Logical Reasoning

PT113 · S3 · Q9 As part of a survey, approximately

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As part of a survey, approximately 10,000 randomly selected individuals were telephoned and asked a number of questions about their income and savings.

Conclusion (clearly / this demonstrates)

In general, people are more willing when they are younger than when they are older to reveal personal financial information to strangers over the telephone.

Evidence

10,000 people were randomly surveyed over the phone about their income and savings.

The older the person being queried, the more likely it was that they would refuse to answer any questions.

Evaluate

Because the conclusion is trying to explain the curious results of a survey, we can use our Explain Curious Fact mindset:

Curious Fact ... why, in this survey, were the younger people more willing to divulge information about their income and savings?

Author's Explanation ... when you're young, you're more willing to divulge that stuff to strangers than when you're old.

We're supposed to now consider 1. Alternate Explanations for the curious fact 2. how plausible is the Author's Explanation

How else could we explain why the younger people were more willing to talk about their financials? Maybe the causal factor isn't really about age, it's about wealth. Wealthier people are less willing to talk about their money and older people are more likely to have wealth.

Or Maybe the causal factor isn't really about age, it's about whether you use Venmo. People who, by using Venmo, get used used to making electronic transactions with witty memo comments that are publicly viewable become less bashful about revealing their financial info. Since younger people are more likely to use Venmo than older people, we get the survey results we got where youth and willingness to divulge are correlated, but it's Venmo not age that is the causal factor.

How would we test the plausibility of the author's hypothesis, that a young version of you was more willing to divulge financial information than an old version of you? We could ask older people whether they were more willing to talk about money when they were young.

Goal

Look for an answer that suggests an Alternate Explanation for the study (or one that attacks the plausibility of the idea that people get less willing to reveal financial information the older they get).

9.

The argument above is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

  1. Correct

    offers no evidence that the

    Why this is right

    "Offers no evidence" is an uncommon version of "takes for granted / presumes / fails to establish". All of these just mean, the author is assuming X. So is this author assuming that the people who were surveyed would have responded differently had they been asked the same questions in years prior? Yes! His hypothesis commits him to that assumption. If he thinks that as we get older we get less willing to reveal personal finances, then we would assume that had these older people been asked the same survey questions two or three decades prior, they would have been less cagey, less aloof, more willing to answer the questions. If we negated this assumption, it would turn into a big objection: yo, author -- these people would have answered the same way if they had been asked this as a younger version of themselves. In other words, it's not getting older that is making them unwilling to talk about money; they've always been like that. Maybe the culture of Baby Boomers growing up was to never talk about money, so Baby Boomers when they were 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. have always been reluctant to discuss their personal earnings. Thus, the older people in this survey (Boomers) were unwilling to talk money. Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen Z were raised to talk about how unfair it is that they make crappy wages while their corporate overlords plunder a planet in its final throes of civilization before climate change turns us all into water-pirates. So they are happy to talk about money now, and they will continue to be when they're 40, 50, 60. etc. Thus, the younger people in this survey (Millennials and Gen Z) are willing to talk money.

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

    62% picked this

  2. fails to specify the exact

    Never a Flaw

    There is a proud pantheon of wrong answers such as this that insist on an exact definition, a precise measurement, the full names and addresses of every person alluded to in the argument. These questions are about the reasoning, not the precise data points. For a survey, we want to be reassured that the sample size is not too small, and "approximately 10,000" is plenty to absolve any concerns we have there. It wouldn't make any logical difference whether it was 9,987 people or 10,112 people.

    1% picked this

  3. assumes without warrant that age

    Too Strong: Age Wrong Determinant

    The author is concluding / assuming that age is a significant determinant of willingness to discuss with a stranger one's personal income and savings. The author hasn't ever promised that age is the most important predictor of your income and savings levels.

    3% picked this

  4. assumes from the outset what

    Not Circular

    One of the top ten famous flaws is Circular Reasoning, although it's only famous for being an incorrect answer so ... many ... times. We want to make sure we understand its handful of phrasings: - the premise just restates the conclusion - the presumes assumes the truth of the conclusion - assumes what it sets out to prove - presupposes what it seeks to establish These answers are almost always wrong. The author is purporting to establish a causal connection between age and willingness to reveal personal $ info on the basis of a body of statistical evidence, but we can't say the author "assumed this from the outset". The outset of this argument is the statistical evidence. This answer is acting like the argument went down more like this: "Kit-Kats are kids' favorite candy bar. After all, in a recent survey, 90% of kids reported having a Kit-Kat bar in the Halloween candy they got from trick-or-treating. That was higher than for any other candy bar. Thus, it's clear that Kit-Kats are kids's favorite candy bar."

    6% picked this

  5. provides no reason to believe

    Too Strong: All

    This is another "offers no evidence / provides no reason / takes for granted / fails to establish" type answer. Was this author assuming that "what is true of a given age group in general is also true of all individuals within that age group"? For example, if it's true in general that people in their 20s are willing to divulge their financial info, then is this author assuming that every single person in their 20s is willing to divulge their financial info? No, the author hasn't committed to any extreme position like "every single person in age group X has trait Y". The author is only citing survey results that say certain traits were more likely among certain age groups and concluding that in general something is true about us as we go from age group to the next. This answer seems to be suggesting that this argument committed the famous Whole to Part flaw.

    28% picked this

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