Logical Reasoning

PT147 · S1 · Q20 Sociologist: Television, telephones, and other

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Sociologist: Television, telephones, and other electronic media encourage imprecise, uncritical thinking.

Statements

causal (encourage)

TV, phones, and ⇢ imprecise, uncritical other electronic media thinking

conditional (the only = sufficient indicator)

Adequate protection → Critical thinking against demagogues (requires)

potential conditional (demagogues = universal)

try to exploit people by Demagogues → presenting emotionally loaded language as an objective description of reality

Evaluate

The correct answer to Must Be False is almost always contradicting a conditional that was provided or contradicting some inference we can make by combining claims.

Were there any conditionals provided?

Sure, the 2nd and 3rd claims could be thought of as conditionals. Contradicting a conditional means that "the Trigger happens but the Outcome doesn't". So possible answers could be:

- sometimes you protect against a demagogue, even though you don't have critical thinking - sometimes someone is a demagogue, even though they don't used charged language to exploit people

Are there any available inferences that can be made by combining claims?

Sure, the 1st and 2nd claims have an overlapping term, "critical thinking". Electronic media encourages uncritical thinking, and uncritical thinking leaves you vulnerable to demagogues.

So there's a causal link between electronic media and susceptibility to demagogues. We could contradict that by saying:

- the more society X got immersed in electronic media, the more protected they became against demagogues

Goal

Look for something that contradicts something we were told or something we can derive from what we were told.

20.

If the sociologist's statements are true, then each of the following statements could be true EXCEPT:

  1. There are no political demagogues

    Possible

    To contradict this, we would need to derive that "If society is highly technological, then there is always political demagogue". We don't have the means to derive an idea that strong. We just know that if a highly technological society involves a lot of electronic media, it encourages a type of lazy thinking that makes a society more vulnerable to demagogues.

    14% picked this

  2. Political demagogues are not the

    Possible

    To contradict this, we would need to be able to derive from the stimulus that "only demagogues use charged language to exploit people". The passage just told us that demagogues do this. It didn't say that only demagogues do this (maybe high school football coaches also use emotionally loaded language, 'we're at WAR with Lincoln High', to exploit their players' utmost motivation). So we can't contradict this.

    2% picked this

  3. Highly emotional people are more

    Out of Scope: highly emotional

    We don't have any information at all about highly emotional people or less emotional people, so we couldn't possibly contradict a claim about them.

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    The mere presence of an

    Why this is right

    This contradicts the conditional we're given in the 2nd claim. That conditional told us that you only have adequate protection against demagogues if you have critical thinking. This is saying that all you need for adequate protection is an orderly system of government. According to this answer, a society that had no critical thinking but did have an orderly system of government would be adequately protected against demagogues (because the mere presence of the orderly system provides the adequate protection). But according to the paragraph, such a society would not be adequately protected against demagogues, because it lacks critical thinking. This matches one of our predictions - sometimes there's adequate protection, even though there's no critical thinking but they disguised it well.

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

    63% picked this

  5. The mere presence of electronic

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: erosion of media freedoms We don't have any information at all about media freedoms or how they might erode, so we can't possibly contradict a claim about those concepts.

    17% picked this

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