Q9 - People are usually interested

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Explain Discrepancy

Stimulus Breakdown:
Given that "people are more interested in anecdotes, which are generally misleading due to their unrepresentative cases",
how can it be that "people tend to have fairly accurate beliefs about society"?

Answer Anticipation:
We need a way to explain how people don't end up with a distorted view of society based on generally misleading anecdotes.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This doesn't help us see why people end up with a good sense of society, even while being more interested in generally misleading anecdotes.

(B) Yes! This gives us a way to understand how people can be INTERESTED in misleading anecdotes but still end up with accurate BELIEFS. People are more curious to hear anecdotes than stats, but they still take the anecdote with a healthy grain of salt.

(C) This doesn't give us a way that people could maintain a correct belief system while absorbing anecdotes.

(D) This almost works, but this sentence doesn't give us any reason to believe that people are frequently hearing correct statistical information illustrated by accompanying anecdotes. In fact, since we're told that anecdotes are GENERALLY misleading, we have to live with the fact that MOST of the time anecdotes are used, they are NOT in alignment with correct beliefs about society. We also have no information provided about whether statistics themselves are NOT misleading, whether stats DO convey accurate beliefs about society. So stats aren't really even a usable way to get from misleading anecdote to accurate societal belief.

(E) This would only work if we thought "people's emotional responses to other people allow them to form accurate beliefs about society". That's a bit of a leap. Moreover, "beliefs about other people" in this context sounds more like [people you actually meet], as opposed to [society, which is composed of other people].

Takeaway/Pattern: Normally the "but/yet/however" divides one half of the paradox from the other. In this case, the paradox was framed in the last sentence using "Although [fact 1], [fact 2]." Focusing on the fact that we're trying to explain how people have accurate beliefs, B has the most tempting keywords, since it's saying that "most people accurately understand what anecdotes are". This paradox also played off a distinction between what people are more INTERESTED in (anecdotes) and what people consider a valid source of information for accurate beliefs about society (not-anecdotes).

#officialexplanation

[Jdanz653]

I got to B through POE but I'm not entirely sure exactly why it resolves the discrepancy.

Is it B because people realize that these anecdotal cases are likely unrepresentative so therefore they draw a different, almost opposite, conclusion that tends to reflect society more accurately ?

Thanks

[maryadkins]

Is it B because people realize that these anecdotal cases are likely unrepresentative so therefore they draw a different, almost opposite, conclusion that tends to reflect society more accurately ?

Yes. If they recognize that the anecdotes are unrepresentative, then they are't basing their views about society on those anecdotes. This resolves the discrepancy, which is, why do people love anecdotes that are inaccurate BUT still have accurate beliefs about society?

As for the others:

(A) doesn't do anything. They don't pay attention to stats anyway. Plus, we're told they have accurate views, not inaccurate ones, and we need to know why.

(C) yikes, seems to further complicate things...

(D) but the anecdotes are generally misleading, so that's still a problem we need to address.

(E) What does this have to do with anecdotes and beliefs?

[JamesM914]

Question Type:
Explain Discrepancy

Stimulus Breakdown:
Given that "people are more interested in anecdotes, which are generally misleading due to their unrepresentative cases",
how can it be that "people tend to have fairly accurate beliefs about society"?

Answer Anticipation:
We need a way to explain how people don't end up with a distorted view of society based on generally misleading anecdotes.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This doesn't help us see why people end up with a good sense of society, even while being more interested in generally misleading anecdotes.

(B) Yes! This gives us a way to understand how people can be INTERESTED in misleading anecdotes but still end up with accurate BELIEFS. People are more curious to hear anecdotes than stats, but they still take the anecdote with a healthy grain of salt.

(C) This doesn't give us a way that people could maintain a correct belief system while absorbing anecdotes.

(D) This almost works, but this sentence doesn't give us any reason to believe that people are frequently hearing correct statistical information illustrated by accompanying anecdotes. In fact, since we're told that anecdotes are GENERALLY misleading, we have to live with the fact that MOST of the time anecdotes are used, they are NOT in alignment with correct beliefs about society. We also have no information provided about whether statistics themselves are NOT misleading, whether stats DO convey accurate beliefs about society. So stats aren't really even a usable way to get from misleading anecdote to accurate societal belief.

(E) This would only work if we thought "people's emotional responses to other people allow them to form accurate beliefs about society". That's a bit of a leap. Moreover, "beliefs about other people" in this context sounds more like [people you actually meet], as opposed to [society, which is composed of other people].

Takeaway/Pattern: Normally the "but/yet/however" divides one half of the paradox from the other. In this case, the paradox was framed in the last sentence using "Although [fact 1], [fact 2]." Focusing on the fact that we're trying to explain how people have accurate beliefs, B has the most tempting keywords, since it's saying that "most people accurately understand what anecdotes are". This paradox also played off a distinction between what people are more INTERESTED in (anecdotes) and what people consider a valid source of information for accurate beliefs about society (not-anecdotes).

#officialexplanation

Hmmmm answer choice B gives us a reason to believe that people don't believe anecdotes, but it still doesn't fill the gap about people having accurate beliefs about society. Just because someone doesn't put much stock into anecdotes, does that mean they have accurate beliefs about society? No it doesn't.

[M.M.]

B feels like it's weakning a premise. It says that people are "often even moved by anecdotes about individuals" - so even if we note that most people recognize that anecdotes tend to be about representative cases, it is still the case that they are "often" moved by them - it's entirely possible that, while someone can think they aren't being influenced by something, they are. Additionally, this doesn't help explain why people tend to have fairly accurate beliefs about society; it doesn't say anything to remove the concern about people not paying attention to statistics, and I would think that in order to have "fairly accurate" beliefs we would need at least *something* to actually boost the percentage of their beliefs that are accurate.

This is irritating.

[ohthatpatrick]

Anger at the test is a pretty normal, common phenomenon.

But to channel it constructively, try to align your thinking with that of the test:
Is there a better answer than (B) that does more to help explain why people could have accurate beliefs about society, given that they're so taken by atypical anecdotes?

The irritation comes from an answer's imperfection.

But if we stop craving bulletproof, perfect answers on relative questions, we can start believing in the cold hard logic of "best available".

RELATIVE QUESTIONS: which answer most strengthens / most weakens / is most supported by / most helps to explain or resolve)

Think about what an answer DOES, not what it doesn't do.
Does any other answer DO more?

(B) does something. It gives us the hope that people would not apply what they learn from anecdotes to society at large. This makes it easier to understand how they could have accurate beliefs about society.