People can achieve great things through motivation, dedication, and

Imo C
The argument talks about motivation and other things to achieve mastery .
It is also mentioned in the passage that to require mastery more than 10000 hours are needed.
But if some one is not interested in some activity then he is not going to attain mastery .
So the auther is considering people who are interested in activity they are doing

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People can achieve great things through motivation, dedication, and practice.
There is not an activity in the world for which someone who has practiced for over 10,000 hours is not a master.
The argument above is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

A It draws a broad conclusion about all activities without addressing each activity individually. This can not be true in all the cases. Sometimes generalisation is true for all.. But that's not what author is doing here.

B It assumes that the number of hours required to achieve mastery is the same for all activities. : we are not given fixed number of hours. Argument just says that "for over 10,000 hours" number of hours to excel can be any number greater than 10,000

C It overlooks the possibility that people only invest significant time in activities in which they excel.

D It generalizes its conclusion from the limited experience of the author. This only attacks the personality of the author, we do not know if the author was experienced or not? Can we tell for sure.

E It draws a conclusion from one data point without considering the existence of other data points. No there is not even one data point mentioned in the argument. Argument gives a general pattern of practising greater than 10,000 hours.

hello arvind
if you could please carify my doubt, it would be a great help
As per question stem if you spend 10000hrs in any activity you will be able to master it
option C says if you are excelling in any activity then only you will give time to it.
but option E says that there are variables other than time which contribute to excellence such as interest and level of difficulty etc...
is it the question about any activity which i am going to start/which i hv no particular experince - then my excellence in that activity will be dependant on amont of time spend along with interest??
according to me answer should be E

if you could please carify my doubt, it would be a great help
As per question stem if you spend 10000hrs in any activity you will be able to master it
option C says if you are excelling in any activity then only you will give time to it.
but option E says that there are variables other than time which contribute to excellence such as interest and level of difficulty etc...
is it the question about any activity which i am going to start/which i hv no particular experince - then my excellence in that activity will be dependant on amont of time spend along with interest??
according to me answer should be E

Author's experience is not really in question in the argument, so we can rule it out. So 'D' is Out.
And I can see how B has been ruled out as well, as B only address the second clause in the argument i.e. Number of hours = mastery, but it contains nothing to address the author's first clause i.e. people achieve great things through motivation, dedication, etc.

C on the other hand tackles both the clauses by stating that people only invest significant time in activities in which they already excel. This breaks down the argument as it attacks the basic premise that motivation, hard work, and number of hours spent on the activity can lead to great achievements.

Hope this helps.

People can achieve great things through motivation, dedication, and practice. \ There is not an activity in the world for which someone who has practiced for over 10,000 hours is not a master.
Type – weaken
Boil it down – With dedicated practice of over 10,000 hours , one can be a master in any activity

A It draws a broad conclusion about all activities without addressing each activity individually. - Irrelevant
B It assumes that the number of hours required to achieve mastery is the same for all activities. – Incorrect – the argument does not give us definite number , but mentions over 1000 hours
C It overlooks the possibility that people only invest significant time in activities in which they excel. – Correct – This reverses the causality as people invest time only in things that they are good at to begin with
D It generalizes its conclusion from the limited experience of the author. – Incorrect
E It draws a conclusion from one data point without considering the existence of other data points.- ISWAT- This is similar to saying that multiple causes are responsible for an effect , but that one cause is still valid here
Answer C

chetan2u : Dear Expert- Can you please explain why option E is wrong? I chose Option E over C. The reason was that I felt that in the last statement while the author does mention about the hours required to make someone's practice successful, he does not mention anything about the other aspects involved that include motivation and dedication. What if someone practices for 10000 hours, but is not motivated and dedicated. Please explain. So I felt that the author was drawing conclusion from only one data point. Thanks

Hi..

Firstly let's check the statements..
People can achieve........ - conclusion
There is not .......... - premise

Now if you look at choice A. It tells us that a broad conclusion is made without giving details of each activity.
If you didn't have any other choice weakening, you may consider this too as a choice..

But we are looking for MOST vulnerable, so you have to look at other choices too.
And choice C here clearly stands out. It attacks the premise itself thus weakening the argument

E too talks of conclusion not taking other data points. Somewhat similar to A. Both A and E do not weaken the argument, they just ask for more info.
So in the given choices C clearly holds on to the MOST tag.

What is the source of this question? In my opinion, the question seems a bit quirky.
The first statement...people can achieve ...can very well stand as premise
and the second statement...there is not...can very well stand as conclusion.

C says that the author does not consider some xyz possibility. Well the author does not need to consider any such thing. He or she simply states that if you spend time on something, you master it. It does not matter to the argument whether you only spend time on an activity if you already like it.

So source remains quirky. What is it?

Source is VeritasPrep.

The argument is most vulnerable to C because people might only become a master in an activity if they are talented already and hence become world class by spending a lot of time practicing.
So it can't be generalized that anyone can become a master in any activity in a matter of 10,000 hours.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for letting know the source

I guess we should not be attacking the premise, but rather attack the conclusion. Its the author's premise that people can achieve great things....through x, y, z.... Typically in such questions, we assume the premise to be true, and unblemished by real world considerations. What we can attack then, is the conclusion that the author draws based on the premise. So in this question, the author draws a conclusion that lot of time invested in practice makes one a master; the conclusion is conditionally supported by the premise. In that sense E) is a close answer.

C) claims the author does not consider some other possibilities- but in my opinion this would be out of scope.

Hope that makes sense.

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This argument makes a classic mistake related to correlation vs. causation. The author draws the conclusion ("people can achieve great things...") from the fact that people who have participated in an activity for 10,000 hours are always masters of that activity. But is the 10,000 hours of participation necessarily the cause of mastery? Or could it be the effect - only people who are very good at an activity will enjoy it enough to keep doing it for such a long period of time! Answer choice C hits that point directly: it could be that the duration of time is the cause of the mastery, but it could also be true that only masters stick with an activity that long.

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