Flaw type - fails to distinguish A and B

[wj097]

Hello, what would be an exemplary case that illustrate such flaw???

1) "fails to distinguish A and B "

2) "confuses A with B" (I understand when the case is "confuses what is sufficient with necessary" but how about in other cases??)

Thx.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great question.

Essentially, any answer with the syntax of
confuses X with Y
mistakes X for Y
fails to distinguish X from Y

is pointing us to a gap between what the premise was discussing and what the conclusion is discussing.

For example:
People who cheat on their tests do themselves a disservice by failing to learn the actual content being tested. So cheaters hurt themselves in the long run.

What's the gap/flaw?
We could say the argument is essentially equating "doing yourself a disservice by failing to learn content" with "hurting yourself in the long run".

So the correct answer could be something like
(A) confuses one specific detriment with an overall disadvantage
or
(A) fails to distinguish between one negative aspect of a certain course of action and the net negativity of a certain course of action.

Whenever I see these types of answer choices, I try to match the first half up with what was being discussed in the premise and the second half up with what is being discussed/distorted in the conclusion.

If I can't match either half, I eliminate it.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have other questions about this.