Can someone please help me understand this argument? When I broke it down this is was i got...
Premise 1: Every year reports come out about health risks about various substances (like coffee and sugar)
Premise 2: In one year said coffee is dangerous to health, in another they said it has some benefits to health
Conclusion: experts are useless for guiding ones decision about health
For me, there are so many problems with this argument... (1) the author goes from health risks in general to narrow coffee example back to broad conclusion (2) how do we know that these articles are written by experts? (3) Is premise 2 even contradictory? something is allowed to be dangerous yet can have SOME benefits? for example the sugar in chocolate is bad for health but its antioxidants help keep arteries from clogging (4) the useless claim is way to strong
I do realize that E is a reiteration of my problem (3), but i still dont feel like i have a good grip of what the author was trying to say. any help would be appreciated
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- jimmy902o
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Elle Woods
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q6 - Every year, new reports appear concerning the health
I think you actually had a GREAT grip of what the author was saying, because you correctly saw the "Swiss Cheese" nature of this argument.
Those were all legit gripes you listed. It's unusual for an early Flaw question to have multiple eligible flaws, but it's somewhat common for later Flaw questions to do so.
It's tough sometimes when there are multiple flaws, because you're not sure which one the correct answer will address (and you might react to the most obvious flaw while the correct answer sneakily attacks a less obvious one).
What was the author "trying to say"?
He felt that these articles were giving contradictory advice, and thus it was pointless to try to listen to experts for health advice.
=== other answers ===
a) "takes for granted" = necessary assumption
the author doesn't need to assume that coffee is dangerous. He doesn't need to assume it's healthy. His argument only needs to assume that the first article contradicted the second article.
b) "presumes" = necessary assumption
"always" is way too extreme. He doesn't have to assume people "always" want expert guidance. (technically, he doesn't even have to assume people "sometimes" want guidance. his argument is only about whether that guidance is useful, not whether it's desired)
c) "fails to consider" = weaken/evaluate
Expert opinion in areas other than health is outside the scope of the conclusion, which is purely about experts and health.
d) again, this is WAY too extreme for a necessary assumption. It's conditional logic! Also, the author never establishes that expert opinion is trustworthy in one case, so we can't even launch the Sufficient condition of this conditional rule.
e) this idea does indeed weaken the argument, because it makes the two articles' findings no longer seem like contradictory opinions.
I think this is a good example of a correct answer "going for the less obvious flaw", since most people would initially just react to the terrible overstatement/extrapolation of the conclusion that "(all) health experts are useless".
Even if the two articles DID contradict each other, this would still be way too extreme and broad of a conclusion. But, as we see, the test used this overstatement as a red herring.
Keep up the good work.
Those were all legit gripes you listed. It's unusual for an early Flaw question to have multiple eligible flaws, but it's somewhat common for later Flaw questions to do so.
It's tough sometimes when there are multiple flaws, because you're not sure which one the correct answer will address (and you might react to the most obvious flaw while the correct answer sneakily attacks a less obvious one).
What was the author "trying to say"?
He felt that these articles were giving contradictory advice, and thus it was pointless to try to listen to experts for health advice.
=== other answers ===
a) "takes for granted" = necessary assumption
the author doesn't need to assume that coffee is dangerous. He doesn't need to assume it's healthy. His argument only needs to assume that the first article contradicted the second article.
b) "presumes" = necessary assumption
"always" is way too extreme. He doesn't have to assume people "always" want expert guidance. (technically, he doesn't even have to assume people "sometimes" want guidance. his argument is only about whether that guidance is useful, not whether it's desired)
c) "fails to consider" = weaken/evaluate
Expert opinion in areas other than health is outside the scope of the conclusion, which is purely about experts and health.
d) again, this is WAY too extreme for a necessary assumption. It's conditional logic! Also, the author never establishes that expert opinion is trustworthy in one case, so we can't even launch the Sufficient condition of this conditional rule.
e) this idea does indeed weaken the argument, because it makes the two articles' findings no longer seem like contradictory opinions.
I think this is a good example of a correct answer "going for the less obvious flaw", since most people would initially just react to the terrible overstatement/extrapolation of the conclusion that "(all) health experts are useless".
Even if the two articles DID contradict each other, this would still be way too extreme and broad of a conclusion. But, as we see, the test used this overstatement as a red herring.
Keep up the good work.
