Hea Sook: One should not readily believe urban legends. Most legends

Hey AntiSplurgeGuy,

What makes you think it is right?
Specifically: Note that the fact that (D) is a correct claim does not make it the correct answer. How is the 'implicit support' a critique of Kayla's argument? How do you justify the sentence 'Kayla's argument implicitly supports that ..repeating arguments.. is not deliberately spreading untruths.. and therefore her argument against Hea Sook is wrong'? In (C) the justification is direct -- 'Kayla's argument fails to address the claim (=Hea Sook's claim).. and therefore her argument against Hea Sook is wrong' is almost a tautology. Watch out for 'correct' but 'out of scope / irrelevant' answer choices!

A. does not specify how many people need to repeat a story before someone is justified believing it
Wrong. It can't be countable as to whether how many people are speaking it or not. The same story can revolve around the world.

B. overstates the significance of political agendas in the retelling of stories
Wrong. Kayla states that people will not repeat the stories if they did not believe it was true. There is no underlying political agenda in it. Political agenda is when people lie..

C. fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose
Right. People will believe it's true but will not go an extra mile to verify that this story actually happened.

D. implicitly supports the claim that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths
Wrong. The claim is that people believe and therefore are spreading the stories and not by mistake.

E. cannot distinguish people's motivations for repeating urban legends from their motivations for repeating other types of story
Wrong. Other types of stories is not in this context.

GMATNinja I was hesitating between A and C. However, I chose A, which is wrong. Could you help clarify on what makes C better than A ?
Appreciate your help.

Hi

Let me try to address your query. If we analyze the stimulus, the conclusion drawn derives in this manner:

Conclusion: If a story has been repeated by enough people then it is more likely to be true.

Premise on which it is based (why): People would not repeat stories that they did not believe were true.

Clearly the gap is that mere belief of people about the truth of a story does not necessitate the story being true. This is hinted at earlier in the stimulus, where it is stated, "...but neither are they particularly motivated to investigate deeply to determine if the tale they are telling is true".

Let us consider the options.

(A) does not specify how many people need to repeat a story before someone is justified believing it.

The flaw here is that people believing something to be true does not necessarily make it true. This flaw is not addressed by this answer option. It merely adds another factor of number of people that tend to repeat a story. The same flaw continues to exist - whether few or a lot of people repeat a story does not give an indication of whether the story is true or not.

(C) fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose.

This hits the nail on the head and addresses the flaw that we had identified in our pre-thinking. Clearly the best answer choice among those given.

Hope this helps.

Situation: Hea Sook and Kayla have a difference of opinion on how likely urban legends are to be true.

Reasoning: What criticism is Kayla's reply most vulnerable to? Hea Sook argues that because urban legends generally are propagated for political purposes, people are not particularly motivated to carefully investigate whether the story they are telling is true. These people may not be deliberately telling an untruth, but they have not taken care to establish whether the story is true. Kayla responds that people would not repeat a story that they did not believe to be true, but Hea Sook not only does not attempt to deny that, but she suggests that it may be true. Kayla ignores the fact that sometimes people believe that something is true without carefully determining whether it actually is true, and that they are less likely to verify whether it is true when the story fits their purposes.



A. does not specify how many people need to repeat a story before someone is justified believing it INCORRECT

Kayla does not specify how many people need to repeat a story before one is justified in believing it, but she does not need to. Her claim—that there is some number sufficient for such belief to be justified—could be true even if she does not specify what that number is.


B. overstates the significance of political agendas in the retelling of stories INCORRECT

It is Hea Sook, not Kayla, who asserts that political agendas are a significant factor in whether one retells a story.


C. fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose CORRECT

Kayla does not address whether people are unlikely to verify whether a story is true if the story fits their purpose.


D. implicitly supports the claim that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths INCORRECT

Kayla does not merely implicitly claim that people who repeat legends are not deliberately spreading untruths; she explicitly states this, but in this she and Hea Sook agree.


E. cannot distinguish people's motivations for repeating urban legends from their motivations for repeating other types of story INCORRECT

We have no reason to think that Kayla cannot distinguish people's motivations for repeating urban legends from their motivations for repeating other types of stories. She may well be able to do this.

Reading this one sounded like HS made some recipe from some ingredients, but Kayla took that food recipe and used it as ingredient to make her own recipe - the only problem was that she used 'but' to start her response. The use of 'but' may lead some to believe that she is still in the same argument challenging HS. However, that's not the case.

