Summarize Argument
The author concludes that increasing productivity in the economy as a whole may help business owners, but it will increase unemployment. She supports this by saying that increasing productivity in a corporation means increasing profit, which often means reducing the number of employees in that corporation.
Identify and Describe Flaw
This is the cookie-cutter part to whole flaw, where the argument assumes that what is true of a part of something is also true about the whole. Here, the author assumes that increasing productivity in the whole economy will lead to more unemployment, simply because increasing productivity in a single corporation can reduce the number of employees there.
A
presumes, without providing justification, that increased unemployment is sufficient reason to abandon increased productivity as an economic goal
The author never claims that politicians should abandon the goal of increased economic productivity. She just notes that they often overlook the drawbacks of this goal.
B
fails to justify its presumption that attempting to increase productivity in the economy as a whole would produce results similar to those produced by attempting to increase productivity in a single corporation
The author assumes that what is true of a single corporation is also true of the economy as a whole. Just because increasing productivity in a corporation may reduce employees doesn’t mean that increasing productivity in the economy will increase unemployment.
C
unfairly criticizes politicians in general on the basis of the actions of a few who are unwilling to consider the drawbacks of attempting to increase productivity
The author doesn’t generalize about all politicians based on the actions of a few. She just notes that politicians often advocate for increased economic productivity while ignoring its drawbacks. This also seems to be a factual, contextual statement, not an unfair criticism.
D
fails to justify its presumption that attempting to increase productivity in the economy as a whole is always more important than the interests of workers or business owners
The author never assumes that increased economic productivity is always more important than the interests of workers or business owners. She points to unemployment as a drawback of increased productivity, but she never makes any claims about which one is more important.
E
fails to address all potential drawbacks and benefits of attempting to increase productivity at a single corporation
The author’s argument is vulnerable because she assumes that a drawback of increasing productivity at a single corporation also applies to increasing productivity in the economy as a whole, not because she doesn’t address all potential drawbacks and benefits.
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that a good movie reviewer should be able to give favorable reviews of movies that she personally may not like. This is because the purpose of movie reviewers is to help people figure out what movies they might enjoy. The unstated assumption is that to help people figure out what they might like, a movie reviewer can’t just give negative reviews based on her own personal taste.
Identify Conclusion
The conclusion is what the author thinks a good movie reviewer should be able to do: “A good movie reviewer should be able to give favorable reviews of movies that are not to his or her taste.”
A
Movie reviewers’ tastes in movies are very different from and usually better informed than those of most moviegoers.
This is part of the context. Movie reviewers have different, better tastes. But the author pivots to argue that a good reviewer should be able to set aside their personal taste and give favorable reviews to movies she might not like.
B
If a movie reviewer is good, he or she should be able to give favorable reviews of movies that are not to his or her taste.
This is an almost verbatim restatement of the conclusion.
C
The function of a movie reviewer is different from that of a film critic.
This is part of the premise.
D
Movie reviewers see many more movies than most moviegoers see.
This is part of the context.
E
The role of movie reviewers is to help people determine which movies they might enjoy seeing, not to help people better appreciate movies.
This is a premise. The author doesn’t offer anything to help prove the role of movie reviewers. Rather, he uses the claim about a movie reviewer’s role to assert what a good movie reviewer should be able to do.
Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that playing a musical instrument alters brain structure. As evidence, he notes that the part of the brain responsible for differentiating piano sounds tends to be larger in highly skilled musicians than in people who rarely play an instrument.
Identify and Describe Flaw
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of assuming that correlation proves causation. The author points out a correlation: a certain area of the brain tends to be larger in highly skilled musicians. He then jumps to the conclusion that playing an instrument causes changes to the brain. He overlooks two key alternative hypotheses:
(1) The causal relationship could be reversed— maybe having a larger brain area causally contributes to people becoming highly skilled musicians.
(2) Maybe there’s some other, underlying factor that causes both altered brain structure and musical skill.
