Q4 - Juan: Unlike the ancient Olympic

[monygg85]

This questions asks us to weaken Juan's argument.

The core is that because the amateurs rarely have financial or material resources they were unlikely to ever offer a serious challenge to professionals and back in the ancient olympics they didnt have this so the argument concludes that the presence of professional athletes violates the spirit of fairness.

Im not sure if I had to consider Michiko's argument but it didnt seem like I had too.

I am confused why D is the right answer. I dont understand what D means. I picked C because I eliminated everything. Could anyone please break down the answer choices? I think see pertains to the argument to some extent

[sumukh09]

Juan basically says the Modern Olympic games are unfair to amateurs. Why? Because they don't have the financial resources that professionals do which might skew the advantage in favour of the professionals; more money available to professionals means better trainers, better facilities to practice their craft, and other resources that might help them master their particular expertise.

D weakens Juan's argument by saying there's no correlation between how much money a professional spends on training and their performance in certain events. If there's no correlation then Juan's argument that money matters and affects performance is weakened.

C is irrelevant because it doesn't matter if these concepts were unfamiliar back in the day. Plus we're talking about modern olympics and financial resources expended towards performance. C doesn't mention anything about that.

A is wrong because amateur's outnumbering professionals doesn't mean they would have any less of a disadvantage against professionals

B doesn't weaken the argument - it has no affect on the conclusion

E would strengthen the argument if anything

[maryadkins]

Really great explanation! Hope that helped to clarify.

[katl]

Really great explanation! Hope that helped to clarify.

Can someone please explain why D is a better answer than B? I ultimately chose D because I saw it as challenging the central correlation of the argument and thus calling the conclusion in question. However, can't B considered to be counterexamples? (Or can counterexamples only be used to weaken sufficient/necessary conditions?). In general, what are ways to weaken correlation?

Thanks in advance.

[maryadkins]

Remember that you're looking for the answer choice that MOST undermines his argument. A counterexample, particularly one that is cushioned in terms that suggest there could be very few of them ("some," and in this case, "certain"), isn't going to be the strongest answer choice if you have another that is more absolute: (D) in this case, which tells us "NO noticeable correlation" and goes to the heart of Juan's argument.

[WaltGrace1983]

Really great explanation! Hope that helped to clarify.

Can someone please explain why D is a better answer than B? I ultimately chose D because I saw it as challenging the central correlation of the argument and thus calling the conclusion in question. However, can't B considered to be counterexamples? (Or can counterexamples only be used to weaken sufficient/necessary conditions?). In general, what are ways to weaken correlation?

Thanks in advance.

In addition, I think that (B) isn't very good because we don't know the nature of these events that the athletes are competing in. We are talking about "certain" events (not "all" events) - this shows that we are only talking about a narrow scope of events. Well what if in these "certain" events there was only one type of athlete? In other words, what if snowboarding was only performed by professionals? What if ice skating was only performed by amateurs? Would saying that amateurs are the best in a sport competed in by only amateurs say anything about the relationship between amateurs and professionals? No.

So rather than just being a weak answer choice, we can also think about it in terms of not being able to question the validity of the conclusion.