#4 - Political opinion and analysis outside the mainstream

[Robert Carroll]

Kristina,

Remember that you can use the Assumption Negation technique to test answers. If answer choice (A) is false, this does not impact the argument in any case. If most people could agree on what answer choice (A) says, it would not undermine the conclusion at all.

The negation of answer choice (C) means either that there is someone who holds no opinion outside the mainstream, or that everyone holds some opinion outside the mainstream, and there is at least one such opinion that everyone holds. You ought to be able to see that this does not undermine the conclusion in any way because the original information was irrelevant, so its negation has no impact.

Robert Carroll

[Johnclem]

Hello powerscore;
This question gave me a ton of trouble. It was very difficult for me to identify the assumption and I think it's because I had trouble understanding the argument. I blame my English for that. This is my approach on it, could you please see if my thinking is okay for this one?

1) political opinion be analysis outside the main stream are rarely found on talk shows .
2) television viewers have economic interests like seller of tangible goods.
3) the attempt to capture a large share of viewers .

C: as a result , political opinions and analyses aired on tv talk shows are typically bland and innocuous.

* my thinking before looking ahead : the first sentence didn't make sense to me. I don't get how it is that political opinions are rarely found in the mainstream and yet there's a financial interest in wanting to have them on talk shows. As confused as I was, I continued reading and seeing the conclusion gave me a bit of relief as I thought it is a causal statement. The author is assuming BECAUSE There's a financial motivation THATS WHY we have showes that are bland and innocuous. And I thought there may be other reasons. Maybe it's because people wouldn't have understood these analysis if they weren't bland. But I think the assumption here is that viewers actually want bland and innocuous.


So then the choices :

A) WRONG : it doesn't matter if viewed agree or not agree as to which part of the analysis is disturbing. Why do we have bland and innocuous talk shows is what we want to know.


B) CORRECT: negated this murders the argument. If there are viewers who would watch tv that is controversial and disturbing then it's not true that tv showes are bland to obtain a large number of viewers.

C ) WRONG : it's not necessary for EACH viewer to have some opinion. Regardless of its sameness or differences.

D) WRONG: we don't need to worry about other tv programs.

E) WRONG: it's not necessary for tv shows to resemble in most aspects. Maybe just some, in that they are mot Bated by
financial reasons to air bland and innocuous shows.

Thanks very much
John

[Kristina Moen]

Hi John,

I can understand why you might think the last sentence is the conclusion. "As a result" can be a Conclusion Indicator, but here it is not the conclusion. It's actually just a restatement of the first sentence. If you have the books for the full-length course, I invite you to turn to p.1-45 and read about Commonly Used Constructions. This is especially helpful for non-native speakers! One commonly used construction is "Some people say... I disagree."

Here, the author says "It might be thought that this state of affairs [political opinion and analysis outside the mainstream are rarely on TV talk show] is a product of the political agenda of the television stations themselves." This is another way of saying "Some people say..."

You'll also see this expressed "It has been claimed that..." and "Many people believe that..."

The great thing about this argument construction is that most often, the author introduces the idea and then go on to disagree with the idea, and that disagreement is the conclusion.

So in this stimulus, the conclusion is that "this state of affairs is not the product of the political agenda of the television stations themselves." Why? He tells us that the reason they air "bland political opinions" is because "they must attempt to capture the largest possible share of the television audience for their shows" and "they air only those shows that will appeal to large numbers of people."

The basic structure of this argument is:
It might be thought that the reason for this event is X. In fact, here's another reason for this event. A leads to B which leads to C. As a result, the event happens.

So knowing this, if you negate Answer Choice (B) to "There are no TV viewers who might refuse to watch TV talk shows that they knew would be controversial and disturbing," it kills the argument. Because if TV viewers would watch anyway, then why would TV stations avoid controversial and disturbing opinions in order to capture the largest possible share of TV audiences? It means that there must be some other reason the state of affairs.


Hope this helps.

[PB410]

I first noticed something off with this question from the stem. I wasn't quite sure what to disregard when considering the assumption in the explanation. Does this mean to exclude the final sentence, which serves as the authors conclusion and is the focus of the following question, question 5?

Secondly, I recognized the assumption in the explanation as assuming that mainstream opinions and analysis appeals to the whole, when really the majority could prefer mainstream content. I debated between A and C. I disregarded A because of the language most disturbing. Answer choice C seemed appropriate when I negated it as,

each television viewer holds some opinion that is outside the political mainstream, but those opinions ARE the same for everyone.

This looked pretty good to me. I must have missed something. Any thoughts?

I overlooked B partially because I wasn't quite sure how to negate it. Sometimes I encounter tricky answer choices that I struggle negating. I negated B as,

there are television viewers who might NOT refuse to watch television talk shows that they knew would be controversial and disturbing.
that is different from
there are NO television viewers who might refuse to watch television talk shows that they knew would be controversial and disturbing.

Can someone explain the rules for negating tricky answer choices? I've reviewed the bible, but when I encounter answer choices like the ones in this question I struggle. For example, would answer choice D be

there are television shows on which economic forces DO NOT have an even greater impact than they do on television
or
there are NO television shows on which economic forces have an even greater impact than they do on television

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for the question, PB410. Let me take a moment to clarify and simplify the argument. The author is arguing that tv talk shows do not stick to mainstream views because they have a political agenda, but rather because they want to appeal to the widest possible audience. In other words, they are just giving their customers what their customers want. If most people want something, that is the "mainstream". That claim is supposed to support the main conclusion, which is that this is the reason why what they provide is bland and innocuous.

Now, to the negation of answer B: your goal in negating an answer choice is to make it a false statement. Notice that there is an implied "some" in that answer - there are (some) viewers who might refuse to watch. To negate "there are some who do X", don't offer "there are some who don't do X", because those claims (some do, some don't ) are compatible, and they don't make each other false. For example, claiming that there are some people who like the New England Patriots is completely compatible with the claim that there are some people who don't like the Patriots. Instead, when faced with a "some" claim, negate it by turning it into a "none" claim, because "none" is the logical opposite of "some". Answer B, then, is negated as something like "there are NO viewers that would refuse to watch controversial and disturbing programming." If that's true, then the whole "give them what they want" argument goes out the window, because they are going to watch anything we give them! They might even PREFER the controversial stuff at that point, rather than the bland, innocuous mainstream pablum!

Negating C is a little weird, because it's got two parts to it, but I would probably say "not every viewer holds a view that is outside the mainstream, and those that do frequently hold the same views as each other". Does that hurt the claim that most people want the mainstream, bland stuff, or that that's all they are likely to get? Not a bit. I'm not sure it has any impact.

I hope that helps to clarify both this argument and what the negation technique is all about in a way that you find useful. Keep at it!

[akanshalsat]

Hi!! I'm just wondering as to why D is wrong? I think this question made sense to me until I read the answer choices bc some of the wording tripped me up.

And to be clear, B is correct bc it is an assumption that since bland political opinions are aired, that's what most of the audience would watch, which inherently means that most of the audience would NOT watch a controversial one since that's the opposite of bland right?

[Who Ray]

Hello!

The Negation Test should help clear things up for you. For D, nothing really changes to the argument if we negate it. Talk shows could even be the only shows affected by economic pressures and the argument still works (although in reality we know that is not the case).

B is correct because if we negate it the argument falls apart. If there were no audience members who would not watch a show because they disagreed with it then there would be no economic pressures on stations to constrain their talk shows' opinions. Therefore, economic reasons can not explain why talk show opinions are so bland.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Who Ray