noah Wrote:This is a strange weaken question in that it does not do what most weaken questions do and attack an assumption - the connection between a premise and the conclusion. Instead the answer correct answer calls into question the validity of a premise. For this argument, wrong answer analysis is key.
The argument states that there is a causal relationship between a specific gene variant and an inclination towards thrill-seeking. Why? Because children who tend to seek thrills (impulsive behavior) are twice as likely to have this gene variant. Pretty sound argument so far. However, (B) calls into question whether the researcher was really able to identify kids who seek thrills because that behavior is indistinguishable from other behaviors. So, if it turns out those kids were not thrill-seeking but were actually lacking self-control, for example, then the gene variant may cause that, not thrill-seeking (and my example assumes that lacking self-control is not the same as thrill-seeking!)
(A) is tempting, but it would be much stronger if it said that "Most adults are not unusually sensitive to dopamine" since "Many" doesn't mean much.
(C) tries to link thrill-seeking and impulsive behavior, which the argument already does.
(D) is irrelevant since we're interested in the kids' behaviors.
(E) is tempting, as it suggests there's a different causal connection, but there could be multiple ones at the same time (i.e. just because obesity causes depression doesn't mean it cannot also cause hair loss).
Just would like to analyze both answer B & E more.
Apparently, by the correlations between different groups, a person attempts to prove the causality.
my first question is, in terms of B, if we add few words into it, such as " as for now ", " temporarily " , in a way that - It is temporarily not possible to reliably distinguish impulsive behavior from the other behavior, any chances that this answer not better weaken the argument than E does ?
My reasoning behind is that if it is just temporarily phenomenon, the could it be true that later on, the argument of proving the causation by correlation could still be airtight, since only if find methods to reliably distinguish the behaviors, there is still possibility that the argument be correct right ? Seems to me, arguing whether can we distinguish the causes can never really 100% truly weaken the causality based on that cause. For example, people who have been dieting from alpha oil gain 20 lbs more than others who haven't. so alpha oil causes people gain fat. But failed to distinguish alpha oil and all the other oil does not really disprove alpha oil " can not " make people gain weight isn't it ? Perhaps alpha oil truly does make people gain fat, it just that as for now we can not " distinguish " alpha oil with other oil.
my second question is, in terms of E, would not the answer opens the possibility that other types of behavior, also correlated with the gene variant study, could contradict the study of the scientist by introducing one type, few types, even 10 billions kinds of the behaviors, being consistent with anti-thrill seeking behaviors ? If it is the case, then would not it be true that the correlation indicated by the scientist is not " sufficient " to guarantee the causality whom concludes ?
Please help me out. I really appreciate all the supports.