Q6 - Editorial: The premier's economic advisor

[Dmitriy.Oziransky]

How can this one be D and not C?

Someone please help

[maryadkins]

We can break down the argument like this:

-The premier's advisor says it's possible to lower taxes without decreasing gov't services

-But the advisor is an ex-con

-So the advisor's argument is untrustworthy and won't work

The argument of the editorial completely relies on what? The criminal history of the advisor. The editorial's argument doesn't get into the merits of the advisor's claim at all. (C) identifies this flaw--the problem is that the editorial's attack is on the source, not the argument itself.

(A) is incorrect because the argument is not about the proposal's implementation.

(B) is incorrect--there's no talk about what could happen.

(D) is wrong because the stimulus isn't about the lack of evidence. It's about the advisor having been convicted of a crime.

(E) is vague and doesn't get at the flaw above.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you're still confused.

[Dmitriy.Oziransky]

Yea I was sure it was C but my book must've had a typo it said D was the answer, thanks

[nflamel69]

I thought this question was weird in a way that the flaw is between the premise and the sub-conclusion. Isn't the main conclusion is that the premier should discard any hope....? my breakdown of the argument is :

p: he was convicted of crime when he was younger

sub-c: so his advice is untrustworthy

c: premier should discard any hope....

If that's the case, couldn't the bigger flaw be something like he didn't consider other people who have other evidence that the policy could work? Any input in this?

[timmydoeslsat]

You are correct that there is technically a leap of logic there.

Our question stem simply asks us what is a questionable technique used, and we definitely see a critique of the source rather than the source's claim.

There will be times in which a flaw will occur from a premise to an intermediate conclusion. In this case, we do in fact have flaws from both reasoning sets to 1) Intermediate Conclusion and 2) Main Conclusion, but I think we will agree that we have a rather grotesque technique being used to arrive at our intermediate conclusion.