RC Question 12 Explanation
DISCUSSION: Once again, this question relates to paragraph 2. That was really the key paragraph in the passage. See question 11 for an explanation of that paragraph. But, briefly, becoming an expert gives us the illusion of direct perception of a phenomenon.
So chess players think they can see chess positions instantaneously, without analysis. Whereas in reality, they have become so fast at their mental calculations that they simply can’t see the calculations.
So you gain the ability to make faster judgement, but at the expense of having the illusion that you can directly perceive entities within that field. For example, if an economist thought they could “see” the GDP growth rate of a country, or a politician thought they could see “the will of the people”.
This is a tricky question. It says “appears to result in”. Does it mean that the expert believes a result occurs (subjective), or that studies indicate a result occurs (objective). This isn’t clear, and you have to analyze each answer with both perspectives in mind. I’ve never seen a question do that before.
___________
- The judgement isn’t altered. A chess expert still says that a position is strong or weak, the same way a beginner might.
- If anything, there is less detail. Instead, the expert can make reasonably well founded snap judgements.
- This is a trap. It’s true that experts do have errors: the chess experts thinks they arrive at their results “without calculation” (lines 33-34). But in fact, there was a calculation, it was just so fast the chess expert didn’t notice it. However, this is not an error in judgement about the field: the expert has not made a bad chess judgement. They’re just unaware of how their mind works. That’s subtly different. Experts generally do know their stuff, they may just be wrong about how they know it.
- CORRECT. See lines 30-31. It “appears….we become able to…..grasp….relations directly”. An expert has the perception that they can see relations directly. They can’t, but this question stem was asking about what “appears” to be true, so this answer works.
This was potentially a devilishly hard question. I felt quite sure of my understanding of paragraph 2, but I had to scour it for those two specific lines to feel confident in this answer over C. - If anything, there is more reliance on sense and emotions. The chess expert simply “knows” that a position is strong or weak. (In reality they have arrived there by a reasoning process, but the process was so quick they couldn’t see it.)
Hello,
A says there is an altered way of “expressing” one’s judgement about issues in that field. It seems to me reasonable based on the passage that an expert may be able to simple feel or take something for granted in making a judgement that a beginner would not, and this would alter their explanation of the judgement.
D is clearly supported by the passage, but I thought A was more of a contender.
Thanks,
I think the issue is the word “expressing.”
The passage does say expertise changes how someone understands or perceives things in that field. Greater expertise changes our perception and makes it seem like we can see and grasp entities and their relations directly. That’s what D gets at: expertise seems to produce a substantively different way of understanding relations within the field.
But A shifts the focus from how the expert understands the issue to how the expert expresses the judgment. The passage doesn’t really discuss communication, explanation, or wording. A chess expert might express their judgment differently, but the passage’s point is not about expression. It’s about the expert seeming to perceive the position differently.
So I think your instinct is right that expertise may make a person “feel” or “take for granted” something a beginner would have to calculate. But that supports D more directly than A. That is a change in understanding/perception, not necessarily a change in expression.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have further questions.