Quote:
Oscar: Emerging information technologies will soon make speed of information processing the single most important factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth. Consequently, the division of the world into northern countries—in general rich—and southern countries—in general poor—will soon be obsolete. Instead, there simply will be fast countries and slow countries, and thus a country’s economic well-being will not be a function of its geographical position but just a matter of its relative success in incorporating those new technologies.
Sylvia: But the poor countries of the south lack the economic resources to acquire those technologies and will therefore remain poor. The technologies will thus only widen the existing economic gap between north and south.
The reasoning that Oscar uses in supporting his prediction is vulnerable to criticism on the ground that it
Another way of analyzing this argument is to treat it as a causal argument. In this case, we can clearly establish the cause and effect relationship in the argument by Oscar after breaking down the argument into premise and conclusion as follows:
Premise: Emerging information technologies will soon make speed of information processing the single most important factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth.
Conclusion: Consequently, the division of the world into northern countries—in general rich—and southern countries—in general poor—will soon be obsolete. Instead, there simply will be fast countries and slow countries, and thus a country’s economic well-being will not be a function of its geographical position but just a matter of its relative success in incorporating those new technologies.
Clearly, we can see that the cause and effect relationship exists within the Premise. The causal relationship is that the most important factor in the creation of individual, corporate, and national wealth will soon be the speed of information processing made possible by emerging information technologies. Breaking it down further we can say that:
The cause is: the speed of information processing courtesy emerging information technologies
The effect is: single most important factor on personal, corporate, and national wealth creation in future
What could possibly weaken this argument? How about the possibility of some other factors that may become more important than speed of information processing in the determination of personal, corporate, and national wealth? How is that possible? Well, let's say emerging information technologies become available evenly in most countries such that speed of information processing although important to wealth creation, is no longer the single most important factor influencing wealth creation. Other factors now surface provides better competitive advantage in the creation of wealth than what is provided by speed of information processing, then Oscar's argument will definitely fall apart. Hence a necessary assumption on which Oscar's argument relies is that there will be no other factor that will be more important in the creation of wealth than speed of information processing.
So the best weakener has to be the option that says that there are other factors that were overlooked by Oscar in his argument that will be more important that speed of information processing in the creation of wealth in future. This is what option C states. Hence C must be the best weakener of the argument above.
Quote:
(A) overlooks the possibility that the ability of countries to acquire new technologies at some time in the future will depend on factors other than those countries’ present economic status
From the reasoning above, the overlooked factors must have the possibility of affecting wealth creation than the speed of information processing. So the mere overlook of the possibility that the ability of countries to acquire new technologies at some time in future that will depend on factors other than those countries' present economic status does not hurt the argument in anyway. The question will the acquisition of the new technologies in future by countries influence wealth creation more than speed of information processing? Once the answer is no or there is no clear connection,
then the argument is not weakened.Quote:
(B) fails to establish that the division of the world into rich countries and poor countries is the single most important problem that will confront the world economy in the future.
This is irrelevant. Once again, the question to ask is will the division of the world into rich countries and poor countries, as the single most important problem that will confront the world economy in future, become more important in the creation of wealth than speed of information processing? The answer is there is no clear connection or an emphatic no.
This option does not weaken the argument.Quote:
(C) ignores the possibility that, in determining a country’s future wealth, the country’s incorporation of information-processing technologies might be outweighed by a combination of other factors.
As stated above, this is the correct answer.Quote:
(D) provides no reason to believe that faster information processing will have only beneficial effects on countries that successfully incorporate new information technologies into their economies.
Once again, this option is irrelevant because it doesn't provide any other alternative that will be more important in future than the speed of information processing. The fact that there could be negative effects associated with faster information processing does not mean that it will not be the single most important factor in wealth creation in future.
This option does not weaken the argument.Quote:
(E) makes no distinction between those of the world’s rich countries that are the wealthiest and those that are less wealthy.
Will the distinction between countries in the world that are wealthiest and those that are less wealthy dislodge the speed of information processing as the most important factor that will affect wealth creation in future? The answer is no.
Hence, this option does not weaken Oscar's argument.