#26 - Acquiring complete detailed information about

[Francis O'Rourke]

In the example you gave, it may be that it is not wise to do either, so the logical negation of "It is wise to do X" would be "It is not wise to do X."

Are you looking at Premise 2? The speaker specifically said that it is rational to not acquire specific information, so that is why I wrote the contrapositive in that way. I may have muddled the issue because of how I wrote "Premise 2." It would have been more faithful to the author's original statement to have written it as "it is not rational to not acquire detailed information."

Let me know if this helps!

[ericau02]

Hi, so is would ac (A) be considered a mistake reversal ?

It also seems so similar to ac (E), lets say hypothetically on test day one would not be able to catch that the contrapositive of ac (A) is direct reflection of the premise in the stimulus. Is there another way to notate this ac as incorrect. I notated it just as a Mistaken Reversal during my blind review, but I did not catch the it the way you had explained. And now after analyzing the questions it seems as if ac (A) and (E) are extremely similar.

[Adam Tyson]

A Mistaken Reversal here would be something like "if you think the benefits will outweigh the costs, then it is not rational not to get the info" (paraphrased for simplicity). That's not answer A. A is, instead, some sort of Shell Game answer, where the right elements are all in there but are presented in a scrambled form. We don't want an answer about "rational consumers" but rather an answer about what these consumers believe. Also, answer A has the problem of "usually" - there is nothing "usual" about this argument, because it expresses itself in absolute terms. These people ARE behaving rationally, rather than these people USUALLY behave rationally. "Usually" really kills this answer dead, if we hadn't already seen that it was wrong for other reasons.

Start your attack here with a diagram, since the stimulus is conditional and a bit complex. Once you have the diagram in place, justifying the conclusion by supplying a sufficient condition for the conclusion will be the way to prephrase it, and that prephrase will protect you against wrong answers better than anything else.

[ericau02]

Alright thank you Adam.

And so when doing this and supplementing the sufficient condition for the conclusion, i should be finding an ac that says that or one that add up to it or both? Just to be certain! apologies for all these questions.

[Brook Miscoski]

Erica,

As a general rule, a correct justify answer will end at the conclusion, not start with it. If you make a general practice of setting the conclusion as the sufficient condition when doing justify questions, without some care, you will usually pick an irrelevant choice or a Mistaken Reversal.

Here, you have to start with the first step (Don't collect info) and end with Rational. If you started with Rational Consumers, you would pick an irrelevant choice or a Mistaken Reversal.

We start with Consumers who don't collect information and learn from (E) that they expect that the benefit of collecting the information doesn't outweigh the costs, and plug that into the stimulus, which defines that behavior as rational--so (E) works.

[askuwheteau@protonmail.com]

Hi, I'm puzzled as to why E could be the correct answer. I've given this problem two solid evaluations and here's my reasoning:

Stimulus diagrams:

Premise: If Aquire>benefits are greater than costs

Conclusion: If Aquire>behave rationally


A: Contrapositive of premise diagram

B: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

C: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

D: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

E: Mistaken negation of premise diagram

Please help...thanks.

Jonathan

[Chandler H]

Hi, I'm puzzled as to why E could be the correct answer. I've given this problem two solid evaluations and here's my reasoning:

Stimulus diagrams:

Premise: If Aquire>benefits are greater than costs

Conclusion: If Aquire>behave rationally


A: Contrapositive of premise diagram

B: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

C: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

D: Doesn’t meet requirements of justify formula

E: Mistaken negation of premise diagram

Please help...thanks.

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

I'd put it a little more like this:

P1: It is rational not to acquire detailed information unless the benefits will outweigh the costs.
P2: ?
Conclusion: Consumers who don't acquire that information are behaving rationally.

However, we know that those consumers could only be behaving rationally if they know the benefits will not outweigh the costs. Therefore, we want an answer choice that informs us that these consumers know the benefits will not outweigh the costs.

Answer choice (E) tells us that, right? It says that consumers who don't acquire detailed information don't think that the benefits will outweigh the costs. That's exactly what we need to make their behavior rational.

[askuwheteau@protonmail.com]

Thank you for the helpful reply. I understand it fully now.