#21 - Although the first humans came to Australia 56,000

[sqmusgrave]

Hello! I've found the practice you guys recommend for parallel Q types of making the flaw/reasoning abstract really helpful. Could someone please tell me how to formulate the stimulus' flaw in abstract terms?

I can see the flaw by thinking "well maybe different human diseases affected different populations, and it's the combination of multiple disease strains that caused the mass extinction. Or perhaps human disease caused a few key species to go extinct, and like a domino affect this disrupted the food chain causing mass extinction." This was enough to hone in on B, but it was all very intuitive and fuzzy because I couldn't describe the flaw in more generally applicable terms. It would be really helpful if you guys could show me what an abstract version of this flaw might look like.
Thanks!

UPDATE: Sorry I just read the thread and I see now it's a composition flaw. This would be the abstract terminology I was looking for, however, now I'm confused as to how this is a part:whole flaw. I thought that was more like saying "the engine of this car is the lightest ever made, so this car must be the lightest car ever made". This seems different than what's going on in the stimulus? Could you help me see your line of reasoning for why it's a part/whole flaw?

[Adam Tyson]

An Error of Composition IS a Part to Whole Flaw, sqmusgrave! Those are just two different names for the same thing. When this flaw occurs, it means that the argument took something that was true of EVERY part of a thing and presumed that it was true of the whole thing. In this case, every single disease shares the same feature - they cannot alone be responsible for the extinctions - and presumes that the collection of diseases cannot therefore be responsible.

In your example, the evidence is about JUST ONE part of the car, and that's more like an overgeneralization flaw.

[willwants170]

I chose C for this question. I looked at the stimulus as "the author neglected to consider that multiple diseases could've caused the extinction." Answer C was attractive to me because I thought it paralleled the above quote; the author of answer C "neglected to consider there are multiple restaurants outside the immediate vicinity of the theater." It made sense because in the stimulus, the author thought only one disease can cause extinctions and in choice C, the author thought only the restaurants in the vicinity were attractive to the theatergoers. Furthermore, I didn't notice the part to flaw because of the distinction in "human-borne diseases" and "diseases." Also, I felt this part to whole was a bit implicit compared to other part to whole questions--thoughts? What went wrong with my train of thought and how can I recognize this as a part to whole flaw next time?

[Chandler H]

Hi Will,

The biggest issue with (C) isn't necessarily that the author only references the restaurants in the theater's immediate vicinity. The flaw in (C) is just that it jumps to the conclusion of "probably go straight home" without considering other possibilities—a false dilemma. For example, they could go to a restaurant only one or two of them like, or they could go out somewhere that's not a restaurant, or, like you said, they could go somewhere outside the immediate vicinity of the theater.

The biggest flaw with the stimulus is, as you identified, the part-to-whole flaw. "No one disease" is a hugely essential phrase here, and it's important to pick up on the fact that the author is hinging their entire argument on the fact that a single disease could not kill 55 different species—ignoring the idea that the diseases could have worked in concert. Answer choice (B) commits the same flaw—"neither of us" can fix "both" doors and windows, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't or didn't divide and conquer.

This is certainly a pretty subtle question! In the future, try to pre-phrase the flaw in the stimulus before even reading the answer choices. In this case, your pre-phrase might have been something like, "Sure, one disease couldn't have been so fatal, but the author makes an incorrect assumption that it had to have been just ONE disease." Based on that pre-phrase, you would be more inclined to agree with answer choice (B) than (C), I believe.

Does that make sense?

[willwants170]

Hi Will,

The biggest issue with (C) isn't necessarily that the author only references the restaurants in the theater's immediate vicinity. The flaw in (C) is just that it jumps to the conclusion of "probably go straight home" without considering other possibilities—a false dilemma. For example, they could go to a restaurant only one or two of them like, or they could go out somewhere that's not a restaurant, or, like you said, they could go somewhere outside the immediate vicinity of the theater.

The biggest flaw with the stimulus is, as you identified, the part-to-whole flaw. "No one disease" is a hugely essential phrase here, and it's important to pick up on the fact that the author is hinging their entire argument on the fact that a single disease could not kill 55 different species—ignoring the idea that the diseases could have worked in concert. Answer choice (B) commits the same flaw—"neither of us" can fix "both" doors and windows, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't or didn't divide and conquer.

This is certainly a pretty subtle question! In the future, try to pre-phrase the flaw in the stimulus before even reading the answer choices. In this case, your pre-phrase might have been something like, "Sure, one disease couldn't have been so fatal, but the author makes an incorrect assumption that it had to have been just ONE disease." Based on that pre-phrase, you would be more inclined to agree with answer choice (B) than (C), I believe.

Does that make sense?

That makes sense and I will start working on those kind of prephases. Thank you!