Wealth is not a good thing, for good things cause no harm at all, yet wealth is often harmful to people.Which one of ...

Steven on February 10, 2018

Question

Could you please explain why answer choice D is incorrect?

Replies
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Richmond on June 10, 2018

I have the same question. There seems to be quantifier language in the stimulus and choice D ("often" and "most", respectively). But there is not quantifier language in choice A. How is (A) correct over (D)?

Christopher on June 11, 2018

@erojas @Richmond

The trick here is not specific language clues but actual logical structure.

Wealth is often Harmful to people. W ==> H

A Good Thing can cause no Harm. GT ==> not H or H ==> not GT

Conclusion Wealth is not a Good Thing. W ==> H ==> not GT

With (A), you have a similar track.

Alex Like Golf A ==> LG

No-one in Chess Club Likes Golf. CC ==> not LG or LG ==> not CC

Alex is not in Chess Club. A ==> LG ==> not CC

(C) follows different logic and isn't sound. To say that the dog is not a dachshund because he hunts well and most dachshunds are bad hunters misses the fact that Sarah's dog could be the one in a million dachshunds that's a good hunter.

Michelle on September 9, 2019

But doesn't the word often indicate that wealth can sometimes be not harmful? Which is why I chose d as well...

jing jing on April 16, 2020

I also picked D over A for the same reason. I still didn't get the question after reading your comment. Could you explain and elaborate more? Thanks. Sorry for my confusion.

Gabby on April 21, 2020

@Christopher, how do we know when to quickly eliminate answer choices that have mismatched structures? In this case, that would have resulted in eliminating a right answer choice because the stimulus had a probability connotation with its use of "might" but the correct answer didn't, it was instead, affirmative.. Would you recommend never skimming through the answer choices and eliminating the mismatched structures first before reading through the remaining ones for logical matches?

Joshua on June 3, 2020

Can someone please address this thread? The previous response addressed ©, not D. I similarly opted for D because of the term often:

G --> ~H = H --> ~G
W -SOME- H

I, therefore, concluded that the argument was flawed in that the conclusion, W --> ~G was too strong to be supported; that the conclusion that could have been drawn was W -SOME- ~G.

Jonathan on September 3, 2020

I am on the same track as everyone else here, conclusion of the stimulus was absolute while it relied on a premise that was not 100% (with the term "often"). Conclusion in the answer seemed to be absolute and relied also on absolute premises. Answer choice D on the other hand mirrored the uncertainty from the stimulus with a stronger conclusion relying on the term "most". Very confused.

Sam on July 27, 2021

Along with most people in this discussion, I too eliminated A because of quantifier statements in the argument. "Wealth is often harmful to people" i took as a "most" statement, and diagrammed it as such. After reading the breakdown of the answer, I still don't understand how A would be the most similar in reasoning. Any explanation would help!