#20 - Game show host: Humans are no better than apes at

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello,

Okay so I am not understanding this question at all. I narrowed my answer choices to B and E.

So this is a Flaw EXCEPT question, so were are looking an answer choice that is not a flaw in the argument.

My conclusion was that essentially chimps are better investors than humans.

So after reviewing B I can see why is the correct answer, because stock reports are not relevant.
But can someone explain why E is the correct answer choice.

Thanyou
Sarah

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for your question, it is a good one.

Answer choice B is a great example of something that happens fairly often in flaw questions: an answer choice can be true without describing an actual flaw in the argument. For instance, in this case, answer choice B is clearly true: no evidence was given that chimpanzees are capable of understanding stock reports or using reason to make investment decisions.

However, don't let the fact that the statement in B is true make you think that it describes a flaw in the argument; it doesn't. To illustrate, let's imagine that answer choice B said:

No evidence is offered that most chimpanzees are left-handed.

That is also, undoubtedly, true, but it doesn't really have any bearing on the conclusion, which is that humans do not attain a better return on their investment than apes do; it is therefore, like B, not a flaw in this argument.

I would encourage you to focus on the specific way the conclusion is worded by its author, rather than your own (or my own, or anyone's) paraphrase of the conclusion. That is, don't put it in your own words - keep it in the author's words. That helps me to make sure I am interpreting it in a very literal way, and it helps in situations like this by reminding me that whether or not a chimpanzee can read a stock report or make a reasoned decision does not necessarily have anything directly to do with whether their investments bring a better return than those made by five humans.

I hope that helps.

[mN2mmvf]

Hi,

How does (A) describe a flaw in the game show host's reasoning? No conclusion appears to me to be made about apes in general; rather, a conclusion is made about humans, in comparison to apes.

Thanks!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, MN2,

Good question! In fact, the conclusion does involve a bilateral comparison; to state that "humans are no better than apes at investing" does imply that "apes are at least as good as humans at investing." Thus, we indeed have a conclusion about apes at large drawn from information about a single chimp.

Does this make sense? Thanks!

[mN2mmvf]

Yes! Thank you.

[lsat200812]

For answer choice D, do we just have to assume that short term investment is around a month or so? I don't think that was specified by the stimulus. I chose D because I thought that a month was a long time so may be short term or long term investment.

Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi lsat,

Yes, for Answer D you do have to realize that one month would be considered short term investing. "Long term investing" is generally considered ten years or more and "short term investing" is generally anything under three years. These are general timeframes/terms in investing.

While you don't necessarily need to know those exact timeframes to answer the question, the test makers probably expect that it would be commonly understood that one month would definitely be considered short term.

Because the overall stock market (and individual stocks) can fluctuate in either direction in the short term for any number of reasons, a one month experiment would be too short a time frame to really judge investment skill.

(On an unrelated note, if you're unfamiliar with investing and personal finance, I'd recommend reading up on this topic for your own benefit, especially if you have, or expect to have, retirement accounts such as a 401k that put the burden of choosing investments on you, the employee. Investing/personal finance is a very important life skill that unfortunately is generally not taught in most schools, even though it should be. There are a number of good books/resources out there, but there is also a lot of really bad advice, so don't just listen to some random person on TikTok.)

[kristinajohnson@berkeley.edu]

It's not obvious to me why answer choice B is out of scope. "Understanding stock reports" and "making reasoned investment decisions" seem relevant to the conclusion that "Humans are no better than apes at investing." Would it be more in scope for a hypothetical answer choice B to have said, No evidence is offered that humans are not capable of understanding stock reports and making reasoned investment decisions? Is the focus on what chimpanzees might be able to do instead of what people might not be able to do the out of scope thing?

Thank you.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi kristina,

The conclusion here is that humans do not receive a better return on their investments than apes do. Whether humans or chimpanzees are capable of understanding stock reports or making reasonable investment decisions is irrelevant to this argument. Let's suppose that evidence was provided that humans are capable of doing these things and that chimpanzees are not. So what? How would that matter?

The only thing that matters is which group, humans or apes, received a better return on their investments (i.e. the results of the experiment). In other words, it is still possible that humans do not receive a better return on their investments than apes do even with the ability to understand stock reports and make reasonable investment decisions. Another way to think about what the argument is getting at is that humans investing do not do any better than random selection (which is presumably what the apes's choices represent).

Imagine that we would want to test whether humans do receive a better return on their investments than apes do. How would we test this? We'd probably want a large, representative study of humans and apes investing over a long time period (in order to reduce short-term random stock market fluctuations).

The problems in this argument all have do with the incorrect way that the experiment was conducted, and all of the wrong answers show specific flaws in the way that the study itself was conducted.