Q24 - Politician: Every regulation currently being proposed

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Each regulation would help the economy.
Evidence: Each regulation will reduce the trade deficit, and the large size of the trade deficit weakens the economy.

Answer Anticipation:
Since we need to resist the Conclusion, we need to think of how we could still argue "at least one of the proposed regulations would NOT help the economy", even though each one would reduce the trade deficit and our large trade deficit is weakening the economy. My thought would simply be, "isn't it possible that one of these regulations does something GOOD, like reducing the trade deficit, but also does something BAD for the economy, and the bad outweighs the good?" Reducing the trade deficit could "help the economy" but what if parts of the regulations "hurt the economy" in some other way?

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We're not concluding anything about the trade deficit, so I'm definitely not interested in reading what the author is supposedly assuming about the trade deficit. The author does not need to assume the deficit will INCREASE. The deficit is doing plenty of harm where it is currently. The author may just be assuming that if no action is taken, the trade deficit will REMAIN large and harmful.

(B) Extreme. The easiest type of Flaw answer choice to get rid of is "Assumes [extreme idea]". Whenever you see "takes for granted / presumes", watch out for strong language. The author certainly didn't assume that reducing the trade deficit is THE ONLY way to help the economy.

(C) Inaccurate. The author does not appeal to the authority of the committee. We're also not discussing the reason for regulations. We're just having a conversation about the effects of the regulations.

(D) YES, this gets at our prephrased objection. Maybe the GOOD stuff the regulations do is outweighed by BAD stuff that they do.

(E) This is probably tempting because the conclusion IS about every regulation in a set. However, the evidence is ALSO about every regulation in a set. There's so premise about what "the set of regulations" will do.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is a good example of why you try to think through potential objections before you look at answer choices. By having already conjured up the potential objection of "what if the regulations ALSO do something BAD, and the bad outweighs the good?", it was easier to hear (D) as giving us that type of objection.

#officialexplanation

[MingL143]

I see this argument as a conditional argument.

Premises: Regulations---> decrease Trade Deficit
Large Trade Deficit ( ~decrease TD)-----> weakens economy

Conclusion: Regulation----> help the economy

Choice B: strengthening the economy ----> decrease TD (correct inference)

So This is not the correct answer, because, apart from its extreme wording, it has nothing to do with the conclusion?

[ohthatpatrick]

I can definitely see how you saw the first sentence as conditional logic, but what about the second sentence is making you think conditional logic?

It's a causal fact. We could always choose to represent causality with conditional arrows, but it's usually only appropriate to do so if we're gonna sketch out a causal chain (and so the arrows aren't really conditional logic, they're just useful for organizing the chain of causality).

Or it's appropriate if the causal claim is written in a universal/guarantee sort of way:
e.g. "Shooting yourself in the brain will always cause you to die."

This second sentence is not a rule, not a universal, not a guarantee, not a requirement. It's just saying that one thing is presently having an effect on another.

At any rate, the author's conclusion is just saying "each of things would help."

When someone says "each of these movies you'd like", are they saying "these are the ONLY movies you'd like?"

Of course not. So when the author is saying each of these regulations would help (via reducing the trade deficit), he's not saying that ONLY these regulations could help or that ONLY by reducing the trade deficit could you help the economy.

You might also be getting tangled up with only / only if vs. the only

only / only if = right side
the only = left side

Only people who pass the bar can practice law.
You can practice law only if you pass the bar.
People who pass the bar are the only people who can practice law.

All three of these put "pass the bar" on the right, and "practice law" on the left.

It looks like you actually symbolized that part correctly in how you notated (B), but I'll leave that last part in for another student.

Your problem, besides trying to force the second sentence to be conditional, is when you make this questionable equivalence:
Large Trade Deficit ( ~decrease TD)-----> weakens economy

Those are NOT logical opposites.

You can decrease the trade deficit and still have a large trade deficit. So you can't say that having a Large Trade Deficit means "~decrease TD".

Each regulation might decrease the deficit a little bit. None of them on their own might be enough to say "okay, it's no longer a LARGE trade deficit", but all of them together might decrease the deficit enough that we no longer call it LARGE.

Or, we still call it LARGE, but we reduced it significantly enough that we would consider the regulations to have helped.

We could do stuff to greatly reduce the CO2 emissions of America, and we would STILL be a large contributor of greenhouse gases.

We wanna keep a distinction in our minds between relative language (reduced) and absolute (not large). Similarly, we can distinguish between HELPING a problem and SOLVING a problem.