Logical Reasoning

PT153 · S3 · Q16 If a novelist is popular

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If a novelist is popular he or she can vividly imagine large numbers of characters, each with a personality and attitudes that are completely different from those of the others and from those of the novelist.

Statements

conditional (If)

popular → can imagine lots of characters novelist w/ traits different from writer's and capable of empathizing with people who have diff goals and have some doubts about real value of own desires

causal (so)

Being capable of empathizing with people who have diff goals will lead to someone having doubts about the genuine value of their own desires.

Evaluate

Must Be False questions usually provide a correct answer that contradicts a conditional statement, or that contradicts an available inference.

Here, we learned three facts that are true about popular novelists. We could potentially infer that (or any combo).

They could contradict this by saying stuff like:

If they go the route of contradicting the conditional, then we'll hear something like: .

The pasta detail is filler meant to obscure the fact that they are triggering the conditional (popular novelist) but then not delivering on the outcome (capable of empathizing).

We indicated that "so" is operating causally here. That's not common, but conclusion indicators do sometimes act as causal indicators.

He fell off the roof and thus broke his leg. He is sick and so will not be joining us. He got the vaccine and therefore doesn't wear a mask any more.

Goal

Find an answer that contradicts what we read. Anything out of scope is automatically wrong. Illegal reversals and negations are not the same as contradictions. Bad inferences ≠ must be false.

16.

If the statements above are true then each of the following could also be true except:

  1. Some novelists who can vividly

    Out of Scope: not popular novelists

    This paragraph only talks about popular novelists, so any fact about unpopular novelists or popular non-novelists is automatically garbage. We can't contradict something we never talked about.

    9% picked this

  2. Some novelists are incapable of

    Novelists vs. Popular Novelists

    This is compatible with the facts. If it said "some popular novelists ...", then it would be a correct answer. But saying "some novelists" leaves room for the idea that these people incapable of empathizing are unpopular novelists.

    5% picked this

  3. Correct

    Some people who lack the

    Why this is right

    This contradicts our conditional. Contradicting a conditional means the Left side is true but the Right side is not (Trigger, but don't deliver). It is saying that there are people who are popular novelists but aren't capable of empathizing with those who have different goals. Poppycock! We were told that if a novelist is popular, such a writer will be capable of empathizing with people who have different goals.

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

    62% picked this

  4. No people who have doubts

    Compatible

    This is stronger than anything we could infer, but it's not something we could contradict. To contradict this statement, we would need to know that "some people who have doubts about the values of their own desires are incapable of empathizing with people who have different goals". We didn't hear about any such people. The only people we heard about were people who had doubts about their desires and were capable of empathizing.

    15% picked this

  5. Most writers who have doubts

    Compatible

    To contradict this, we would need to have read that "at most 50% of people who have doubts about the value of their desires are popular novelists." Do we know anything that would let us quantify what share of the self-doubting population is a popular novelist? Of course not. We don't have any quantifiers relating to that.

    9% picked this

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