Q16 - Fremont: Simpson

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw (since it's the 2nd person, we should look out for some form of Bad Listening)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: I reject your argument that "S's lack of background in the oil industry disqualifies him for CEO of Pod Oil".
Evidence: An oil background doesn't guarantee success, as you can see from the last CEO, who had such a background and was terrible.

Answer Anticipation:
My first objection came when I heard Galindo say "an oil industry background is no guarantee of success" …. Okay … who said it was? Fremont didn't say "Because Simpson has an oil background, he's a great CEO candidate". Fremont said, "Because S doesn't have an oil background, he's a terrible CEO candidate".

Fremont seems to feel that [an oil backround] is necessary for the CEO job. Galindo is discussing whether [an oil background] is sufficient for the CEO job. The correct answer will likely hit on that bad listening / shift of discussion.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) G doesn't seem to be accusing F of any personal bias.

(B) The conversation only touches on oil background, which is clearly relevant experience for being CEO of Pod Oil. There's no distinction needed.

(C) YES! F is arguing that an oil background is necessary to be CEO, and G is disagreeing by arguing that an oil background is not a sufficient guarantee that you'll be a good CEO.

(D) Does the author conclude that an attribute is always irrelevant to success? Not at all.

(E) Does the author present only one example? Yes. Does the author make a broad generalization on that basis? No. The author is only saying "oil background doesn't guarantee success". Since you only need one true example to prove that claim, we probably wouldn't call it a generalization. If we DID call it a generalization, fine. The author's example FULLY proves her generalization (if one experienced CEO did not succeed, then you have proven that experience doesn't guarantee success), so this is not the source of a flaw.

Takeaway/Pattern: Earlier in this section was a "How did the 2nd person misinterpret the 1st" question. This is very similar. We wouldn't be able to just read G's argument and find the flaw, because the real logical error was when G shifted the topic of debate from what F was talking about to what G felt like talking about.

#officialexplanation

[YuriJ257]

I have a question about Galindo's point. So, he disagrees by saying that an oil industry background is no guarantee of success. I thought guarantee = necessary? But, when I read the stimulus, I thought if G's point was made into a conditional, it'd look like

if success -> ~oil industry background
or
if oil industry background -> ~success.

Did guarantee always mean sufficient? Or, is it because it says NO GUARANTEE, it means NOT NECESSARY, so therefore SUFFICIENT? Can someone please show me the conditional logic behind this? I'm so lost. Thank you.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, guarantee always means sufficient.

The left side ---guarantees----> The right side

If you're in Los Angeles, then it's a guarantee that you're in California.
Meanwhile, if you're in California, there's no guarantee that you're in LA.

That's why we would write this as
LA --> CA

You can't symbolize "no guarantee" ... it's not conditional, because it's not certain. Conditional logic is about certainty .. it's about "guarantees".

If someone says "being in California is no guarantee that you're in LA", we can't write that as a conditional.

This person is disagreeing with a conditional, that "being in Cali guarantees that you're in LA".

This person is saying:
"It is not true to say that CA --> LA"

If you wanted to draw that pictorially, you could say
CA ---/----> LA
and that would mean "there is NOT a definite inference from being in CA to being in LA", but it seems like you'll only add to your confusion if you try to write a non-conditional in pseudo-conditional terms.

Any time we disagree with a conditional, we don't get a new conditional in return.

If someone says, "If you're a girl, then you like dancing", and I say "That's not true", I haven't just committed myself to any conditional idea. I'm just rejecting someone ELSE's conditional idea.

Rejecting a conditional always means that you're saying
"it's possible to be the left side but NOT be the right side">

If he says "an oil background is no guarantee of success", he's just saying
"it's possible to have an oil background but NOT have success".


When you see a conditional statement, such as
X --> Y

you can choose to read it lots of different ways:
if X, then Y
whenever X happens, Y happens
All X's are Y
X guarantees Y
X requires Y

Hope this helps.