Q4 - Compared to us, people who

[sunhwa2881]

Can you please explain why choice (B) is a better answer than choice (E)?

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question.

Compared to us, we're told, people had very few diversions to amuse themselves a century ago. Therefore, they likely read more than we do.

There are a number of possible assumptions here, but the one that comes into play is the assumption that people a century ago had as much free time as we do. But what if they worked 19-hour days? Would we still expect them to have read more than we do now? Probably not.

(B) is correct. It weakens the argument by negating the assumption that people back then had as much leisure time as we do now.

(E), on the other hand, is out of scope. We're told that people had few diversions, not that they had no diversions. Whether one of the popular diversions was horse racing, moose hunting, or potato-sack relays, we really don't care.

As for the other answer choices:

(A) is out of scope. The quality of books published is irrelevant.

(C) is out of scope. The number of books sold doesn't really tell us much about respective time spent reading.

(D) is, again, out of scope. We're not interested in the relative cost of books.

So, does that answer your question? Let me know if you're still tempted by answer (E).

[griffin.811]

Another reason I think E is out of scope is because of what I like to think of as the "so what" factor.

Horse riding was a popular diversion a century ago...So what!? Just because horse riding was popular doesn't mean reading couldn't be popular as well. In other words, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

The issue I had with this was choosing between A and B.

I finally decided A was wrong for the same reason as E. The books are of lower quality...compared to when!? now, the century before it, etc...Maybe both the books of a century ago and the books of today are both of lower quality than books written in biblical times. We just dont know. If this is the case both sets of books are bad, so this doesnt offer a reason that the people of a century ago would read less.

B on the other hand sures up this timing relationship explicitly stating that "the people of a century ago" had less leisure time "than people of today".

Rather difficult to be so early in the question set IMO.

[mchelle]

Hi there, I am still confused about this question...

I was between (B) and (C). My hesitation about (B) was that just because people today have more leisure time doesn't necessarily mean that we use this time to read. What if we spent most of this time engaging in the diversions that the argument core refers to, such as watching TV or browsing on the Internet? Couldn't people then have been just as likely to have read more, given that they devote more of the fewer leisure hours they have to reading, while we devote less of the greater leisure hours we have to reading?

I chose (C) because I thought that even if "the number of books sold" doesn't explicitly indicate that people are reading more, it still is more suggestive that people a century ago were not as likely to have read more than we do today.

[griffin.811]

Hi Michelle!

So I just re-did this problem after seeing your post. This is one of my least favorite.

To answer your question, when looking at this particular question, it is really important to go back to the basics. The author concludes: People who lived a century ago likely read more than people today.

But WHY....?

Because they had fewer diversions than we have today. This is very similar to saying people today spend their time doing other things, as we are preoccupied with these new diversions that were not around a century ago.

B addresses this issue most clearly. Our time is divided up amongst more things now, so less time is spent on any one thing, including reading. But what if we have much more time on our hands? now we can still read just as much and entertain ourselves with other diversions.

Looking at C, it is very attractive, but the issue is it doesn't directly attack the WHY? or Core, as stated by the author. The fact that more books are sold now does not impact the relationship between: few diversion--->likely read more. Also, you would expect the number of books purchased to be higher now, as there are more people living now.

Essentially C says, the ppl of the past had fewer diversions, but more books are sold today, Whereas B says ppl of past had fewer diversions, but also had less time to read.

[deedubbew]

I am still having trouble wrapping my head around why A is not the answer. I've found that fill in the blank questions are usually inference questions. Which means the main task would be to eliminate the answer choices that are out of scope. E seems too narrow, while A might be too broad. A actually seems closer to the scope since it's related to everything in the stimulus; such that studying whether we can find all possible causes of language acquisition is related to the psychologist bringing up that there is more than one cause. However E brings up a new idea of comparison.

I feel like I'm trying too hard to choose E over A. However, I've come up with a possible reason why A is not right. The word "explained" is not the same as "influences." We might know that there are environmental influences, but that doesn't mean that they explain language acquisition.

[obobob]

I am also having trouble convincing myself why (A) is an incorrect answer— especially because it doesn’t seem like (B) is a more weakening answer than (A) is.

So I was thinking:

For (A) bad quality literature in the old days could have influenced those people living a century ago to spend their time doing something else besides reading even if they had not much of free time.

For (B), even if they had less leisure time than we do today, they could have read more than we do now.

I understand this is just a most weakens question, meaning we just need to find one answer choice that is the most influential in weakening the argument provided in the stimulus, but I am just not so sure how (B) is a more weakening answer than (A) is (or, if not, how (A) doesn’t weaken the argument or is irrelevant).

I mean, in order for my line of thought for (A) to work, I think there is some outside assumptions need to be considered. Like, we need to assume that people a century ago would have been influenced by low literary quality enough to influence those poeple’s lifestyle.

But what if they worked 19-hour days?.

But, for (B) also, I think similar level of outside assumption/s, but maybe different ones, needs to be taken in order for (B) to weaken the argument. For example like, 19-hours working people a century ago did not use most of their free time reading.

Granted, it is a very extreme hypothetical case that I am saying here, given that they would only have gotten 5 hours of free time to eat sleep and do other things than working if they worked for 19-hours, but I just wanted to make a point that there is some kind of assumption needs to be made for (B) to weaken the argument, and thus it doesn’t seem like it is more weakening than (A) does. After all, we can also think of a case where the general literature quality a century ago was like really horrible that 95% of people thought they were boring and hard to understand.

[smiller]

I mean, in order for my line of thought for (A) to work, I think there is some outside assumptions need to be considered.

That's one important thing to notice in a Weaken question. These questions often include more than once answer choice that could possibly weaken. However, some of the answers will require more assumptions than others. It also helps to notice which answer choice weakens the argument more forcefully or is more relevant to the argument that we're given. As the question stem states, our job is to choose the one that "most weakens the argument."

Choice (A) states that "many" books published a century ago were of low quality. But how many are we talking about? That's not specified. More importantly, Choice (A) doesn't contrast the quality of those books to the quality of books published today. It could be said that "many" of the books published today are of low quality. We don't know if (A) is describing a difference that actually weakens the argument in any way.

Choice (B) explicitly describes a difference between our lives today and the lives of the people who lived a century ago, and it's a difference that's directly relevant to the argument.