Logical Reasoning

PT7 · S4 · Q24 One sure way you can tell

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One sure way you can tell how quickly a new idea—for example, the idea of “privatization”—is taking hold among the population is to monitor how fast the word or words expressing that particular idea are passing into common usage.

Goal

Determining how quickly a new idea is taking hold among the population.

Plan

Monitor how fast the word or words expressing that idea are passing into common usage, potentially tapping the professional opinions of dictionary editors who are all about monitoring when a new word has passed into common usage.

Evaluate

Since we have a Plan / Goal setup, we would skeptically analyze this argument by thinking,

How could we monitor how fast a word passes into common usage but FAIL to accurately gauge how quickly a new idea is taking hold among the population?

It's possible that dictionary editors would give us bad information about whether or not the word has really passed into common usage.

It's possible that the word has passed into common usage, even though the idea hasn't really taken hold among the population. For example, most people probably know words like "Cryptocurrency" or "Skibidy", but they might not know what those words really mean.

Goal

Let's look for an answer providing a missing link, like , or an answer where if we negated it, it would make it sound like the Plan wasn't going to achieve the Goal.

24.

The method described above for determining how quickly a new idea is taking hold relies on which one of the following assumptions?

  1. Dictionary editors are not professionally

    Negation Bait

    This is the classic "Fake Opposite" trap answer in Necessary Assumption. If the stimulus said that "children with dark hair love their mother", there would be a trap answer accusing the author of assuming that "children with light hair don't love their mother". We were told that editors are professionally interested in when words have passed into common usage. No one ever said that's the only thing they're interested in, so the author isn't making any assumptions about what other stuff they may or may not be interested in.

    13% picked this

  2. Dictionary editors have exact numerical

    Too Strong: exact numerical criteria

    This answer suggests that dictionary editors use specific numerical thresholds, but this isn't necessary. The argument only requires that they can reliably identify when words have entered common usage, not that they use precise numbers to do so.

    13% picked this

  3. For a new idea to

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: have to Out of Scope: inclusion in dictionaries This is worded way too strongly, because the author doesn't have to assume that there is any necessary condition for "new idea taking hold". We are consulting dictionary editors' opinions about whether or not a word has passed into common usage. Whether those editors choose to put such a word into a new edition of a dictionary is up to them and has nothing to do with our plan.

    14% picked this

  4. Correct

    As a word passes into

    Why this is right

    This answer has the lovable Defender "not", so we negate it and see if it would weaken. If meanings were severely distorted in the process of going from the original idea to when the word representing that idea passed into common usage, then monitoring common usage of a word would be decoupled from monitoring whether the original idea has taken hold. For example, if an original idea was "becoming aware of structural racism" and the word used to describe that was "woke", but by the time "woke" had passed into common usage it now meant "being obsessed with identity politics and over-policing language", then the fact that the word "woke" has taken hold among the population doesn't mean that the idea of "becoming aware of structural racism" has taken hold among the population.

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

    52% picked this

  5. Words denoting new ideas tend

    Opposite (if anything)

    The author's plan wants a correspondence between using the word and understanding the idea behind it. This answer is actually weakening that connection.

    8% picked this

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