To answer this question, we do not necessarily need to make inferences about a majority. However, it doesn't hurt to know what you can conclude. This will help you to know what you cannot conclude. That is the key to this question.
"Only a minority of those who engage in political action do so out of social justice." What can we conclude? That a majority of those who engage in political action do not do so out of a sense of justice. We can be certain of that. There may be a variety of other reasons, but they are all "not a sense of social justice."
However, this is not the conclusion drawn by the author. The conclusion is: "Therefore, some people who have a sense of social justice do not engage in political action." This is not valid. What is wrong with it? We do not have enough information about those with a sense of social justice. We can only say that, "some of them engage in political action." We have no idea if this is one person with a sense of social justice, or every single person with a sense of social justice. All of them could, and that's why the conclusion is incorrect.
The mistake is taking information about the makeup of one group, and using it incorrectly to make a conclusion about a second group. A makes this same error. We can make a conclusion about most scholars, but we cannot make a conclusion about award winners.
To1M1arApril 26, 2020
But why can we conclude that if a minority does something then a majority does the opposite... But we are not allowed to conclude that when some people do something that most others do the opposite?
