Logical Reasoning

PT103 · S1 · Q10 Audiences find a speaker more convincing

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Audiences find a speaker more convincing if the speaker begins a speech by arguing briefly against his or her position before providing reasons for accepting it.

Recommendation

Candidates for national office who want to be successful in winning votes should use in their speeches the technique of starting out your argument for X with counterarguments against X.

Evidence

Showing you recognize the counterpoints to the thing you're arguing makes you seem fair-minded and trustworthy.

Evaluate

What would limit the effectiveness of this recommendation, so, "what would Weaken this recommendation?"

The author is assuming that one is likely to win votes if one appears fair-minded and trustworthy. So we could write a correct answer that would attack this assumption, like , but that seems like an unlikely correct answer.

Normally when we weaken a plan / recommendation, we're saying - it's not feasible - people wouldn't react to this the way you're assuming - this doesn't treat the core issue - this backfires in some way

Goal

Hard to predict. We should just cue up the Anti-Conclusion (or in this case Anti-Recommendation) and hope that the correct answer jumps out as a usable objection.

10.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously limits the effectiveness of adopting the argument's recommendation?

  1. Correct

    Political candidates typically have no

    Why this is right

    "Candidates hoping to win national elections should not open up their speeches by presenting counterarguments against their proposals, because ..... the news media might excerpt the part of their speech that contains the counterpoints, thereby giving voters the wrong impression of a candidate's stance on the issue. If Shelly is running as a pro-immigration candidate, and she starts a pro-immigration speech by saying, "I know a lot of people are worried about unlawful immigrants taking jobs and committing crimes, and I know that state budgets are already strained so spending money on unlawful immigrants is a dubious use of money, but ... [pro-immigration speech]" the news media might just run excerpts from the preamble, saying "Here's what candidate Shelly had to say tonight about immigration: "people are worried about unlawful immigrants taking jobs ... spending state money on unlawful immigrants is a dubious use of money" This answer is giving us the "backfire" objection. You shouldn't follow this recommendation because it could have an unanticipated negative consequence: you get meme'd saying stuff that was just a disclaimer, not your core beliefs.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    61% picked this

  2. Many people do not find

    Strengthens Recommendation

    This says people don't like one-sided, oversimplified. The recommendation is for multi-side, embrace the complexity. So this answer makes it seem like people would appreciate those who follow this recommendation.

    9% picked this

  3. People decide which political candidate

    Strengthens

    Although this technique does involve clarifying arguments for and against a candidate's exact positions, the effect of this technique is that it makes the candidate appear "fair-minded and trustworthy" (which are traits of the candidate's character). So even though voters wouldn't be as interested in the specific policy position part of this recommendation, they would still presumably be affected positively by this argumentative technique, since it reflects positively on the user's character.

    27% picked this

  4. People regard a political candidate

    Strengthens Recommendation

    This sounds like it confirms the whole rationale for this recommendation. By showing you recognize counterarguments, you're showing that you respect an opponent's position even though you will go on to disagree with it. And voters view this favorably.

    2% picked this

  5. Political candidates have to address

    No Impact

    This is the classic "wishy-washy" no impact answer of - things fluctuate - there's lots of variety - many different types and sizes There's nothing specific to use from these answers usually. We could certainly limit the effectiveness of the recommendation if we could say, "Hey, this only works well for Settings like X or Y, but it doesn't work well for Settings A, B, or C." But we don't have any common sense way to think that this technique would work in the South, addressing the factory floor of a manufacturer, but wouldn't work in the Northeast, addressing the employees of a seafood restaurant.

    1% picked this

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