The Absurd Academics

Yeah we're just tryna debate anything tbh now

On this episode, we debated over which was better to sacrifice when they come in conflict - your work life or your love life.

In this debate, we argued over whether having friends in your life created more meaning and purpose. Amit argued that friends ultimately don’t do much to make your life more meaningful since the social interactions you have are mediocre, they end up distracting you from achieving your biggest ambitions, and they tradeoff with focusing more on your familial relationships and bonds. David argued that friends are necessary to develop social skills that are a key indicator of how happy someone can become and that since families aren’t always the best option to find love and support, you have to have friends to be there to pick you up when you fall down.

In this debate, we argued over whether if high schools had to make a choice between financial literacy electives and art classes as part of a core curriculum for students. David argued that financial literacy is one of the most essential elements of producing stable income opportunities to succeed because students need to know money and the economy work at a young age. He also argued that the creativity we get from art classes is not relevant since most people aren’t creative, but everyone has to manage money. Amit argued that financial literacy is not going to be relevant to young students because they are going to forget the information just like they forget tons of other things in school and to really make money and solve problems, there needs to be a part of the curriculum that cultivates creativity outside of the mundane other subjects so that kids are exposed to the potential of being able to express themselves and find happiness within the creative arts.

In this debate, we argued over whether bingeing content on platforms like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc. were a good thing for you on balance. Amit argued that bingeing is an extremely vital tool because it helps people in rough situations in life escape their realities by diving into the lives of characters that provide them momentary relief and the binge itself is necessary for that form of escapism. David argued that bingeing does not productive for you and that it ultimately ends up leading to you being stuck in a worse mental health position which is why you need to pursue activities outside of bingeing.

In this debate, we argued both sides around how we should currently feel towards the system of democracy. Amit argued that democracy is not a perfect system, but its better than any other system we have and that there are some fundamental principles within that validate why we should be more optimistic than ever about democracy. David argued that democracy is intrinsically flawed, and that the pursuit of democratic values has been manipulated by governments to only cause more pain around the world. He argued that by being pessimistic towards it- we have a better chance at changing the system and getting people to see what is wrong in it.

In this debate, we argued both sides around the controversial standardized tests like the ACT and SAT that determine which colleges students in the United States can get into. Amit argued that although these tests are not perfect, if colleges switched to other forms of evaluation for students, they would only use worse metrics to discriminate against students who come for harder-hit areas. David argued that the test is so bad that there needs to be new way to think about college admissions and evaluating students without the test is a key way to begin that process.

In this debate, we argued both sides around an age-old question: can money truly buy happiness? Amit argued that money can help you become comfortable in life, but it ultimately does not create a foundation to find meaning and purpose – which are the only two significant factors when it comes to being happy in life. David argued that money was essential buying the material items that sustained and created happiness and that it would be foolish to assume people without money would be able to achieve some type of meaningful purpose in this existence.

In this debate, we argued over what governments should do if they had to make a choice between solving problems on Earth or allocating those same resources to space colonization. Amit argued that the Earth is one day going to die which means we need a backup plan. Since earth is going to die and since we have been unable to solve the major problems as a human species like poverty on Earth, we should now begin to focus our energy on how to create new civilizations beyond this planet since we’ve done all that we could do. David argued that focusing on space trades off too much with all the resources we can contribute to problems here and that because it is so difficult and risky its not worth actually pursuing when we know what investments we can make on earth, to solve climate change for example, that could end up saving our planet.

In this debate, we argued both sides around if using social media actually helps your face to face communication skills in real life. Amit argued that to get over your fear of public speaking and social anxiety, you should try to post as much as you can on social media because it will allow you to get more comfortable with talking to people in real life. David argued that the influx of information in social media destroys our ability to perceive and recognize meaningful information which hurts our in-person listening and communication skills.