Q23 - A spy fails by being caught

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Match the Reasoning

Stimulus Breakdown:
There's some conditional logic in here, but it's super tricky. It's also not clean, in that we don't have clear conditional keywords throughout, so instead of coming up with a conditional chain, let's come up with an abstract description of what's going on with these spies.

It's spy vs. spy here, and we know that caught spies are failed spies, and they reveal their secrets. Successful spies are not caught. Therefore, information we have is skewed, since we only get information from failed spies.

Answer Anticipation:
How can we generically restate this to look for an answer? We'd try to find an answer that tells us about two sides of the same coin (here, the coin being sucessful and unsuccessful spies), and concludes from this that we know more about one side of the coin than the other (here, the unsuccessful spies).

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Number of terms mismatch. Our spy argument split spies into two groups. This answer has three groups (successes, failures, and did-not-competes).

(B) Looks good! We have two sides of the same coin (conscious vs. unconscious motives), and a conclusion about learning more about one side. We wouldn't pick it on our first pass (since on Matching questions it's important to work wrong-to-right), but this ultimately is correct.

(C) Term/premise mismatch. Our argument about spies clearly defines the terms, whereas this argument explicitly tells us that we haven't defined them.

(D) Conclusion mismatch. Our argument concludes that we learn more about one side of the coin than the other. This conclusion is about counting the two sides. Additionally, there's a premise mismatch, since our two groups in the argument are mutually exclusive (you can't be both an unsuccessful and successful spy), but the groups here aren't (you can both be a teacher and a teacher who isn't called one).

(E) Premise/conclusion mismatch. Our conclusion here is about an alternative possible outcome, not the flipside of the same coin. To highlight the difference, here's what a similar argument would look like that would be a correct answer:

When someone overtly intervenes in a conflict, their impact is easily discernible. However, when someone covertly intervenes, it's nearly impossible to tell that there was outside influence. Therefore, we know more about how to successfully overtly intervene in a conflict than to covertly do so.

Takeaway/Pattern: When the conditional language doesn't show up throughout the passage, and it's very convoluted without clear chains, it's usually best to revert to restating the argument in abstract terms. However, it's still important to capture the connection between the premises and conclusion!

#officialexplanation

[alejandrac29]

I was able to narrow down to (B) and (E) through process of elimination, but I ultimately chose (E) because (B)'s use of less certain language: "usually" and "more likely".

I see how (B) is closer to the reasoning and felt inclined to chose it but second guessed myself after noticing the difference in language. I also generally struggled to eliminate (E) and am still having trouble fully understanding what makes (E) incorrect. Can someone help dig in to what makes this answer choice wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes, and sorry for the delay.

You could lean on strength of language here. The original and (B) are both talking about an asymmetry of data, because we NORMALLY (orig) / USUALLY (choice B) get our info from one type of source, not another.

Thus, the conclusions say in moderate language, "we know MORE about this than that".

ORIG - "you can learn a lot about X but very little about Y"
B - "you're more likely to hear about X than to hear about y"

Meanwhile, (E) is talking about an extreme asymmetry of data, where we have ZERO information from one source and all from another.

And its conclusion is not moderate comparative language; it's extreme absolute language, "It's impossible to know about y".


Does that make sense?

[VickX462]

Wouldn't B have a premise number mismatch?

There are 3 premises in the original argument:
1. A spy fails by being caught
2. It is normally only through being caught that spies reveal their methods.
3. The successful spy is never caught

There are only 2 premises here:
1. People who are aware of their motives can articulate them
2. Unconscious motives are usually impossible to acknowledge.

Thanks in advance!