Kayla neither talks about political agenda nor about legends fitting people's purpose. In her response, there is no reference to whether people were spreading untruths deliberately and about people's motivation in determining if the tale they are telling is true.

A,B and E are easily eliminated as they are nowhere related. Now if her response is not at all discusses HS's argument then D can't be our answer.
Two people talking type question are not easy generally - neither was this one. But if you pay a little attention the answer looks easy.
Hope this makes sense.

Answer C.

The answer is unequivocally C. Why? Because Kayla fails to note a key move in Hea Sook's argument: that believing in the truth of what one spouts is not the same as investigating deeply about whether the tale an individual is telling is true. i.e. You can BELIEVE in the truth of what you say, but that does not preclude you from having to actually investigate the validity of what you say.

Hea Sook: One should not readily believe urban legends. Most legends are propagated because the moral lesson underlying them supports a political agenda. People will repeat a tale if it fits their purpose. They may not deliberately spread untruths, but neither are they particularly motivated to investigate deeply to determine if the tale they are telling is true.

Kayla: But people would not repeat stories that they did not believe were true. Therefore, one can safely assume that if a story has been repeated by enough people then it is more likely to be true.

Kayla's reply is most vulnerable to the criticism that it

A. does not specify how many people need to repeat a story before someone is justified believing it
Suppose she did do so, would it change anything? Nope.

B. overstates the significance of political agendas in the retelling of stories
She doesn't do this

C. fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose
Correct...this is what I highlighted above.

D. implicitly supports the claim that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths
She doesn't do this either.

E. cannot distinguish people's motivations for repeating urban legends from their motivations for repeating other types of story
We don't care about other types of stories.

dear DavidTutorexamPAL

GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, VeritasKarishma, AnthonyRitz, CJAnish, MartyTargetTestPrep, AndrewN,VeritasPrepBrian,fiftyoneverbal

I am confused.
for me, Hea Sook's conclusion is one should not believe urban legend, then Hea Sook points out some evidence to support it, such as propagated if the legends fit purpose, people won't investigate , people won't deliberately spread untruth.
while, Kayla says it is true if the legends are repeated.

is my analyst correct?
I picked up C, just because C is the best, but I am not sure why C is correct.

genuinely want your clarify,

thanks in advance

Hello, zoezhuyan. I checked my OG 2020 just to make sure the name Hea Sook was correct—it sounds Korean to me, and I wanted it to be Hae Sook instead. Anyway, the e-before-a spelling is just what the guide says. On to the matter at hand.

I think you have the gist of what each person is saying. Perhaps you have oversimplified the position Kayla takes. Notice that Kayla talks about people believing stories were true, and also that more likely to be true is not the same as saying that a story is definitely true. That is, the argument Kayla puts forth still leaves room for an improbable but nonetheless false story to be repeated.

The crux of the first argument, the one put forth by Hea Sook, comes in the last two lines:

People will repeat a tale if it fits their purpose. They may not deliberately spread untruths, but neither are they particularly motivated to investigate deeply to determine if the tale they are telling is true.

We would expect Kayla in her rebuttal to address these lines, but she shifts away from the idea of stories fitting an agenda, and away from determining the truth of a story, into what people believe instead, making an assumption about what is probably true instead. In short, she dodges the argument by addressing a different concern. If you answered (C), good for you. I do not see any other option as a real contender.

I hope that helps a bit. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

Hi Andrew, Just want to be clear, Kayla is not addressing the key conclusion which is bolded above, correct? D is not untrue (green), but it's not the flaw in the argument. She sidesteps the issue altogether and the main point of what was said by Sook.

Hello, CEdward. How about we look at choice (D) for context?


The answer starts off on the wrong foot—implicitly is the opposite of what we want if the passage reveals that Kayla would agree that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths. That sounds an awful lot like what she says:


Of course, stories in this context refers to the urban legends or, more broadly, the legends that Hea Sook opens the discussion with. So yes, (D) is not untrue in the sense that it distorts what Kayla believes, but the implicit frame is completely off the mark, not to mention that the answer would not deliver on the setup of the question stem—i.e. how would restating Kayla's main claim make her response most vulnerable to... criticism? In short, (D) is more of a non-answer, definitely not what we want.

I hope that makes sense. Thank you for thinking to follow up with me.

