If you know a lot about history, it will be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals. But unfortunately,...

SamA January 22, 2020

Hello @annetr0712,

That is not the flaw here, but you are on the right track.

I'll diagram this one.
Know a lot about history (KLH)
Easy to impress intellectuals (EII)
Read a large number of history books (RLB)

1. KLH - - - - - - > EII

2. KLH - - - - - - -> RLB

The stimulus then gives us: I am not well versed in history due to a lack of reading (not RLB). From that, we can conclude that I do not have a lot of history knowledge (not KLH).

not RLB - - - - - - - - -> not KLH

This is a valid contrapositive of our second premise. This is the only valid conclusion that we can make from "not well versed in history."

But the argument takes it a step further. The author continues to say that it will not be easy to impress intellectuals (not EII).

Where is the author getting this from?

The author is taking our valid conclusion (not KLH) and trying to say that:

not KLH - - - - - - - -> not EII

This is the flaw. It misrepresents our first premise. It negates our terms, but it does not flip them. In other words, the author believes that the failure of a sufficient condition leads to the failure of the necessary condition. This is not necessarily true. There may be other ways to easily impress intellectuals.

This is a very important lesson. The necessary condition can exist without its sufficient condition. This is why D is correct.

Shirnel March 13, 2020

Hi Sam,

I followed your explanation until you got to the conclusion. I diagrammed the question this way:

If you know a lot about history, it will be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals.

KLH ==> EII
not EII ==> Not KLH

But unfortunately, you will not know much about history if you have not, for example, read a large number of history books.

Not RLB ==> Not KLH
KLH ==> RLB

Therefore, if you are not well versed in history due to a lack of reading, it will not be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals.

Not RLB ==> Not EII
EII ==> RLB

I don't understand how it was mapped as:
Not KLH ==> Not EII

shunhe May 2, 2020

Q36 Flaw

Hi @Shirnel,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look again at that last sentence. If you aren’t well versed in history due to a lack of reading, it won’t be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals.

In order words, what’s the author saying? You haven’t read books, so you don’t know history. This is a valid contrapositive of the second sentence.

But then the author goes on to say that if you aren’t well versed in history (if it is not the case that you know a lot about history), then it won’t be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals.

This is where we get

Not KLH —> Not EII

Because we can safely say that based on ordinary language use, being not well versed in something and not knowing a lot about it are the same thing.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.