Q7 - A commonly accepted myth is

[jardinsouslapluie5]

Could you explain (B)?
I chose (D) for this.

[ohthatpatrick]

The conclusion of this argument is:
Right-handed people are just as accident prone as left-handed people (if not more so).

Why?
More household accidents are caused by right-handed people than by left-handed people.

The point of a FLAW question is for us to say why the evidence doesn't prove the conclusion.

Let's look at a quick analogy:
A lot of people think that Washington DC is one of the most dangerous areas in the U.S. But this is clearly not the case. After all, there are many more crimes committed each year in California than there are in DC.

The problem with this argument (and the original) is that you can't just use raw numbers to prove which city is more "criminally inclined" or which type of person is more "accident prone".

California is probably 100 times bigger and at least 10 times more populous than DC. Naturally, there are more crimes committed in California.

What we REALLY need to judge which state is more dangerous (let's pretend DC is a state) is a PER CAPITA statistic.

If I told you that 1 out of every 12 people in DC was the victim of a crime while 1 out of every 30 people in CA was the victim of a crime, you'd think, "Huh, DC sounds more dangerous."

A per capita statistic averages the number of crimes versus the number of people. That's how we judge how prevalent a certain quality is among a certain population.

So returning to righties and lefties, let's say (somewhat realistically) that 90% of people are right handed and 10% are left handed.

If we're all equally accident prone, then 90% of accidents will be caused by righties and 10% will be caused by lefties.

But if the actual statistic is that 70% of accidents are caused by righties and 30% are caused by lefties, that would be evidence that lefties are more accident prone. They are DISPROPORTIONATELY causing more accidents than they should (even though there is still a bigger absolute number of accidents caused by righties).

So our gripe with the original argument is that the statistic cited is a raw numerical total; it's not a per capita figure that relates the total number of accidents to the total number of righties vs. lefties.

B) is complaining about this. If left handed people are very rare in the population as a whole, then they might cause fewer total accidents (as the premise states), but they could still be clumsier (have a higher individual likelihood of getting into an accident).

==== other answers ====

A) the distinction made between left and right handed people is a real distinction, crucial to the evidence and the conclusion

C) this is a recurring flaw (almost always wrong, by the way) called "Equivocating", or using the same idea in two different senses. This argument is using "accident" the same way both times, so this is not our problem.

D) does it weaken the argument to say that "some accidents are caused by more than one person"? Not really. This is somewhat tempting because we might think, "if accidents can be caused by multiple people, then doesn't that muddy the statistic the premise relies upon?"

Not really. It's possible that when multiple people cause an accident we create a separate statistical category (wouldn't change that there are still more accidents caused by righties than by lefties).

Or it's possible that when multiple people cause an accident we take not of whether they're right or left handed and add them to the grand total of right-handed accident causers and left handed accident causers (doesn't change the fact that there are ultimately more right-handed accident causers).

E) The evidence is very relevant. The opposing position is about how left/right handedness relates to being accident prone. The evidence relates to accidents caused by left/right handed people.

Hope this helps.

[patrice.antoine]

C) this is a recurring flaw (almost always wrong, by the way) called "Equivocating", or using the same idea in two different senses. This argument is using "accident" the same way both times, so this is not our problem.

I chose this answer because it went from general "accident" to specifically "household accidents".

How is this not equivocating two separate things?

[ohthatpatrick]

I see your concern. It's not equivocating (i.e. being intentionally misleading by using two different meanings of the same word) to refer to accidents broadly and then refer to a subset of accidents, "household accidents".

If I go from a broad category like "football players" to "high school football players", we could worry about a sampling flaw ... maybe high school football players have characteristics that wouldn't generalize to all football players.

But "football" has the same meaning in both contexts.

Equivocating with "football" would be more like saying:
In America, football players are paid large sums of money if they're good at catching the ball with their hands. In Europe, football players are penalized for touching the ball with their hands. Clearly, then, Europeans feel differently about the use of hands in football than Americans do.

This is equivocating between American football and European football ("soccer").

The problem isn't switching from American to European as our modifier; the problem is that the noun "football" refers to two completely different things.

Hope this helps.

[blairped]

The conclusion of this argument is:
Right-handed people are just as accident prone as left-handed people (if not more so).

Why?
More household accidents are caused by right-handed people than by left-handed people.

The point of a FLAW question is for us to say why the evidence doesn't prove the conclusion.

Let's look at a quick analogy:
A lot of people think that Washington DC is one of the most dangerous areas in the U.S. But this is clearly not the case. After all, there are many more crimes committed each year in California than there are in DC.

The problem with this argument (and the original) is that you can't just use raw numbers to prove which city is more "criminally inclined" or which type of person is more "accident prone".

California is probably 100 times bigger and at least 10 times more populous than DC. Naturally, there are more crimes committed in California.

What we REALLY need to judge which state is more dangerous (let's pretend DC is a state) is a PER CAPITA statistic.

If I told you that 1 out of every 12 people in DC was the victim of a crime while 1 out of every 30 people in CA was the victim of a crime, you'd think, "Huh, DC sounds more dangerous."

A per capita statistic averages the number of crimes versus the number of people. That's how we judge how prevalent a certain quality is among a certain population.

So returning to righties and lefties, let's say (somewhat realistically) that 90% of people are right handed and 10% are left handed.

If we're all equally accident prone, then 90% of accidents will be caused by righties and 10% will be caused by lefties.

But if the actual statistic is that 70% of accidents are caused by righties and 30% are caused by lefties, that would be evidence that lefties are more accident prone. They are DISPROPORTIONATELY causing more accidents than they should (even though there is still a bigger absolute number of accidents caused by righties).

So our gripe with the original argument is that the statistic cited is a raw numerical total; it's not a per capita figure that relates the total number of accidents to the total number of righties vs. lefties.

B) is complaining about this. If left handed people are very rare in the population as a whole, then they might cause fewer total accidents (as the premise states), but they could still be clumsier (have a higher individual likelihood of getting into an accident).

==== other answers ====

A) the distinction made between left and right handed people is a real distinction, crucial to the evidence and the conclusion

C) this is a recurring flaw (almost always wrong, by the way) called "Equivocating", or using the same idea in two different senses. This argument is using "accident" the same way both times, so this is not our problem.

D) does it weaken the argument to say that "some accidents are caused by more than one person"? Not really. This is somewhat tempting because we might think, "if accidents can be caused by multiple people, then doesn't that muddy the statistic the premise relies upon?"

Not really. It's possible that when multiple people cause an accident we create a separate statistical category (wouldn't change that there are still more accidents caused by righties than by lefties).

Or it's possible that when multiple people cause an accident we take not of whether they're right or left handed and add them to the grand total of right-handed accident causers and left handed accident causers (doesn't change the fact that there are ultimately more right-handed accident causers).

E) The evidence is very relevant. The opposing position is about how left/right handedness relates to being accident prone. The evidence relates to accidents caused by left/right handed people.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for a really good analogy Patrick! Struggling with % and # questions!!!!