- Andrew

When Kayla says "But people would not repeat stories that they did not believe were true." - Doesn't it imply those stories may or may not be true but people repeat them believing they are true. Hence, in cases where they aren't true, people spread false stories still believing they are true i.e., unknowingly.

Why is " D. implicitly supports the claim that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths" clearly incorrect then?

Hi Kshitijp04,

In order to understand why choice D is incorrect, we need to understand some key aspects. Let me list them down:

1. We have arguments of two different people.

In such questions, the question stem describes what we need to find. However, before moving to the question stem, it is important to visualize each person’s argument independently, as well as with respect to each other.
2. Let’s visualize the conversation between Hea Sook (HS) and Kayla:

a.What are the main points of HS and Kayla?

i. HS: One should not readily believe urban legends.
ii. Kayla: If enough number of people are repeating a story, then it is more likely to be true.

So, you can see that Kayla’s argument is going against HS’s argument.
b. How do they support their arguments?

i. Independent analysis of HS’s argument-

1. One should not readily believe urban legends because most of these are repeated if they fit a political agenda or a purpose.

a. For example, if a group of people is propagating the benefits of a policy, most of them would do so because the policy is beneficial to them.
2. Now, HS also mentions that these people do not intentionally spread untrue things, just that they don’t make an effort to verify the truth of tales that support their purpose.
ii. Independent analysis of Kayla’s argument -

1. One can safely assume that if a story has been repeated by enough people, then it is more likely to be true because people will not repeat something that they do not believe is true.
iii. Both arguments together- Since Kayla’s argument goes against HS’s argument, was Kayla successful in convincing us?

1. The answer is No because-

a. Even if people repeat only the stories that they believe to be true, the stories may not be true.
b. Thus, Kayla fails to address the possibility that even though people repeating a story believe it to be true, the story may actually not be true.
3. Understand the question stem

a. The question asks us to find a flaw in Kayla’s argument. In simple words, what is lacking in Kayla’s argument?
4. What can be the flaw here? Let’s pre-think before moving to choices:

a. As we analysed above, Kayla fails to address the possibility that even though people repeating a story believe it to be true, the story may actually not be true.
b. So, the correct answer choice should be about this flaw.

With this understanding, let’s analyse Choices C and D.

Choice C- fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose.

This choice is exactly in line with our pre-thought answer.

Choice D- implicitly supports the claim that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths.

Yes, Kayla’s argument supports this claim. However, is this a flaw in Kayla’s argument?
Just think about it.
Does this support make you believe that oh HS is correct? Clearly no. Even HS has mentioned that the people repeating legends are not deliberately spreading untruths.
Hence, choice D, even though true, does not present a flaw in Kayla’s argument and hence is not the correct choice.

Where did you falter? In my opinion, you were not sure what you were looking for. You understood the argument and hence shortlisted choice D, which is true for Kayla’s argument. However, you failed to understand that choice D does not highlight any flaw in Kayla’s argument. Visualizing the passage to the extent we did, thoroughly understanding the question stem, and pre-thinking the flaw before moving to the answer choices will help you avoid such a mistake in any other question!

Hope that helps,
Kanupriya

[quote="Bunuel"]Hea Sook: One should not readily believe urban legends. Most legends are propagated because the moral lesson underlying them supports a political agenda. People will repeat a tale if it fits their purpose. They may not deliberately spread untruths, but neither are they particularly motivated to investigate deeply to determine if the tale they are telling is true.

Kayla: But people would not repeat stories that they did not believe were true. Therefore, one can safely assume that if a story has been repeated by enough people then it is more likely to be true.

Kayla's reply is most vulnerable to the criticism that it
In simple terms, Kayla's thought is all people are dumb , so they are more likely to believe the story repeated by enough people.
What if all people aren't dumb, some people in the crowd have ability to distinguish what is right story and wrong story. in other words, some people in the crowd smart and intelligent as well.
That exactly what the option(c) is said

Kayla's reply is most vulnerable to the criticism that it (C) fails to address the claim that people will not verify the truth of a story that fits their purpose.

In the conversation, Hea Sook argues that people often propagate urban legends because they align with their political agendas and moral beliefs, without necessarily investigating their truthfulness. However, Kayla counters by stating that people would not repeat stories they do not believe to be true. This response overlooks Hea Sook's point that people may not be motivated to verify the truth of a story if it already supports their purpose or beliefs. Kayla's assertion assumes that people always critically evaluate the veracity of the stories they repeat, which is not necessarily the case.