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.)
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