Watching music videos from the 1970s would give the viewer the impression that the music of the time was dominated by...

Irina on July 31, 2019

@jessicalange,

Let's look at the argument.

Music videos from 1970s give the viewer the impression that the music of that time was dominated by synthesizer pop and punk rock. It is misleading because videos were a new art that attracted primarily cutting-edge musicians.

The author argues that our view of a certain concept, i.e. music of the 1970s, would be skewed if we form our opinion based on a specific aspect of it, i.e. music videos.

(A) differs from the reasoning in the stimulus. The author is not arguing that the view of the music of the time is inaccurate because only certain musical pieces survived but because music videos tend to gravitate to certain genres.

(B) presents an entirely different argument. The author is not saying our memory of 1970s music is good because many of 1970s music is still being played today.

(C) parallels the reasoning in the stimulus. Future generations of the publishing trends would be distorted if they only look at works published on CD - similarly to looking only at music videos.

(D) presents a different argument. The author is not saying our understanding of 1970s music is incomplete, rather it is distorted because it is based on only one medium - music videos.

(E) is the opposite of the reasoning in the stimulus. It is saying that the notion of fashion trends would still be accurate even if we rely only on TV fashion programs.

Let me know if this helps and if you have any other questions.

medasmx@protonmail.com on January 18, 2022

A and C look pretty similar to me. The stimulus says that music videos show cutting edge artists and people will think they were the dominant music artists of the time. A says that the copyists selected who they thought were the best which may not be the best regarded of the time so their survival was not accurate. I’m not saying C isnt a better answer just saying that A in some ways seems to work also.

Abigail on January 24, 2022

Hello @medasmx@Protonmail.com,

In Parallel Reasoning questions, we are looking to parallel the dominant structure of reasoning. While some wrong answer choices may still parallel certain aspects of the reasoning, there will always be one and one only answer choice that is closest in structure to the stimulus. In this question, the form of reasoning that we are matching is that this particular medium (i.e., "music videos") gives a distorted vision (i.e., "synthesizer pop and punk rock") of the music of the era. Answer choice A is tempting because it also presents a medium (i.e., "pre-printing press literature") that is a skewed sample (i.e., "deemed by copyists to be of interest") of a general era. However, answer choice A differs importantly from the stimulus in the conclusion ("Our view of pre-printing-press literature can NEVER be accurate)" whereas the conclusion of the stimulus only says "that this would be MISLEADING." Like the stimulus, answer choice C concludes that "understanding of today's publishing trends will be DISTORTED." The stimulus doesn't conclude that the understanding is completely wrong, just that it can be misleading which is a synonym of distorted. It is important to match the degree of the conclusion.

I hope this clarifies why answer choice C is without doubt better than answer choice A. Feel free to follow-up if you are still unsure.

Abigail