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Zorluk: OrtaRuling Out Alternate Explanations (Defender)

An urban planner argues: 'Last year, our city installed a new smart traffic light network at ten major intersections. Over the past twelve months, traffic accidents at these specific intersections decreased by 30%. Therefore, the new smart traffic lights directly caused this significant reduction in accidents.'

Match each potential alternate explanation (objection) on the left with the specific defender assumption on the right that the urban planner must rely on to neutralize that threat to the causal claim.

  • A new highway bypass recently opened, diverting a substantial amount of vehicle traffic away from the targeted intersections.The targeted locations did not experience a substantial drop in the total volume of cars passing through them.
  • The city simultaneously doubled police patrols at the targeted intersections to monitor the implementation of the new system.The reduction in collision rates was not attributable to increased law enforcement presence in the area.
  • The targeted intersections were chosen solely because they experienced an anomalous, statistically rare spike in accidents the prior year.The observed decrease in accidents was not simply the result of a natural reversion to historical baseline averages.
  • The year prior to the installation featured record-breaking ice storms, while the past twelve months had unusually clear weather.The improvement in safety metrics was not primarily driven by an unseasonably mild climate.

Cevap

Match the highway bypass to the assumption about car volume; the police patrols to the assumption about law enforcement; the anomalous spike to the assumption about historical baselines; and the weather changes to the assumption about mild climate.
In causal reasoning, a defender assumption protects the argument by explicitly ruling out an alternative explanation for the evidence. By matching each specific threat (alternate cause) with the assumption that negates it, we logically insulate the author's claim that the smart lights were the true cause.

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Analyze the causal argument in the stem.
The argument concludes that A (smart lights) caused B (reduced accidents) based on the premise that B followed A.
Identifying the cause and effect is required to understand what alternate explanations threaten the conclusion.
2
Understand the function of a defender assumption.
A defender assumption eliminates a specific alternate cause or confounding variable that could explain the observed effect.
This establishes the rule for matching: the correct assumption must directly negate the specific alternate explanation proposed in the left column.
3
Evaluate each alternate explanation and pair it with its logical negation.
Highway bypass (volume drop) pairs with the assumption of no volume drop. Police pairs with no law enforcement effect. Statistical anomaly pairs with no reversion to baseline. Weather pairs with no climate effect.
This guarantees that if the assumption is true, the specific threat to the author's causal claim is successfully eliminated.

Anahtar Kavram

Defender Assumptions (Ruling out alternative causes)
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Konular

Ruling Out Alternate Explanations (Defender)

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