Q20 - Sociologist: Television, telephones, and other electro

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Inference/Must be False

Stimulus Breakdown:
Modern tech causes uncritical thought. Critical thinking is the only protection against demagogues.

Answer Anticipation:
There's overlap between the two statements in that they both talk about critical thinking, so there's an inference to be made there. The inference is likely to be contradicted to give us our correct answer (Modern tech doesn't contribute to the rise of demagogues), but we should leave ourselves open to other answers.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Since technology only encourages uncritical thinking, it's not definitive that it will inevitably result in it. Thus, it's possible some countries avoid demagogues.

(B) Sure, why not? Demagogues do this, but there could be others, as well.

(C) Since the stimulus doesn't talk about highly emotional people (just emotionally loaded language), anything could be true about them, including this.

(D) Bingo. Outside of inferences, strong statements are likely to lead to correct answers. Here, "the only" is a strong statement, telling us that critical thinking must be there to protect against demagogues. This means anything else - such as an orderly system - won't get the job done. This is directly contradicted by the text, so it's our answer.

(E) Similar to (C). The stimulus doesn't talk about media freedoms, so anything could be true about them.

Takeaway/Pattern: Must be False questions look for answers that are directly contradicted by the stimulus. These generally come from inferences you can make, or strong/conditional statements in the givens.

#officialexplanation

[DanielG926]

A is wrong because while CT is the only defense against PD, PD's need not exist, so A *Could Be True*.
B is wrong because while PD's do use emotional language as an objective description of reality, other types of demagogues could too, or just other kinds of people! so it *Could Be True*
C is wrong because highly emotional people COULD be more easily exploited than less emotional people, and nothing in the arg really addresses that.

E) is the tricky one, but it *Could Be True*. It COULD BE TRUE that the mere presence of Electronic Communications Technology (not just media as addressed in the arg, ECT could be like a dumb cell phone) provides adequate protection for media freedoms. Nothing in the argument addresses media freedoms.


D) is right because the argument states that *at minimum*, critical thinking is needed, which "the mere presence of orderly system of government" does not guarantee