dispute as it was clear no winner would arise.

So, what do you think? Is it reasonable to feel as though you, the viewer, could coach certain plays better than the actual coach?

I have been working out for a few years now and I would consider myself fairly qualified in the field of weightlifting. Naturally, I have seen just about every kind of workout split. A workout split is the way a person chooses to divide up their workouts. This is necessary in weightlifting because full body workouts would take way too much time. A typical split will divide every main muscle in your body into 3 or 4 days of exercise, and a rest day. This argument begins when catching up with a hometown friend and asking him how things have been in the gym. We both explained the split or training plan we are on, and immediately began bickering about which is more effective (as a side note, while I am about to breakdown both of our arguments, there is no one split that is better than others, or one that always works the best … so, you could say this argument is completely useless).

My split looks like this:

Chest and front deltoids

Back and rear deltoids

Arms and forearms

Legs

 

His split looks like this:

Arms

Chest and biceps

Back and triceps

Legs

Shoulder (If he has time)

Chest and Back

 

Immediately, the first thing we disagreed over was the pairing of chest and biceps, and back and triceps. My argument was that chest is a push movement and back is a pull movement. Push movements are scientifically shown to activate your chest, front deltoids, and triceps. Pull movements are shown to activate your back, rear deltoids, and biceps. For this reason, I asked why he would not combine chest with triceps and back with biceps. After all, these complement each other. He said it was because he then gets to hit each muscle a little bit on both his arms day and his chest and back days. What he means by this is that on arms day, he will fully exhaust his biceps and triceps. Then, on chest day, he doesn’t want to destroy his triceps, so he pairs it with a muscle that remains inactivated throughout the chest portion of his workout. The same logic applies to his back and triceps workout.

The other thing we disagreed over was the fact that he has a specific shoulder day which he sometimes skips. I said that shoulders are a very important part of a bodybuilding physique, so leaving them out on other days in the split and then possibly skipping them could result in undeveloped shoulder muscles. He countered by explaining that because they have their own day, he focuses on his shoulder’s way more than me on weeks when he has time, so missing that day every other week should work out.

Finally, he explained that he thought his workout split was better because it doesn’t get boring. He said that mine is very basic and will get boring to me. I admitted that his is very interesting, but I have been using my split for a year and a half and still love it.

In the end, a workout split is purely preference, and our argument was just for fun. However, he still let me know at the end of the conversation that he is bigger than me. He’s not wrong, he benches 275.

Yesterday, I was talking to my friend when we came about the topic of icons. We debated what the word meant, and my friend gave me an example: Taylor Swift. She happens to be a huge Taylor Swift fan, and while I like some of her music, I do not really consider myself a fan. While I did not know whether or not Taylor Swift was iconic, my friend had some very convincing arguments. She found the official definition of an icon:

“a person or thing widely admired especially for having great influence or significance in a particular sphere” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary).

Of course, when learning this definition, there was no denying that Taylor Swift is an icon. Arguably, she is the biggest icon of our generation. However, this launched our real debate. Will Taylor Swift stand the test of time?

We agreed that the craze around Taylor Swift is very similar to that of the Beatles in the 1960’s. Everyone was obsessed with the Beatles, and people could not get enough of them. My grandparent’s generation grew up with the Beatles, and so, of course they idolize their music. What’s more interesting than this, is that two generations later, people do not just know who the Beatles are, but know and like at least a few songs. According to a 2014 CBS news poll, 75% of Americans like the Beatles and 40% of these people like them a lot. Only 15% of Americans claimed that they disliked the Beatles. By all metrics, the Fab Four have stood the test of time.

This is where I shifted my argument over to Taylor Swift. Since we had agreed that Taylor Swift was one of, if not the biggest icon of our generation, it brought up the question of whether masses of people in fifty years would be listening to her music?

My friend started by arguing that, yes, people will be listening to her music. This is because she will be raising her kids on Taylor Swift, since she is such a big fan and does not see that changing.

While there is no denying that there will be a generation of parents listening to Taylor Swift in the car with their kids, I am more interested on if this love for her will be passed down further? Will these kids grow up to cherish Taylor Swift and her music in the same fashion as our parents did with the Beatles? Will they be inspired to pass this music down another generation, keeping her fame and beloved music alive?

This was the real “meat and bones” of my argument. My friend said that yes, her music will be passed down from generation to generation. This is because, like the Beatles, she has done something groundbreaking and different with her music. This will set her aside from other artists and allow her to “stand the test of time”. On the other hand, I was not so sure. I believe that while Taylor Swift’s music is creative, I do not think it will translate in future generations.

This debate was just for fun, and I think it outlines the kind of things my friends and I “argue” about. I think that it is pretty fitting to make this my passion blog for the semester, as this class focuses heavily on opinions and arguments, and I happen to really love a good debate. I hope you enjoy!