Q21 - A chimp who displays feelings of affection toward

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Affection plays the same role in chimp and human communities.
Evidence: Humans face more risks for the sake of those they feel affection for. Chimps face more risks for the sake of those who display feelings of affection.

Answer Anticipation:
This is a COMPARATIVE argument. The author is trying to reason that "Because THIS thing is common to both things, THIS OTHER thing is also common".

Here it's, "Because chimps and humans have RISKING MORE BASED ON AFFECTION in common, the ROLE OF AFFECTION must also be in common." Our job in evaluating comparative arguments is to think "are these fair to compare? or could they in some way be meaningfully different?" If we're reading carefully to see how each half of the comparison matches up, we see that humans and chimps are both expending more risk for a certain trait. But the trait differs. Humans are expending more risk for "those they feel affection for", and chimps are expending more risk for "those who display affection". Humans are protecting the loved. Chimps are protecting the lovers.

Since the author's argument hinges on this comparative element lining up, she has to assume that "risking more for those we love" has a similar role to "risking more for those that love us".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Extreme: "whenever". Also where did "emotions" come into play? I guess that's adjacent to "displaying affection". If we negated this, and there was at least one instance in which a chimp didn't express its emotions behaviorially, would that hurt the argument. Of course not.

(B) YES. Omigosh, how evil. It's at least appealing because of the soft "at least sometimes" language. Remember, our prephrase was all about the gap between "I have affection for you" and "you show affection for me". This is touching on that gap. If we negate it, it says that "feelings of affection are NEVER reciprocated". That would crush the argument, because it would guarantee that "a chimp DISPLAYING affection" is never a "chimp RECEIVING affection". Since the gap between the chimp example and the human example is this distinction, the author is ruined if we learn that the chimp example he cited could not possibly match up with the human example he cited.

(C) Extreme: "the only". Who cares if there's at least one other reason we protect each other?

(D) Somewhat extreme: "limited to". It sounds softer than "only", but it basically means the same thing. This is saying that chimps are only affectioned to members of their social group. Is it really going to hurt the argument if at least sometimes they're affectionate to something outside their group?

(E) Somewhat extreme: "usually". Did the author need to assume that 51% or more displays of affection are altruistic? Would it hurt the argument if we negated and only 49% of displays of affection are altruistic? Of course not.

Takeaway/Pattern: Mean, mean, mean! The easier parts were recognizing the Comparative structure (one of the three most common reasoning structures, along with Conditional and Causal), and bringing our scrutiny to whether the parts were "fair to compare" or whether they were "meaningfully different". Once we isolated the "receiving" vs. "displaying" affection mismatch, we knew the author was assuming that those different cases were still fair to compare. (B) slightly creeps us towards the idea of them being fair to compare. Negating (B) demolishes the chance of them ever being fair to compare.

#officialexplanation

[aquiwill]

ohthatpatrick, you posted the wrong explanation here. I really appreciate all your explanations, you are the best out of all the instructors!

[bobjon1259]

Question Type:
Match the Reasoning

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The characters will not be developed in a more realistic manner.
Evidence: If the writers made the characters more realistic, the viewership for the show would shrink, and the writers will choose to maximize their audience.

Answer Anticipation:
This an argument by contrapositive.
Given: X --> Y and ~Y,
we can fairly conclude ~X.

If we wanted to capture more of the color of the conversation, we could think about it more in terms of goal / action / result. If they took a certain action (more realistic characters), they would see a certain result (less viewership). Since the goal is to avoid that result (maximize viewership), then they won't take that action.

As I look at each answer I'll ask, "Is there a conditional premise? If not, bail. If so, is a fact provided that goes against the right side? If not, bail. If so, does the conclusion say that the left side will not occur?"

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) There is a conditional, but the fact provided is about the left side, whereas we want to hear a fact that goes against the right side. Bail.

(B) There is a conditional, but the fact provided is about the left side, whereas we want to hear a fact that goes against the right side. Bail.

(C) The conclusion is a conditional. Bail.

(D) YES! There is a conditional. Then the fact provided goes against the right side, and the conclusion goes against the left side.

(E) There's no conditional premise, so bail.

Takeaway/Pattern: It's always annoying when they use the same topic five times over. Luckily, the argument structure here was fairly straightforward. Arguing via contrapositive is probably one of the top 3 argument structures (the other two being "A -> B and B -> C, thus A -> C" and "X is either A or B. It's not A, so it must be B."

As it turned out, getting more conversational with the argument would have not helped, since the matching argument just matched the contrapositive structure, not the whole goal / action / result structure.

#officialexplanation

Patrick, can we please get an explanation for this question? You accidentally posted the explanation for question #22.

[ohthatpatrick]

Thanks for pinging it to the top!

[Wenjin]

Hi Patrick, just wondering for E) if “usually” is replaced by “at least”, will that be a correct answer?

[ohthatpatrick]

Good question, but I think I would still have to reject it based on "altruistic behavior". The argument never describes the behavior as altruistic, and I don't think it fits our dictionary definition (behavior that has no self-interested motivation).

We know they're risking harm to themselves, but that doesn't show something is altruistic. Parachuting out of a plane risks harm to oneself, but it's not altruistic.

Similarly, seeing a girl you're attracted to get harassed by a toxic male and telling him to knock it off is risking harm to yourself, for the girl's benefit, but also potentially for YOUR benefit, because you might curry favor with her by intervening.

If the author thinks that chimps are defending fellow chimps that give them affection (and for whom they have affection), then there is still some self-interest in that action.
i.e. "I will risk injury to myself in order to defend Bobo, since I want to still enjoy Bobo's affectionate massages and I want to be spared the pain of seeing my friend Bobo get hurt")