Q12 - Legislator: The recently passed highway bill is clearl

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The highway bill is clearly unpopular with voters.
Evidence: The majority party supported the bill, and polls predict that the majority party will lose a bunch of seats in the upcoming election.

Answer Anticipation:
This is a Causal Explanation argument, although the conclusion has implied, not explicit, causality.

The author goes off the CURIOUS FACT that "polls predict the majority party will lose a bunch of seats" and asks "Why?"

His brain answers with a speculative theory that "since they supported that highway bill, it must be that voters are mad at them for that".

Our job is to ask, "How ELSE could we explain the fact that polls expect the majority party to lose seats?"
- Maybe the poll is wrong.
- Maybe the majority party did something else, and THAT's the thing voters are mad about. -
- Maybe there are just some charismatic candidates in the opposition party that are going to overtake the majority party's candidates.

The author is taking one possible reason for why voters might be mad at the majority party and rigidly assuming that voters ARE mad for that reason.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) YEAHHHH, right? Let's say the predicted outcome would be the same either way. "Whether the majority party supported or opposed that highway bill, we would still predict that they were going to lose lots of seats in the next election."

Okay, if that's the case, it sounds like supporting the highway bill is pretty irrelevant to them losing seats in the upcoming election. If supporting the bill isn't connected to the forthcoming election losses, then what evidence does the author have that the bill is unpopular with voters? None!

(B) No, we're not concerned with defending the possible merits of the bill. We're concerned with how the author became so sure of this ONE POSSIBLE explanation for why the majority party is going to lose seats.

(C) DOES the author infer (i.e. conclude) that the bill is unpopular? Yes. DOES the evidence contain a claim that presupposes the bill's unpopularity? No. Neither of the two premise claims presuppose that the bill was unpopular. That would have sounded like, "After all, since voters clearly do not like the bill ...". This answer choice is just the classic CIRCULAR REASONING incorrect answer choice on Flaw questions. CIRCULAR REASONING is when the conclusion is really a restatement of the premise, or when you "assume what you're trying to prove". This is saying the author concluded unpopularity on the basis of a claim that assumed unpopularity.

(D) There's no evidence that the legislator WISHES the bill to be unpopular.

(E) DOES it base its conclusion on the views of voters? No It's CONCLUSION is about the views of voters. The argument bases its conclusion on how a certain party voted and what a poll says about the outcome of the next election.

Takeaway/Pattern: It was a fairly easy to diagnose flaw: "Who says THAT'S the reason that the party is expected to lose a bunch of seats in the next election?" But interpreting the answers seemed harder. My confidence that (A) was the correct answer the first time I read it was low enough that I wanted to really consider the other answers.

(A) is really just complaining that the author failed to achieve even a minimum baseline of plausibility for her hypothesis. An equally persuasive argument would be, "Tony's Businesswear is clearly unpopular with voters. After all, polls show that the majority party, which is usually dressed in Tony's Businesswear, will lose more than a dozen seats in the upcoming election".

(C) and (E) were two of the ten Famous Flaws (Circular, and Appear to Inappropriate Authority).

#officialexplanation

[ca_teran1]

Hello,
I seem to keep selecting circular reasoning answers in flaws. Can you please explain again in a slower way the answer being A.

How would I dissect this laser wise?

I see for choice C it repeats word unpopular and so thats circular trick way for me to know its not happening in paragraph. When there is time limit, I panic and A just seems so convoluted. How would you laser that one?

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

I have no idea how you're using the word 'laser'.

The real answer to your question is not a super helpful / fun one to hear.

To react correctly and quickly to this argument in realtime you would need to do lots of Logical Reasoning practice, and you would need to think a lot about recurring reasoning patterns as you review those problems:

- Was this a Causal Explanation?
- Did the author rely on a Comparison / Analogy?
- Is there Conditional Logic that I need to chain together or apply to facts?
- Did the author rely on a Statistic / Survey / Sample / Experiment that could be impugned?
- Did the author's Rebuttal drift from the ideas contained in the argument he's disputing?
- Is the author concluding something is on the whole good/bad or better/worse, just because ONE thing mentioned about it is good/bad or better/worse?

Causal explanations are one of the three biggest recurring reasoning patterns on LR. Authors present some curious background fact that prompts us to ask "Why?"

In this case, "Why is the majority party probably going to lose more than a dozen seats in the upcoming election?"

The author's answer is "Because they supported the highway bill."

