Q7 - Rotelle: You are too old

[b91302310]

For this question, could anyone explain why (D) is better than (C)?

Thanks.

[tamwaiman]

R is directed against S's age, relatively, which (D) describes.
(C) generalizes this issue, we have no idea how young is necessary to address these effectively.

[nmop_apisdn2]

I'll take a stab at this question.

Rotelle is committed to which one of the following?

(A) is incorrect because Rotelle is not addressing all old people, which this statement does. Also, we don't know exactly what cut off for "old" is, according to Rotelle, which makes this answer choice way too ambiguous for it to be conclusively true.
(B) is incorrect because of the word "only"; we know that Rotelle thinks that Sims is too old and therefore not able to address effectively the stated issues, but are these the "only" people Rotelle thinks are unable to do so? This answer choice is too strongly worded.
(C) is an incorrect answer choice a lot of people choose. The reason this one is wrong is because Rotelle is not really committed to speaking about young people; we know nothing about her opinion on them, as a matter of fact. All that we know she is committed to saying is that Sims is too old.
(E) is alos incorrect because no where in Rotelle's statements does she give us any requirements on how to address the difficult issues, which makes this answer incorrect.

Lastly, answer choice (D) is correct because Rotelle is committed to saying that Sims is too old, which would mean that anyone older than Sims would be too old as well. In effect, the only type of person Rotelle is committed to saying that has the ability to address effectively the issues is someone who is younger than Sims. How young, you say? We have not a clue, but that's not important because Rotelle is basically saying that the person to address effectively the issues can't be as old or older than Sims.

[bbirdwell]

Nice work! Thanks for posting a solution. Some comments below:

(A) Minor point -- this choice doesn't address "all" old people, just "many," though your point remains -- we have only a claim regarding Sims, not "many" old people.

(C) Essentially, yes. Just because the car's not blue doesn't mean it's red, so to speak. Just because Sims is too old to do the job does NOT imply that "young" people can do the job, and again, "young" has not been defined.

(D)

In effect, the only type of person Rotelle is committed to saying that has the ability to address effectively the issues is someone who is younger than Sims.

Careful! This is essentially correct, but note that Rotelle is definitely not committed to saying that someone younger than Sims can definitely address the issues. For all we know, Rotelle thinks old people are too old and young people are too young and middle-aged people are too in the middle!

What we know, as (D) says, is that the only people Rotelle believes MIGHT be able to do the job must be younger than Sims.

[stol1989]

Hi guys, thank you for discussion!
I have concerns about answers A and D
Many is logically equal to some and some is equal to at least one. So (one) Sims is logically coherent with "Many"
About D... If we consider two persons of the same age one of them could be "too old" for accomplishing the task and other not. Oldness is not matter of age but rather condition of mental and physical fatigue. How can I know that Rotelle wasn't adhere to this concept?

[sportsfan8491]

I'm not an expert, so if one of the experts would like to provide their insights or correct anything that I've said, it would be greatly appreciated.

The words "many" and "some" are not the same from a semantics perspective (i.e. you can't equate these words in terms of what they mean specifically). These two words do tend to overlap in terms of what they represent, at a certain point, and I'll discuss this a bit more below.

"Some", as the previous poster accurately denoted, means "at least one".

However, "many" means "two or more".

For this particular question, Rotelle only refers to one person: Sims. So, as one of the experts already mentioned above, the word "many" is enough to rule out answer choice (A).

If you had a hypothetical stimulus or situation that mentioned two or more variables, then I think "many" and " some" could be viewed as referring to the same thing, because the minimum constraint for both terms (which is what specifically differentiates these words when it comes into play) would no longer be a factor. That is, these two words would overlap after two or more people, groups, elements, etc., were discussed and they would be similar in meaning only once this threshold point was met (two or more).

I think answer choice (D) can also be arrived at through conditional logic (although to be honest, I didn't use this method to answer the question correctly in a timed environment).

Rotelle is ultimately saying that: if you are as old as Sims then you cannot effectively address (AOAS---> not EA). I got this from the fact that because Sims is too old, then anyone the same age or older must be just as ineffective as Sims, or else then the author would contradict himself/herself: if Sims is considered too old, then how can someone the same age or older than Sims be more competent/effective than Sims? It wouldn't make any sense.

The contrapostive of my conditional statement above would be: if you can effectively address, then you must not be as old as Sims (EA---> not AOAS). At this point and from a common sense perspective, I don't think it would be wrong to substitute "not as old as Sims" with the phrase "younger than Sims"; the conditional statement would still retain the same meaning. This is ultimately what answer choice (D) gives us.

I hope this is helpful.