A spy fails by being caught

Answer choices

1. A

   No Skewed Sample1% picked this

   Of those who participated in the marathon, some succeeded and others failed. But those who did not participate at all neither succeeded nor failed,

   This is a rather amusing argument that is just showing how if you enter a competition, then labels like success / failure can be meaningfully applied. If you don't, then they can't. There's no skewed sample of data in the end. (there's an expression people sometimes say, "you know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take", and this argument would say "No, that's not true. If you don't take a shot, then you neither make nor miss it, since both making and missing require shooting.")

   1%
2. B

   Correct66% picked this

   People who are aware of their motives can articulate them. But unconscious motives are usually impossible to acknowledge. So people are more likely to

   Why this is right

   There is a skewed data set here -- we're more likely to have data on people's conscious motives than their unconscious ones. Is the skewed data a result of the fact that the nature by which we obtain this data makes it way more likely to get one type than another? Yes, we obtain this data by hearing other people speak about their motives, and for the most part, people can only speak about conscious motives, not unconscious ones. We obtain data about spies by catching them, and for the most part, only bad spies get caught, not good ones.

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

   66%
3. C

   No Skewed Sample4% picked this

   It is unclear whether the company’s venture succeeded, because the criteria for its success are undefined. But if the venture had had a measurable

   This argument has nothing to do with ending up with a skewed impression because of a selection-bias in our data gathering. This argument is saying we ended up with an ambiguous impression because we had no precision in defining our goals.

   4%
4. D

   Bad Premise Match4% picked this

   A teacher is someone who teaches. In addition, there are people who teach but are not called teachers. So while the number of those

   We do end up with a comparative conclusion, which is a good structural match. But we don't get there via any selection-bias in data collection. This is just a mathematical argument saying, if X, then Y. but there are also things ~X that are Y. Thus, there are more Y's than X's. (after all, the group of Y includes all the X's and then some of these other fools who are Y as well) That sort of argument doesn't match the selection-bias data gathering argument of the original. This argument is more of a group-membership / Venn diagram type of conversation.

   4%
5. E

   Weak Premise/Conclusion Match24% picked this

   Because someone intervened in the conflict, the effects of that intervention can be discerned. But since no one can investigate what does not happen,

   This ends with a conclusion saying, "It is impossible to discern what would have happened in this situation". That's a pretty poor match for "we know a lot about this type of thing but very little about this other type of thing". This argument feels closer than other trap answers to me because it involves a similar sense of "by the nature of this thing, we can't know about it". But in the original argument, it was like "because a good spy doesn't get caught, we can't learn about their methods". In the correct answer, it was like "because people can't articulate their unconscious motives, we can't learn about those motives." This one is more like "because this thing never occurred, we can't know what would have happened if it had occurred". In addition to that being a weaker parallel for "by the nature of this thing, we can't know much about it", this is also stronger (it's IMPOSSIBLE to know about it), whereas the original argument was saying we normally can't learn about methods of good spies, and the correct answer said that unconscious motives are usually impossible to articulate. Finally, there's no conclusion here that compares the volume of info we have on one thing to the volume of info we have on another thing.

   24%