Q26 - Economist: Countries with an uneducated

[farhadshekib]

Could clearly eliminate A and C.

But I have trouble with the others.

Will someone please walk me through the flaw and each answer choice?

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

Here's a quick analogy:

If you're nervous, you sweat.
If you're not nervous, you whistle.
So anyone that whistles will not sweat.

We want to see that the two premises are both conditional ideas (sufficient conditions, to be fancy). And the conclusion tries to make a conditional relationship out of the two right side ideas (necessary conditions).

Premise 1:
NOT educated --> Polit & Econ Weak

Premise 2:
Educated --> Commit to Public Educ

Conc:
Commit to Public Educ --> NOT Polit & Econ Weak

The flaw is that the author is trying to chain together two conditionals that can't be chained.
~A --> B
A --> C
thus, C --> ~B

He's thinking that there is a link to be made since they both deal with whether society is educated, but you can't link a statement about "A" to a statement about "~A" if they both appear on the same side of the conditional statement. (if they appeared on opposite sides, then the contrapositive of one would link up with the other)

I would be reading all the answers for this recipe of ingredients:
~A --> B
A --> C
thus, C --> ~B

A) does not have two conditional statements for premises, so it's not even worth trying to match up

B) looks perfect
NOT empathy --> NOT good candidates
+
Empathy --> Manipulate easily
====
Manipulate easily --> Good candidates

C) only has one conditional premise. no good.

D) doesn't really have conditional premises. One idea is "most likely" and the other is "rarely". We could stretch that to fit a conditional structure, but why bother when B already locks in. Beyond that, the idea of "shockingly inventive" is supposed to be the A and ~A here, but both mentions of "shockingly inventive" are stated positively.

E) the conclusion isn't of conditional strength, "will probably fail", so there's no point in wasting any energy examining the rest of it.

If you haven't divulged my shortcut from my explanations there, always consider the type and strength of claim that you have in your premises and your conclusion. Often, you can realize an answer choice is hopeless (without doing any precise matching of ideas) just by noticing that it doesn't have the right batch of ingredients.

Let me know if any part of this was confusing.

[alana.canfield]

B) looks perfect
NOT empathy --> NOT good candidates
+
Empathy --> Manipulate easily
====
Manipulate easily --> Good candidates

I also thought (B) was perfect but was turned off by it because of the word "easily". While the 2nd premise says people who have the capacity for empathy are able to manipulate others "easily", the conclusion says that people who can manipulate others are good candidates; the conclusion doesn't use the word "easily" so I saw this as a 2nd flaw - I can't manipulate others easily, but with a lot of effort I might be able to do it... you get where I'm coming from? This question was very hard for me because I was forced to eliminate every single answer... I guess I shouldn't jump on a mistake like that sooo quickly and we just need to focus on overall structure, instead of little details, for these types of questions?

[joseph.m.kirby]

The flaw committed is a mistaken reversal of the terms in the conclusion:

~education --> weak (contrapositive: ~weak--> education)
education --> serious commitment
------
serious commitment --> ~weak

or

~weak --> education --> serious commitment
------
serious commitment --> ~weak


(B) matches the flaw

~capable --> ~gc (contrapositive: gc --> capable)
Capable --> manipulate
------
manipulate --> gc