A
The argument presumes, without providing justification, that what is true about the brain structures of highly skilled pianists is also true of the brain structures of other highly skilled musicians.
The author only says that a certain area of the brain tends to be larger in highly skilled musicians. Presumably this correlation also applies to highly skilled pianists, but he never specifically mentions the brain structure of pianists.
B
The argument fails to address the possibility that people who become highly skilled musicians do so, in part, because of the size of a certain area of their brains.
The author overlooks the possibility that the causal relationship could be reversed. Maybe having a larger brain area causally contributes to people becoming highly skilled musicians, not the other way around.
C
The argument draws a conclusion about a broad range of phenomena from evidence concerning a much narrower range of phenomena.
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of hasty generalization, where the argument draws a broad conclusion from too little evidence. The author doesn’t make this mistake. He draws a conclusion about musicians’ brain structures from evidence about musicians’ brain structures.
D
The argument fails to address the possibility that a certain area of the brain is smaller in people who have listened to a lot of music but who have never learned to play a musical instrument than it is in people who have learned to play a musical instrument.
The author does address this possibility. He explicitly says that a certain area of the brain is smaller in non-musicians than in highly skilled musicians. The amount of music that people listen to is irrelevant.
E
The argument presumes, without providing justification, that highly skilled musicians practice more than other musicians.
The author never makes this assumption. He compares the brain structures of highly skilled musicians and non-musicians (people who “rarely, if ever,” play an instrument). He doesn’t compare highly skilled musicians to other musicians.
Researcher: Overhearing only one side of a cell-phone conversation diverts listeners’ attention from whatever they are doing. Hearing only part of a conversation leaves listeners constantly trying to guess what the unheard talker has just said. Listeners’ attention is also diverted because cell-phone talkers speak abnormally loudly.
Summary
Hearing only one side of a cell-phone conversation distracts a person from whatever they’re doing. Hearing only one person in a conversation results in listeners constantly trying to guess what the unheard person is saying. Cell-phone conversations distract listeners because people talking on a cell-phone are abnormally loud.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
When a person performing a task hears a cell-phone conversation, that person ends up distracted from whatever they’re doing.
A
The risk that a driver will cause an accident is increased when the driver is talking on a cell phone.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus what the risk of accident is for any driver. Since we don’t know the baseline risk, we also can’t say that this risk increases.
B
When a driver hears a passenger in the driver’s vehicle talking on a cell phone, that detracts from the driver’s performance.
This answer is strongly supported. Hearing only one side of a cell-phone conversation distracts a person from whatever they’re doing. Since the driver is distracted, this detracts from their driving.
C
Overhearing one side of a conversation on a traditional telephone does not divert listeners’ attention from tasks at hand.
This answer is unsupported. The stimulus is limited to overhearing conversations being had over a cell-phone. We don’t know what the effects are from overhearing a conversation had over a traditional phone.
D
People who overhear one side of a cell-phone conversation inevitably lose track of their thoughts.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know if these people lose track of their own thoughts, we just know that they become distracted from whatever they’re doing.
E
Conversing on a cell phone requires making more guesses about what one’s conversational partner means than other forms of conversation do.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know what conditions are required for having a conversation via cell-phone.
Maria: In most of the vampire stories I am familiar with, vampires turn only a few of their victims into vampires. The rest are permanently dead.
Speaker 1 Summary
Joe argues that all vampire stories are based on absurd premises. Why are these premises absurd? Because if they were true, vampires would have almost driven their prey (humans) to extinction. Joe supports this by explaining that in vampire stories, all victims of vampires become vampires. Also, vampires are ancient and immortal. These premises imply that vampires would have replaced humans over time, meaning they would have no more prey.
Speaker 2 Summary
Maria doesn’t make an argument, instead just stating that she has encountered vampire stories where most victims of vampires die, and only a few become vampires. This conflicts with Joe’s claim that in vampire stories, all victims become vampires.
Objective
We need to find a disagreement. Joe and Maria disagree about whether all victims of vampires become vampires.