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- cverdugo
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Vinny Gambini
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Re: Q6 - Every year, new reports appear concerning the health
I had a nice little streak of correct flaws questions until I got to this one. Looking at the answers, I still have trouble with eliminating D, but I totally see why E is the correct answer. Here's my write up and thought process.
Every year, new reports appear concerning the health risks posed by certain substances, such as coffee and sugar.
1 year an article claimed that coffee is dangerous to one' health.
The next year another article argued that coffee has some benefits for one's health.
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C: From the contradictory claims we can see that expert opinions are useless for guiding one's decisions about one's health.
My prediction was not very helpful, I basically quickly wrote on my paper we couldn't base the conclusion off of two experts only.
A: I quickly eliminated this, the flaw didnt make mention of the coffee the subject of the conclusion was that EXPERTS opinions suck
B: Once again easily eliminated we dont make mention about what people want. What if nobody wants there opinion or vice versa?
C: This felt like a trap answer and I eliminated fairly quickly because it seemed out of scope for the argument. The con does in fact state that it is solely about health.
D: The answer choice I initially picked, I thought because the writer thought the first and second claim were to be taken at face value that we must always trust it. Writing it out now, I can clearly see where I went wrong. THis argument doesnt do this at all in fact he is literally bashing the opinions of the ones making the claim. Perhaps if the argument said something like "Since it was proven without a shadow of a doubt that DR BOBS research on sugar was correct then we can conclude all the research he did this year as 100% correct!" I can now clearly see why this doesn't match
E: This is correct and I think the mos important thing I overlooked was in the wording of the second claim "coffee has SOME benefits for ONES health," The conclusion is overlooking this and so in reality the terms are necessarily contradictory; they could both be right!
Every year, new reports appear concerning the health risks posed by certain substances, such as coffee and sugar.
1 year an article claimed that coffee is dangerous to one' health.
The next year another article argued that coffee has some benefits for one's health.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C: From the contradictory claims we can see that expert opinions are useless for guiding one's decisions about one's health.
My prediction was not very helpful, I basically quickly wrote on my paper we couldn't base the conclusion off of two experts only.
A: I quickly eliminated this, the flaw didnt make mention of the coffee the subject of the conclusion was that EXPERTS opinions suck
B: Once again easily eliminated we dont make mention about what people want. What if nobody wants there opinion or vice versa?
C: This felt like a trap answer and I eliminated fairly quickly because it seemed out of scope for the argument. The con does in fact state that it is solely about health.
D: The answer choice I initially picked, I thought because the writer thought the first and second claim were to be taken at face value that we must always trust it. Writing it out now, I can clearly see where I went wrong. THis argument doesnt do this at all in fact he is literally bashing the opinions of the ones making the claim. Perhaps if the argument said something like "Since it was proven without a shadow of a doubt that DR BOBS research on sugar was correct then we can conclude all the research he did this year as 100% correct!" I can now clearly see why this doesn't match
E: This is correct and I think the mos important thing I overlooked was in the wording of the second claim "coffee has SOME benefits for ONES health," The conclusion is overlooking this and so in reality the terms are necessarily contradictory; they could both be right!
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- jdieck
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Vinny Gambini
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Re: Q6 - Every year, new reports appear concerning the health
Hi,
I got this question wrong because I was stuck between E and B and I would like some clarification as to why B is wrong. For me this question went quickly from being an, "Oh this is easy." to "Oh..this is way too easy. What if they are trying to trick me early on in the section?" It started when I re-read the conclusion after selecting E. I noticed a gap between the evidence, contradicting health claims, to and the conclusion, that experts are useless for helping us decide our actions. This gap made me think, "Well the author is assuming that we use experts to guide our health decisions." Then I fell for B.
In retrospect I realize I probably should have been tipped off that this is a bad answer choice because of the "always" in B, but I wanted to know why my thought process was wrong.
Thank you,
I got this question wrong because I was stuck between E and B and I would like some clarification as to why B is wrong. For me this question went quickly from being an, "Oh this is easy." to "Oh..this is way too easy. What if they are trying to trick me early on in the section?" It started when I re-read the conclusion after selecting E. I noticed a gap between the evidence, contradicting health claims, to and the conclusion, that experts are useless for helping us decide our actions. This gap made me think, "Well the author is assuming that we use experts to guide our health decisions." Then I fell for B.
In retrospect I realize I probably should have been tipped off that this is a bad answer choice because of the "always" in B, but I wanted to know why my thought process was wrong.
Thank you,
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