Political scientist: People become

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct75% picked this

   presumes, without providing justification, that there is no cause of decreasing voter turnout other than the belief that few important problems can

   Why this is right

   This answer is weirdly friendly in its essence -- the author presumes that there is not something that would directly contradict her conclusion. Whenever we see presumes / takes for granted, we can ask ourselves whether the author assumed the idea that follows. Since the idea that follows has the lovable Ruling-out "not" we see in so many correct Necessary Assumption answers, we should consider negating this to see if it would weaken. Would it hurt the author's argument if we said, "There is some cause of decreasing voter turnout other than the belief that few important problems can be solved by government action"? Yes, that's basically contradicting the conclusion! The conclusion was that decreasing voter turnout is entirely due to the belief that important problems can't be solved by politicians / government action.

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

   75%
2. B

   Too Strong: no Belief vs. Reality4% picked this

   presumes, without providing justification, that there are no political solutions to the

   Does the author need to assume that there are zero political solutions to the most important problems? No, because her argument isn't about whether the government can / can't solve any of the most important problems. Her argument is about whether people believe that the government can / can't solve any of the most important problems.

   4%
3. C

   Bad Evidence/Conclusion Match7% picked this

   infers that important problems can be seriously addressed if people's attitudes do change from the premise that these problems cannot be addressed

   Any time we see a Flaw answer describing a two-part reasoning move, we can ask ourselves whether we can match up the parts. inters that X from the premise that Y This means that Y should match our Evidence and X should match a Conclusion the author drew (implicitly or explicitly). Was there a premise that said "important problems cannot be addressed if people's attitudes do not change"? No, there wasn't. There was a premise that said, "If people believe that important problems can only be addressed by changes in attitude, then they will become unenthusiastic about voting". If the premise part (or the conclusion part) doesn't match, we can ditch these answers.

   7%
4. D

   Doesn't Undermine8% picked this

   undermines its claim that people no longer believe there are political solutions to important problems by suggesting that

   The idea of undermining something you say elsewhere in the argument is the general gist behind the famous Self Contradiction flaw (which shows up a lot in answers but is almost never correct). In this case, the two ideas don't seem in conflict at all. People believing that there are no longer political solutions to big problems and people being dissatisfied with politicians seem to go hand in hand. Perhaps this answer wanted people to be thinking, "if you think politicians are powerless to fix the big problems, then you wouldn't blame them or get dissatisfied with them for failing to fix the big problems". But the actual argument had nothing to do with that.

   8%
5. E

   Reversed Causal Relationship6% picked this

   presumes, without providing justification, that voter apathy prevents the attitudinal changes that result in finding

   The author doesn't seem to ever be suggesting or assuming that voter apathy stops there from being the big attitude shifts that we would need to solve big problems. The author is telling a story that reverses the causal direction there. She is saying that "the belief that we would need big attitude shifts to solve big problems and that government can't cause big attitude shifts causes voter apathy."

   6%