Advertisement: Hypnosis videos work to alter behavior by subliminally directing the subconscious to act in certain wa...

Skylar on September 28, 2019

@cjahangiri Happy to help. Let's take a look.

The advertisement states that "directions to the subconscious must...be repeated many times in order to be effective." It then says that Mesmosis issues "an initial command to the subject's subconscious to experience each subsequent instruction as if it had been repeated 1,000 times" which makes it "extremely effective."

The key to understanding the flaw in this reasoning lies in the phrase "an initial command." Note that this is singular. So, only one command is issued (which tells the subject to experience each following instruction multiple times). The second sentence of the advertisement clearly states that commands have to be repeated multiple times to be effective, yet this command was only given once. Therefore, it does not logically follow that this command would induce "extremely effective" results. This is why (A) is the correct choice. Answer choice (A) says the advertisement "overlooks a requirement that it states for the effectiveness of directions to the subconscious." The requirement it is overlooking is the need for instructions to be given multiple times.

Answer choice (B) reads "takes for granted that the effectiveness of a direction to the subconscious is always directly proportional to the number of times the direction is repeated." The word "always" in this choice should raise some concern. The advertisement is only talking about one case; it does not make a statement about all cases. Also, the advertisement is not saying that the effectiveness is proportional to the number of times a command is repeated. It does state that a command must be repeated to be effective, but it never claims proportionality in this relationship. In fact, the only relationship in which the argument demonstrates proportionality is between how many times the subject is told to experience the other instructions and the effect of how the subject experiences these instructions. Therefore, (B) is incorrect.

Does this make sense? Please let me know if you have any other questions!