Sociologist: Research shows, contrary to popular opinion, that, all ot

A is wrong because:
1. The stimulus uses strong words as 'most' whereas option A uses 'some' in one place
2. Option D establishes the reason of happiness to be 'pets' whereas, option A fails to do that.

I think so: the argument clearly says that people are NOT happy with pets, and we must contraddict this point.

So we can split between who HAVE pets and who HAVE NO pets, we interest who HAVE pets.

from this B and E out.

A make a comparison, again, but maybe happier, true , but we are not sure about this.

C reasonably happy: again as A: maybe or not

D Most people who have pets feel happier because they have pets.: for sure..........people do not care, they are happy and stop.

I'm still not conviced with the reasons you are providing to ruling out A.

Some people who have pets are happier than most people who do not. Suppose two people A(who has a pet) and B(who doesnt have a pet)

Premise says -
A less happy than B

Conclusion-
For A or B to be as happy as possible they should not have a pet

Consider A or B want to be as happy as possible , which of them below statements can they use -
(A) Some people who have pets are happier than most people who do not. - This says that some A are happier than B , doesnt help much to decide how can 1 be more happier.
(D) Most people who have pets feel happier because they have pets - This says that A or for that matter B can be happier if they have a pet which directly attach the conclusion

Hope, it clears the confusion.

Premise:
Most people who have pets are less happy than most people who do not.
Conclusion:
Any person who wants to be as happy as possible would do well to consider not having a pet.

What the argument doesn't say is that pets are the reason why people who have them are not as happy. We do not know what is the causal agent here. Is that people were unhappy in the first place and hence got pets to be happier? or is it that they were happy and got pets and then got unhappy?
What would weaken my conclusion is: People were unhappy in the first place and hence got pets and got happier. In that case, getting a pet would make people relatively happier than before.

Option (D) says exactly this. Most people who have pets feel happier because they have pets. Lets say on a scale of 1 to 10 of happiness, people without pets are at 9 and those with pets are at 7. Those who have pets were actually at 5 without pets but came up to 7 because of their pets. So without the pets they would go down to 5 (may be even 3 because losing a pet is terrible but that's besides the point!) This seriously weakens my conclusion that if you want to be as happy as possible, don't get a pet.

Option (A) is incorrect because even if some people who have pets are happier than most people who do not, they could be few and exceptional cases. You cannot draw general statements based on the cases of few people. General statements can be drawn only from what most people experience.

Conclusion: Not having a pet => Be as happy as possible

Option A is wrong because:

1)

2) In addition to what is quoted, I would say that A) is flawed because the argument mentions that "any person who wants to be as happy as possible", so the fact that "some people who have pets are happier" (option A), does not mean that this people is happy as possible, right? Maybe the pets are diminishing their happiness.

So, this choice does not debilitate the argument because it makes a generalization based on "few people" and it does not assure the point of the argument (be happy as possible)

Option D) is correct because:

It weakens the argument by stating that the cause and effect of the conclusion is faulty: Not having a pet => Be as happy as possible, and gives us an alternate cause: Having pets =>Be as happy as possible.

Best

But premise also say 'all things being equal' then how can we say people were unhappy in the first place or less happy in the first place.

From Manhattan:

The argument's conclusion is that people who want to maximize their happiness should not get a pet. Why? Because those who have pets are less happy than those who do not. Since this is a weaken question, we should look for a gap. The gap lies somewhere between the two forms of measurement. The conclusion focuses on maximizing one's potential for happiness while the premise compares two groups.

Analogously: You should not take heart medication because in general, those who take heart medicine have more heart problems than those who do not. The problem here is that comparing these groups is probably not valid since those who take heart medicine are predisposed to have heart problems.

Similarly, perhaps those who get pets are generally less happy to start with (and thus they get pets in an effort to cheer up). However, if pets do tend to make you happier, as (D) indicates, regardless of which group you're in, you'll probably get happier, contrary to what the conclusion suggests.

(A) is incorrect because it only tells us about some people with pets; that may mean two people!
(B) is out of scope because wishing is not the issue, happiness is.
(C) is irrelevant. What does reasonably happy mean?
(E) is also irrelevant because feeling unhappy sometimes doesn't give us a sense of the overall tendency that we're concerned with.

In the absence of D , could be C be correct choice???

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