Q19 - Young people believe efforts to reduce pollution

[jaf51200]

Could someone please explain why answer choice a is wrong and b is correct?

As for the general argument, I thought that the author assumes that enabling our children to believe that better futures are possible is a necessary condition to prevent the loss motivation. Does answer choice B basically say this in a different way? If something is necessary for the achievement of another thing, can we say that the necessary thing (helps) to bring about the other thing? The reason I ask this is because answer choice b states that enabling people to believe better futures (a necessary condition bc of the must in the conclusion) "will help" prevent the loss of motivation...


Thank you in advance!

[logicfiend]

I was also between A and B. The short answer for why A is wrong is that it is actually backwards.

Here's what we have from the stimulus:

Main conclusion: Young people's pessimism is probably harmful to humanity's future because they lose motivation.

Sub conclusion: We must do what we can do prevent this loss of motivation.

Premise: Must enable children to believe better futures are possible.

The gap: why do we have to enable children to believe better futures? The argument is assuming that doing this will prevent loss of motivation, but we don't actually have that bridge in the stimulus.

So we need to have:

Enable children to believe better futures --> prevent loss of motivation (--> NOT probably harmful to humanity's future)

I'm putting the conclusion in parentheses because it doesn't have direct conditional language, but it's important to put here to understand the relationship between the premises.

If you negate (B) it would negate the relationship between the premises:

Enabling people to believe better futures --> NOT prevent loss of motivation.

This is directly negating our premises that are required to get to the conclusion. Therefore, it's a necessary assumption.

For (A), you can see how it mixes up the premises.

Motivation --> enable people to believe better futures.

If you negate it you get:

Motivating people to solve humanity's problems will NOT enable them to believe better futures are possible....

The only place where we talk about motivation is preventing the loss of motivation, so "motivating" people directly is not in the stimulus. Therefore, this is not required to be true. (A) is a good trap answer because it seems to have all the component parts of the stimulus.

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation for this, for posterity's sake.

Question task: Necessary Assumption

Argument Core:

Conclusion
We gotta prevent demotivating pessimism so that our kids think the future can be better

(why?)

Intermediate Conclusion
This pessimism is probably bad for the future of humankind.

(why?)

Evidence
Kids think the efforts to solve big global problems are doomed to fail. If you think a goal is unrealizable, you'll lose motivation to work for it.

Analysis
All I'm seeing are stupid-sounding missing links like
"being less motivated about solving global problems is harmful to humanity's future"
"we must take actions that will attempt to prevent harming humanity's future"

Not sure exactly where this one is headed. Onto the answer choices.

(A) This is a word blender of things mentioned, but is it in the right order?
I thought the author was suggesting
Less Pessimism -> More motivation -> Less harm to humanity's future

This has "less pessimism" as an effect at the end.

(B) this definitely sounds like "YEAH, he's thinking this." It sounds like his ultimate solution IS 'we must enable our kids to believe better futures are possible'. This is to combat the demotivating pessimism. So I guess keep it.

(C) Too much new stuff. "X is BETTER THAN Y"? "Illusory vision"?

(D) WAY too strong. All our societal ills will be ELIMINATED?!

(E) Too new. Blaming older generations?


It's gotta be (A) or (B). Comparing them one more time, they both have the feel of
"Doing X will achieve Y as a result".

If I try to match that up with the argument, it looks like he's saying
"enabling children to believe better future" is doing what we can "to prevent this loss of motivation".

(A) is saying
"motivating people to work on problems" will lead to "enabling them to believe in better futures" which will lead to "less pessimism".

(B) is saying
"enabling them to believe in better futures" will lead to "preventing loss of motivation".

(B) is the correct answer.

This is a really weird argument, to me. There are a couple different conclusions (as indicated by the "because" / the "probably" / the "therefore").

The simplest way to think about the correct answer is to just focus on the assumption being made in the final sentence.

If I said
"I gotta make her parents respect me and therefore I must mow their lawn."

What's being assumed?

"Mowing their lawn is a way to make her parents respect me."

The original poster correctly noticed that (B) seems to be assigning a Sufficient power to "enabling children" when it's identified in the argument as a Necessary measure.

But, importantly, (B) says that achieving "enabling children" will HELP prevent loss of motivation.

If a goal has several required components, achieving any one of those required components HELPS you get closer to the goal.

[ganbayou]

so is this argument making assunption within only the conclusion?
usually assumption is made between premise and conclusion but it seems B is the assumption bridging two ideas in the conclusion?

[haeeunjee]

so is this argument making assunption within only the conclusion?
usually assumption is made between premise and conclusion but it seems B is the assumption bridging two ideas in the conclusion?

Well, you could see it as bridging a premise and a conclusion, still. I saw this stimulus in vaguely two parts with three conclusions, each extending after another in a weird Russian-doll "Therefore X. Therefore Y. Therefore Z" sequence.

I. Premise: When they are pessimistic, people lose motivation to work for goals that are unrealizable

Sub Conclusion: [Thus] this pessimism is probably harmful to humanity's future (since people aren't working for goals)

II. Sub Conclusion: "[Thus] we must do what we can to prevent loss of motivation"

Main Conclusion: "[Thus] we must enable children to believe a better future is possible".

(B) bridges the second Sub Conclusion (a certain type of premise) and the Main Conclusion. If "enabling people to believe in better futures does NOT HELP prevent loss of motivation," then the connection between the second Sub and the Main falls apart (see italics).

Hope this helps. I think there's more than one way of seeing this (including separating the stim. into two complete parts and not having sub conclusions), but hopefully this was helpful.

[YT]

Premise: Young folks are pessimist + People lose motivation when they are pessimist about goals. ---> The fact that young folks are pessimist is harmful.

---

Conclusion: We must prevent the loss of motivation ---> We must enable our children to believe that better futures are possible.

I believe that the problem with (A) is not what first replier has said, i.e. "motivating people to work" is a different thing than "preventing the loss of motivation". The loss of motivation that the conclusion talks about is the loss of motivation to work. So, it's safe to say that the argument's recommendation is "motivating people to work.", in other words, we could assume that preventing a decrease in motivation is actually motivating.

So the first part of (A), until and, seems to me fine as it ties/bridges the conditional in the conclusion. My view about the structure of answer choice (A) is a bit different than the previous posters, as I think that causing pessimism is not an effect of "believing that the future can be better". I think it is a separate effect of motivating people to work. So basically, answer (A) says the following:

Motivating people to work ---> Enable them to belive that the future can be better.

AND

Motivating people to work ---> Young folks less pessimistic.

So as our conclusion is (Prevent loss of motivation ---> Enable our children), I think it's necessary to assume the first part before the conjunction AND but it's not necessary to assume the second part. (For the reasons stated above, the goal of motivating is not making them less pessimistic, the reverse is true. We try to motivate them by making them less pessimistic.) So that's why, in my opinion, (A) is wrong.

Also I'd like to discuss an additional idea: I think that if the conjunction was not AND but it was OR, that assumption in the answer choice (A) would be a necessary assumption. Any thoughts?

(Note that I might be wrong at any point of the process above... Just my thoughts.)

[ganbayou]

Hi

Does this mean whenever it says (goal)→(action)
Action helps achiving the goal? So there IS causation relationship?
(A→B means B CAUSE A?)