Logical Reasoning

PT143 · S1 · Q17 Critics worry that pessimistic news

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Critics worry that pessimistic news reports about the economy harm it by causing people to lose confidence in the economy, of which everyone has direct experience every day.

Statements

Causal Opinion (critics) pessimistic news reports about the economy harm the economy by causing people to lose confidence in it.

Causal Opinion (journalists) In order to do their job well, they can't worry about the effects.

Conditional Fact If it's not a matter of people don't defer which people have → to journalists no direct experience

We would want to clean up that double-negative in the trigger: it is a matter of not deferring which people have → to direct experience journalist

"Except" is like unless, without, until = "if-not"

Jerry hates musicals, except the ones Lin-Manuel makes. TRANSLATION musical and ~Lin-Manuel → Jerry hates

Evaluate

We have two opinions and one fact. The fact is the most trustworthy thing, and it's Conditional, so we should start there.

Can we apply this conditional to either of the first two sentences? Is there any overlapping information?

Yes, the first sentence and the conditional talk about whether or not someone has "direct experience" of something.

According to the first sentence, everyone has direct experience of the economy every day.

Thus, according to the rule in the third sentence, people would not defer to journalists when it comes to the economy.

Does that inference then take us any further with the Critics' or the Journalists' opinion?

It sounds like the journalists don't have to worry about the effect they're having on people when they write articles about the economy, since people don't defer to journalists on the economy.

And it seems like the critics have little to worry about when it comes to news reports harming the economy by causing people to lose confidence in it. Since people don't defer to journalists on matters of the economy, the news report has no power to change the confidence level that any given person has in the economy.

Goal

Look for an answer rewarding us for figuring out that or an answer that applies that to the critics to say .

But, as always, beware of strong language and unknown comparisons. And stay flexible.

17.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  1. Critics who think that the

    Misrepresents Critics' Position

    Inference questions routinely put a very tempting trap answer at (A). It's designed to sound a lot like our prediction, but be minutely wrong. We wanted an answer to say "critics who think that the economy is affected by pessimistic news reports are wrong". The economy may well be affected by people's confidence in it. What we learned from the paragraph is that people's confidence in the economy isn't going to be affected by pessimistic news reports.

    3% picked this

  2. Pessimistic news reports about such

    Negation

    This is taking a conditional relationship we know if have direct experience, don't defer to journalists, won't have negative impact and trying to illegally flip these ideas if don't have direct experience, do defer to journalists, will have negative impact.

    15% picked this

  3. Pessimistic news reports about the

    Opposite

    We've come away with an almost contradictory understanding. Since everyone has direct experience with the economy, they won't defer to journalists, meaning they won't take the pessimism of the news report to heart if it's not a view they don't already have (won't defer to journalist is like "won't accept their view in place of our view"). Since people won't change their opinions on the economy based on what a journalist says, these dire news reports aren't likely to harm the economy.

    7% picked this

  4. Correct

    News reports about the economy

    Why this is right

    Since everyone has direct experience with the economy, they won't defer to journalists on the economy, so they won't be likely to change their opinions on the economy based on what a journalist says.

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

    70% picked this

  5. Journalists need not be deeply

    Trap

    Too Broad Out of Scope: well-being of average citizen We could draw a more tightly narrow takeaway about articles about the economy, but we can't speak to journalists' work overall, because they might often (or even usually) be writing about topics of which people don't have experience and are influenced by the journalist.

    6% picked this

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