Q20 - The rise in the prosperity

[tamwaiman]

After checking the answer I know the flaw is assuming that a temporal sequence has a causal relationship.

However, what reveals in the stimulus is a conditional relationship (I notice the key word "only when" and consider the correct answer should have a similar description.) but not a temporal sequence, can someone help to correct me?

Thank you.

[giladedelman]

Good question!

Actually, this is not a conditional statement. A conditional statement is an absolute statement, something that is always true, all the time. As in, I only eat meat on Tuesdays, or, I never listen to the Rolling Stones. A rule.

But this argument says that something happened only when something else happened. It's not saying that this relationship is always the case -- that the policy is a necessary condition for economic prosperity -- it's just saying that the economy didn't improve until that policy was implemented. It's not a rule, it's just a sequence of events that occurred.

Does that make sense? Do you see the distinction?

So the problem with this argument is that it assumes that because X happened, then Y happened, X must have caused Y. (This is a very common real-life flaw, by the way!)

(D) has the exact same flaw: just because the program was put in place before profitability increased, that doesn't mean the program caused it.

(A) is a different flaw: because X happened last year, it will probably happen again this year.

(B) is saying that because something is generally the case, it should be the case this one specific time. Different from the causation issue.

(C) is just super different. No sequence of events, no causality, no good.

(E) might be tempting, except it's valid logic! (Unless maybe there's a way for a collision to cause extinction before it happens? Like gravity or something? But that's not really the collision, right?) Okay, yeah, it's valid. X caused Y, we know this, so X must have come first.

Okay, hope that clears this one up!

[geverett]

Gilad, C actually seems to imply causality. Meaning that before the rate increase people with average incomes could almost
afford a amount twice their salary, but now that the rate has increased they mortgages are beyond their reach. Does this not show that the rate increase has caused the mortgages to be beyond their reach?

Of course two problems I see that imply this wrong is the gap from talking about mortgages that are twice their salary to mortgages in general. Also it did initially say almost afford mortgages twice their salary to putting it beyond their reach. One can argue these are essentially the same thing.

Thoughts?

[giladedelman]

I suppose that's a kind of causality. What I meant to point out is that we don't have two events, X and Y, where we're saying X caused Y or vice versa. And you're right, one problem with (C) is that it goes from a specific mortgage level to mortgages in general.

[HazelZ814]

The "ONLY WHEN" phrase in choice D really confused me. Why it indicates a correlation here, rather than a necessary condition?
Can someone please explain how to differentiate the situations that "ONLY WHEN" indicates correlation vs. necessary condition? Thanks!