Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S1 · Q23 A spy fails by being caught

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A spy fails by being caught, and it is normally only through being caught that spies reveal their methods.

Conclusion

Available data on spies are skewed: you can learn a lot about bad spies but very little about good spies.

Evidence

You only really get data on spies if they're caught, and only bad spies get caught.

Evaluate

Although there are some hints at Conditional Logic here because of the "only through" and "never", the conclusion is not trying to derive anything conditionally, so I think I would resist trying to diagram this and think more about the gist-y principle behind it.

The author is essentially saying that our data set on spies is inherently biased in a certain way based on the nature of collecting data on spies. It's almost like the data we have on spies is a self-selecting sample of data on "bad spies".

By definition of us having data on you, you're a bad spy.

Goal

Because this argument seems to be working more on a conversational level of "unrepresentative sample", I wouldn't be as stringent about forcing the answer choice to have all the same structural similarities.

I basically want to hear about a situation in which our data is skewed because the nature of how we collect the data makes it very likely that we'll see one subpopulation overrepresented.

23.

Which one of the following arguments is most similar in its reasoning to the argument above?

  1. Of those who participated in

    No Skewed Sample

    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% picked this

  2. Correct

    People who are aware of

    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.

    69% picked this

  3. It is unclear whether the

    No Skewed Sample

    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.

    3% picked this

  4. A teacher is someone who

    Bad Premise Match

    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.

    2% picked this

  5. Because someone intervened in the

    Weak Premise/Conclusion Match

    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.

    25% picked this

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