Logical Reasoning

PT136 · S4 · Q2 Editorial: It is usually desirable

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Editorial: It is usually desirable for people to have access to unregulated information, such as is found on the Internet.

Conclusion

Information on the Internet should somehow be regulated.

Evidence

Usually it's good to have unregulated information, but the Internet is a messy mix of truth and fiction. If you can't differentiate the accurate from the inaccurate information, then the accurate information is useless.

Evaluate

When authors weigh tradeoffs on a strengthen question, we often want an answer to tell us "the good thing outweighs the bad thing" (or vice versa).

The bad thing with regulating the Internet would be that it would spoil the pure unregulated info the Internet currently provides. Access to unregulated info is usually desirable.

The good thing about regulating the Internet would be ....

Did they say why we should regulate? Their concern with unregulated internet was that it rendered the accurate information useless, because people couldn't separate truth from fiction.

How is regulating the internet going to help with people being able to separate truth from fiction? They must be talking about attempting to remove misinformation via regulation.

Because we see a conditional word -- unless -- in the final premise, we should think about how this rule works:

if we can't easily distinguish → accurate info real info from fake info is useless

When there's a conditional rule in a Strengthen question (not that common), we need to make sure it's actually triggered.

So we could strengthen the argument by affirming the trigger, "it's difficult to tell which info is accurate".

Goal

Look for something saying that we can't easily distinguish accurate info from misinformation, or for an answer weighing tradeoffs, like, .

2.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the editorial's argument?

  1. It is never possible to

    Weakens, if anything

    The author's goal, in proposing that we regulate information on the Internet, is to prune away the misinformation, so that the accurate information can be useful again. This answer is saying that doing so will inevitably shrink our access to accurate information. Since it presents a new downside of regulation, it would either do nothing or weaken.

    2% picked this

  2. Even if information is regulated,

    Weakens

    This makes it seem like the author's proposed Plan (regulation) wouldn't achieve its Goal (make sure it's easy to distinguish accurate information from misinformation). It says that regulation often fails to produce clearly distinguishable lines between accurate info and misinformation.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    Regulation of information makes it

    Why this is right

    This answer is saying that the Plan will achieve the Goal. Our author is worried that on the unregulated internet, people can't easily distinguish accurate information from misinformation, and so the accurate information is useless. She's proposing regulation as her Plan for fixing that. This answer is saying that regulation makes it easy to distinguish, so now the accurate information can be useful.

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

    92% picked this

  4. It is acceptable for people

    Unrelated to Goal

    This answer choice isn't talking about regulation at all, so it's not going to be able to help us strengthen the idea of "we should regulate". Also, the conversation was never about whether or not it's acceptable for people to have access, and we never discussed whether or not people were overlooking accurate info (we were talking about whether people could distinguish between accurate and inaccurate information).

    4% picked this

  5. It is usually more desirable

    Weakens

    This addresses the whole weighing tradeoffs issue, but it says it in the opposite direction of the author. The author prefers accurate but regulated, so that accurate will be useful. This answer prefers inaccurate but unregulated, even if accurate is useless.

    1% picked this

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