#24 - Folklorist: Oral traditions are often preferable to

[silent7706]

Thank you for your elaborated response Jeremy!

[alexis.la]

Hi there! After reading the forum here I can understand why D is correct.

But, I picked E. (which apparently only 2% of people do) so my thinking was clearly wonky here.
Here is my thoughts: I need to supply an answer that validates why oral traditions are preferable to written ones.

Some of the key statements in my opinion are: "writing has no limits, it can proliferate to the point where writer and reader both become confused" and "Since oral traditions are dependent on memory, what is useless and irrelevant is quickly eradicated" which to me is suggesting that written traditions don't eradicate useless/irrelevant stuff, therefore they might contain these things.

Answer D contains a similar structure to the conclusion, mainly they both have one thing being preferable to another. But to me answer E is articulating something something the author doesn't explicitly say: that oral traditions are more efficient and accurate. Albeit that isn't synonymous with 'clarity'. But the answer still supports that oral traditions are preferable, because they're presented as being clearer than written; they're less convoluted/twisted.

Is the big problem then that "Ideas that cannot be discussed clearly should not be discussed at all."? That is a bit of a stretch, and definitely not something the author suggests.

I'm rambling, but let me know what the obvious problem with E is

[atierney]

Hi Alexis,

Don't worry, this is definitely a principle that I may or may not agree with, and, regardless, certainly, sometimes, have difficulties abiding by!

Anyway, yes, E is probably the closest contender, with the idea being that proliferation can (but not always) create confusion, and therefore, where that happens, speech is preferred. The problem with that however, is that the point being made in the passage is not about the content of the writing (the ideas themselves), but rather about the tendency to write unclear, In other words, unclear writing makes the means of communication useless, but not necessarily the ideas attempting to be communicated, even to the extent that there is a question as to whether they may be addressed clearly via any form of communication including oral presentation. This latter point is not mentioned in the argument, and therefore should not be mentioned in the central principle upon which the argument relies.

D however, both addresses the point of proliferation and why oral traditions' ability to eradicate the useless and irrelevant is to be preferred.

Let me know if you have further questions on this.

[jammies]

I got this question wrong both during my original take and blind review with the same answer, so clearly I am not thinking through this straight. I chose answer A.

I understand why D is the correct answer. It matches the conclusion on why oral traditions are PREFERABLE to written ones since they get rid of useless and irrelevant stuff (last line).

But I still have a hard time wrapping my head around why A is incorrect.

I identified the question to be a PR, strengthen question. For a strengthen question, we want to identify an answer that helps or assist the CONCLUSION. And for a PR, strengthen question, the answer should act as an additional premise that supports the conclusion. So my immediate reaction was to identify the conclusion. Which was in the first line. "Oral traditions are preferable to written ones." The rest of the lines were premises.

I took out answers B, C, and E because they felt irrelevant to the conclusion.

I was left was A and D.

I chose A because I thought oral traditions were preferred over written ones since they get rid of the useless and irrelevant stuff hence the mental self reliance. I thought this supports and acts as an additional premise for the conclusion.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi jammies,

First, if you haven't done so already, I'd recommend that you read the other posts in this thread, especially Jeremy's post about a judgement based conclusion requiring a judgement based principle.

Second, I think that you may be making this question much harder than it needs to be by not identifying the new information in the conclusion and prephrasing an answer before looking at the answer choices.

To simplify the argument:

Premise: Oral traditions improve the memory.
Premise: Oral traditions are more concise than written traditions.
Conclusion: Therefore, oral traditions are preferable than written traditions.

The concept of overall preferability is new information in the conclusion. To strengthen this argument, we need to connect one or more characteristics of oral traditions to overall preferability. Simply put, you should be looking for an answer discussing preferability.

With that in mind, here are two Possible Prephrases

1. Traditions that improve memory are preferable to ones that don't.
2. Being concise is preferable to not being concise. (Answer D)

You wrote:

I chose A because I thought oral traditions were preferred over written ones since they get rid of the useless and irrelevant stuff hence the mental self reliance.

The problem is that "oral traditions were preferred over written ones" is the conclusion that you need to prove (or at least support). The fact that oral traditions get rid of useless and irrelevant stuff does not mean that oral traditions are preferable overall. There could be many other reasons why written traditions could be preferable overall even though oral traditions have that one advantage.

One final point, Answer A mentions "accuracy." Accuracy isn't necessarily the same as concision and even though some writing can confuse the reader due to excessive length, that does not mean the writing isn't accurate. No where in the stimulus does it state that oral traditions are more accurate. This is a classic shell game wrong answer that uses a term that is easy to mistake for the terms in the stimulus, but is not the same.