Q21 - A good way to get over

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Flaw

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: Good way to get over fear of X is to do X repeatedly.
Evidence: More than 50% of people who parachuted only once were crazy scared by it. Less than 1% of people who have done it more than ten times are scared by it.

Any prephrase?
When an argument relies on a correlation or statistic, we usually want to think of other ways we could interpret, explain, or frame the statistic. Some people might have intuited where LSAT was going with this, but others wouldn't. An analogous argument could be, "A good way to make yourself like the taste of something is to eat it over and over again. Of the people who have eaten sushi only one, less than half of them thought it tasted good. Meanwhile, of the people who are regular sushi eaters, more than 98% of them think it tastes great." Okay, well maybe it's not that "eating it over and over again makes them think it tastes good" ... maybe instead it's that "thinking it tastes good makes them eat it over and over again"!

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
A) Did the author make this Assumption? No. Any claim of the type "the more X, the less Y" is very strong. It means there is a constant relationship between two variables. The author never committed herself to such a strong idea. Also, this is talking about engaging in a NUMBER OF dangerous activities, whereas the conclusion is talking about getting over the fear of AN activity.

B) Would this weaken? Do we need to hear about people who have parachuted 2-9 times? It could help the author's argument if we knew that as they went from jump 3 to jump 4 to jump 5, etc. that their fear slowly went down. But failing to talk about these jumpers isn't a primary objection we would make to this argument. We can complain about the actual facts presented, without even needing to get into data points not mentioned.

C) Does the author Assume this? It's extreme: "unless". Does she commit to the idea that "If you haven't tried something, you CANNOT know how frightening that thing is?" No, she doesn't commit herself to that, and those ideas don't match up with the core.

D) Would this weaken? If people would be better off not scaring themselves, does that harm the author's argument? No. She's not arguing that you'd be "better off" by getting over your fear. She's just arguing that "a good way" to get over a fear is to use this method. I could tell you a "good way" to get arreseted without believing that you're "better off" getting arrested.

E) Would this weaken? Yes! If the people who parachuted a bunch were not frightened to begin with, then the author has NO evidence that repeatedly parachuting LESSENED THEIR FEAR over time. It was never there in the first place! This also speaks to the reverse causality from the sushi analogy. It's not that "parachuting more than 10 times made them unafraid to parachute"; it's that "being unafraid to parachute made them parachute more than 10 times".

Takeaway/Pattern: When an author interprets a statistic / correlation to mean some Causal conclusion, our primary way of objecting is, "How ELSE can we explain or interpret that statistic / correlation?" The two biggest alternative interpretations are Reverse Causality (being fearless caused them to parachute more) and Other Cause (for example, "being less fearful and being able to afford the expense of parachuting many times are both symptoms of being wealthy")

#officialexplanation

[LSAT-Chang]

Quick question on this one. Why wouldn't B be a flaw? I was thinking that if we had a sample of people who parachuted 9 times (more than once but less than ten times), those people, even when having parachuted repeatedly might not have gotten over their fear and still report being frightened by it. So the conclusion would be flawed in concluding that from just reports of people who have parachuted once and others who have parachuted more than 10 times. Does anyone see my point? It is as simple as this:

I feel like the flaw is that the author is concluding such a general statement on the basis of not considering all possible situations.

Please help!!

[gilad.bendheim]

Your point about parachuting 9 times is correct, but it still doesn't make the stimulas false. It says a good way to get over the fear is to do it repeatedly. And then it shows that most people who did it 10 times (repeatedly) are not afraid of it. So even if you show the speaker a person who went 9 times who was still afraid, the speaker could respond 'So what? I said the best way to get over the fear was to do it repeatedly, and I've just shown you a statistic that proves that people who do it repeatedly are less afraid. Maybe you should just take a few more jumps.' Essentially, the fact that after 9 jumps a person is still afraid does not undermine the validity that after 10 jumps, most people aren't. Thus, regardless of how many in-betweeners you show the speaker, the fact remains that the claim was that doing it repeatedly makes one less afraid and it is supported by people who do it repeatedly who are not afraid. Notice that 'repeatedly' is not a specific number, so technically the proof could have been from people who went 1000 times, and it would still be correct. This makes it impossible to refute the statement by saying 'i went a lot but am still scared' because you could always go more times...

Hope this helps!

[olena]

Hi, can you please explain why the answer D is wrong? I was between E and D , and I went with D because after I negated E I got: "most people who have parachuted many times found it friending initially." as I just finished typing, I realized that I had to negate MOST, not the entire sentence, right?



But why D cannot be the answer, though?



Thank you!!!!

[einuoa]

I think D goes beyond the scope of the problem. Why are people necessarily better off they did not do things that terrify them? Maybe doing terrifying things is a way to grow, and people need that. Choice D also doesn't take into account the last sentence of the problem, that less people who've parachuted a lot of times are scared. The question that needs to be answered is that why are less people scared? Maybe the report found a wrong sample of people and interviewed parachuting extreme enthusiasts, in that case, they probably weren't scared to begin with.

[547494985]

i think there might be a change of context here. those who fear at their first time and those who don't at their tenth time. they might not be the same bunch of people. maybe only those who do not afraid stick to the tenth time, and those who afraid already give up. so you see, the two group of people used to compare are not the same people, but the author's conclusion relies on that they be the same, or at least some of them are the same.

i know my reasoning looks weird somehow, but it's my first though.