Why should we believe that THAT'S the reason they'll lose more than a dozen seats?

The author provides no evidence for that theory. So far, his explanation for why the majority party is going to lose more than a dozen seats has exactly as much plausibility going for it as any other theory for why they're gonna lose more than a dozen seats:
- more of their incumbents are up for reelection than from the minority party
- it was the anti-environment bill the majority party supported that voters hate
- everyone in the majority party wears short yellow neckties that people think are dumb

The author just plucked a potential cause out of thin air and implied that it was the reason for the majority party losing seats in the upcoming election.

Whenever author's conclude a Causal Interpretation of a curious background fact, we ask:
1. Is there some OTHER WAY we could interpret that background fact
(is there some other way to interpret that they'll lose a dozen seats in the upcoming election?)

2. How plausible is THE AUTHOR'S WAY of interpreting?
(is there any evidence that voters were opposed to the highway bill?)


(A) gives us the 2nd of those objections.
It could have given us the 1st objection by saying something like,"gives no reason to think that the highway bill is a more likely cause than any other potential reason for the predicted election outcome."

If the author looks at the majority party about to lose a dozen seats and thinks, "Voters must be mad about the highway bill", then she thinks that voters are going to vote out majority party candidates as punishment for voting for that highway bill.

If voters are punishing the majority party for supporting this highway bill,
the election outcome will be worse for the party than it would have been if voters weren't punishing the party for that bill.

The author assumes that the highway bill is relevant to the party losing seats, but if the party was going to lose those seats either way, then LOSING TWELVE SEATS doesn't indicate anything about whether voters are / aren't angry about the highway bill.

For (C), when you see any flaw answer that has a 2-part structure, you compare it to the Core/Evidence.
confuses X with Y
concludes X on the grounds that Y
infers X on the basis of Y
bases its conclusion on Y

(C) says "Infers that X from a claim that Y"
X = conclusion
Y = premise

We ask ourselves, "WAS the conclusion that the bill is unpopular?"
If yes, keep reading.
If no, eliminate.

Yes, so now we ask ourselves, "DID the premise have a claim that assumes that the highway bill is popular?"

Let's look at the two premise claims and ask ourselves if they presuppose an unpopular highway bill.

CLAIM 1: the majority party supported the highway bill

Does that claim assume that the bill is unpopular? No, we have no way of judging from that claim whether the bill is popular or unpopular. The bill could still be either, so this claim apparently doesn't presuppose (i.e. require) that the bill is unpopular.

CLAIM 2: the majority party is predicted to lose more than a dozen seats in the election.

Does that claim assume that the bill is unpopular? No, it doesn't even mention the bill, so of course not.


You're probably reading (C) with too fuzzy a lens ... it's not saying "the author inferred from the evidence that the bill was unpopular" (THAT is true).

It's saying ONE of the premises was A CLAIM that has the idea of 'unpopularity' baked into it (presupposed). We can't match that up, so we eliminate.

[ChrisH162]

Hello, I understand why A is correct. I originally chose C, however. I'm wondering if you could offer an example of what a claim that presupposes its unpopularity would look like, specific to this question? I'm having a hard time with flaw questions and especially on when to eliminate answers that use this language about presuppositions. An example would be helpful. Thank you!

[XiaoranZ794]

I got this question right, but misunderstood the legislator's idea at first. I once thought that the legislator infers the unpopularity of the bill from the unpopularity of its supporters. In other words, since its supporters are not as popular as they were, the voters will not like the bill these people supported as much as before. But as soon as I saw choice A, I found that there could be a second explanation for his idea, which is what Patrick has put forward and what A is trying to point out. So my question is, is my first explanation also reasonable? Or maybe there's some clues that can rule out this explanation?

[Misti Duvall]

I got this question right, but misunderstood the legislator's idea at first. I once thought that the legislator infers the unpopularity of the bill from the unpopularity of its supporters. In other words, since its supporters are not as popular as they were, the voters will not like the bill these people supported as much as before. But as soon as I saw choice A, I found that there could be a second explanation for his idea, which is what Patrick has put forward and what A is trying to point out. So my question is, is my first explanation also reasonable? Or maybe there's some clues that can rule out this explanation?

I see where you're going, but I think the first explanation is less likely because of the phrase "which supported the bill's passage." That piece of information sets up the causal assumption that supporting the bill is what will cause the majority party to lose the next election.

Hope this helps.