Oscar's conclusion is: "a country's economic wellbeing will not be a function of its geographical position but just a matter of its relative success in incorporating those new technologies."
Why? Oscar states that emerging information technologies will soon make "speed of information processing" the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth. He surmises that the division of the world into northern countries--in general rich--and southern countries--in general poor--will soon be obsolete. He believes that instead there will be fast and slow countries.
So, Oscar's conclusion is that soon, due to emerging information technologies, a country's economic wellbeing will not be based on its geographical position--as it is now: northern countries being rich and southern countries being poor--rather it will be determined by "the single most important factor:" speed of information processing.
However, what if a lot of smaller other factors grouped together would actually surpass the importance of "the speed of information processing" in determining a country's economic wellbeing?
Well, if this were to occur, then Oscar's conclusion is no longer true, since a country's economic wellbeing would not be a function of MERELY its relative success in incorporating new technologies, but a function of ALL the small FACTORS combined, which may or may not have anything to do with the incorporation of technology having to do with the speed of information processing.
Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
DanielDePasqualeAugust 24, 2018
could you explain why D is incorrect
MehranAugust 25, 2018
Hi @DanielDePasquale, thanks for your post. This is an Errors of Reasoning question that focuses on one speaker, Oscar. Oscar makes an argument, which is broken down by @Naz's post above. You are asked to identify the flaw in Oscar's reasoning; answer choice (C) does this.
Answer choice (D) is incorrect because the problem with Oscar's argument isn't that he only focuses on the "beneficial effects" of faster information processing. There's nothing in the stimulus to indicate that Oscar is overlooking some downside or negative consequences with respect to faster information processing.
Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have additional questions.
