QUESTION TEXT: Consumer advocate: Last year's worldwide alarm about…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: There was no real threat from the virus.
REASONING: Anti-virus companies sold a lot of software, and in the end, there wasn’t much of a problem.
ANALYSIS: You can tell this is an old LSAT; they had to define “computer virus”.
This is a bad argument. It’s possible there was no a threat.
Yet it’s also possible that there was a large threat, but the anti-virus software prevented most of the damage. The advocate gives no evidence that the software was useless.
___________
- This isn’t a circular argument. The advocate did give a reason: little damage was done.
- We don’t care about other viruses. The advocate is only talking about this particular virus.
- This is a causation-correlation error, and it doesn’t happen here. An example is: The sun rises, and you win the lottery. Therefore the sun caused your victory.
- The advocate does provide evidence: there was little damage done.
- CORRECT. The antivirus companies might have saved the world with their software. The advocate gives no evidence the software programs were useless against the virus.
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