A
Vampires are always depicted in vampire stories as immortal.
Like (B), Joe agrees with this, but Maria never states an opinion. Maria only talks about whether vampires’ victims always become vampires, not about whether vampires are immortal.
B
Vampires are always depicted in vampire stories as having existed since ancient times.
Like (A), Joe agrees with this, but Maria doesn’t take a position. Maria’s focus is on what happens to vampires’ victims, not the traits of vampires themselves.
C
No vampire stories are incoherent.
Joe disagrees with this, but Maria doesn’t express an opinion. Joe concludes that all vampire stories are “absurd,” or in other words, incoherent. Maria doesn’t make any overall claims about vampire stories, just about the single aspect of what happens to victims of vampires.
D
No vampire stories depict the vampire population as being very large.
Neither speaker agrees or disagrees with this claim. Neither Joe nor Maria talks about the vampire population sizes depicted in vampire stories.
E
In all vampire stories, every victim of a vampire becomes a vampire.
Joe agrees with this but Maria disagrees, so this is the point of disagreement. Joe explicitly states this claim as a premise. Maria says that in some vampire stories, not all victims become vampires, which necessitates disagreeing with this claim.
"Surprising" Phenomenon
Salespeople generally didn’t cooperate with or use the new, convenient digital database.
Objective
The correct answer will be a hypothesis explaining why salespeople weren’t on board with the database, to the point of refusing to hand over some of their files. This explanation will provide some comparison between the database and the current system, which was preferred by the salespeople.
A
Some of the salespersons gave huge paper files to the staff responsible for creating the database while other salespersons gave them much smaller files.
We need to know why salespeople chose not to access the database. It doesn’t matter which files went into creating the database.
B
Most of the salespersons already had portable computers before the new database was created.
The stimulus tells us that most salespeople continued to use paper files. We need to know why. All this tells us is that salespeople had access to computers before the database was created.
C
The papers that the salespersons found most important all contained personal information about employees of client companies, which the salespersons did not want in a central database.
The most important documents for salespeople are sensitive documents that they don’t want to share with others. So, the database failed because salespeople wouldn’t have been able to access their most important documents.
D
All of the salespersons were required to attend a series of training sessions for the new database software even though many of them found the software easy to use even without training.
Why would this stop the salespeople from using the database? If anything, it just means that all the salespeople were able to use the database.
E
The number of staff required to create the database turned out to be larger than anticipated, and the company had to pay overtime wages to some of them.
We need to know what happened after the database was created. We don’t care how difficult or expensive it was to make the database.
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that the criminalization of certain kinds of speech is justified, because they are likely to lead directly to serious harm.
Identify Conclusion
The conclusion is the author’s judgment about free speech restrictions: “The criminalization of these forms of speech is justified.”
A
it is legitimate to prohibit some forms of speech on the grounds that they are likely to lead directly to serious harm
This is a paraphrase of the conclusion. The author argues that it is legitimate (justified), to prohibit (criminalize) some forms of speech.
B
a form of speech can be restricted only if it is certain that it would lead directly to serious harm
“Only if” describes a necessary condition for restricting speech. The author never argued that anything was necessary for restricting speech.
C
in all but a few cases, restricting speech eventually leads directly to serious harm
The author never argued that restricting speech usually leads to serious harm.
D
any form of speech may, one way or another, lead directly to serious harm
The author never argued that any form of speech can lead to serious harm.
E
all but one of several possible reasons for restricting freedom of speech are unjustified
The conclusion isn’t about what reasons for restricting speech are unjustified. Rather, the conclusion is that certain restrictions are justified.
Note: This is video #2 in a two-part explanation using the split approach for comparative passages. In the previous video, J.Y. already tackled whatever questions he could based solely on a readthrough of Passage A. In this video, he picks up with Passage B and then cleans up the remaining questions. So, if you don't see a full explanation for a given question in this video, it's because J.Y. tackled that question in the previous video. (Press shift + ← to head to the previous video.)