Roundtable discussion

Four groups covered four hot topics in modern technology during roundtable discussions.

The first group discussed hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), in terms of its advantages, costs and feasibility. Apparently, the supporting side illustrated the benefits HEV brings and its promising future: less greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, expected cheaper energy cost compared to the continuously rising oil price, hopeful large-scale manufacturing to guarantee affordable vehicles. Unsurprisingly, these arguments were rebutted by opponents with the current financial pressure and inconvenience caused by HEV. They argued that apart from HEV’s price which remains challenging to majority (not to mention the wide disparity between rich and poor), unavailable transportation infrastructure including “charging stations” in most of places at present would cause even greater cost to HEV travelling, let alone inconvenience of extra time consumption to reach those sporadic charging points. Furthermore, they pointed out the technology to produce safe HEV is centered in developed countries, which limits the wide adoption of HEV in global scale.

I don’t think the evidence offered by the opposite is persuasive enough, because they view the use of HEV as a still process. Their main emphasis is on the “present” situations HEV is faced with, including the unavailability of affordable price, infrastructure and widespread technology. In fact, every process of popularization is dynamic and time-demanding. In retrospect, those historic inventions, which were once doubted and rejected due to “present inconvenience” at that time, have turn out successful in facilitating the growth of society in all directions, and even revolutionizing the way people work and live. Without taking the initiative in HEV, in the context of global climate change, none could tell whether a decisive revolution of transportation would take place in the future and change the way human interact with the nature. However, to simplify the opposite argument, they implied that society should give up the attempt at making HEV widespread purely due to current restrictions. This is fallacious reasoning.

The summary of second group’s discussion is skipped here as it is my own group.

The third group debated over the promotion of green chemistry in Singapore. One side for green chemistry listed possible and advantageous conditions for Singapore to develop this field, including sufficient financial funding, research institute and manpower. To the contrary, the other side asserted Singapore lacks talent pools for this field. He added Singapore as a small dot on the map doesn’t have to take the risk of leading the world in technological innovation and Singapore had better borrow mature and successful experience from other countries. He indicated it would be more practical to invest in other familiar technology and existing practices.

It is perceivable that the opposite side just debated for the debate without justified reasoning. He seemed to be forced to take one side, and unfortunately, this side is against investment in green chemistry, which is undeniably one of the largest fields of technological development. This stand he had to take goes against common sense. Thus whatever he argued appeared artificial, unnatural and consequently not quite reasonable. Actually, I sympathize with his difficulty much since I am not sure about the specific role of green chemistry. I feel that this general term includes every technological improvement wherever chemistry is made use of. If so, obviously and automatically, this should be encouraged and hardly any counterargument would stand up.

The fourth group targeted at stem cell research. The affirmative side claimed resulting gains in medical progress outweigh the loss in other aspects. The other side stressed a lack of moral standard if only profitable gains are valued. Furthermore, when a life starts sharing the right to survive and grow remains a controversial issue, which hinders the usage of embryos from being ethical.

I recommend that the opposite side should develop their argument further with concrete data and facts, rather than arguing in a general way with the sentences like “Man cannot play God”. The latter is less suitable for “university-level” debate.

Overall, all the roundtable discussions are interesting and worth of consideration. Still, more logical reasoning would lead to more persuasive arguments.