Self-study
Editorial: It is usually desirable for people to have access to unregulated information, such as is found on the Internet. ███ █ ████ █████ ██ ██████████████ ████ ██████ ████ ██ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██ ██ █████████ ██ █████████ █████ ███████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ███████████ ██ ███████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ █████████████ ████ ███████████████ █████ ███ ███████████ ██ ███ ████████ ██████ ███████ ██ ██████████
Summary
The author concludes that online information should be regulated. Why? The large amount of misinformation online makes it hard to tell accurate information from inaccurate information, which renders the accurate information useless.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that regulations would help to either curtail online misinformation or make it easily distinguishable from accurate information. There is currently no link between these two ideas, so an answer choice connecting regulations to misinformation would strengthen the argument.
The conclusion is a prescriptive claim, so the author also assumes we should, in fact, try to curtail misinformation or make it easy to distinguish from accurate information.
2.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ██ ███████ ███ ███████████ █████████
a
It is never ████████ ██ ████████ ██████████████ ███████ ███████████ ████████ ██████ ██ ████████ ████████████
Wrong trigger and wrong conclusion. The premises never mention whether regulations would need to restrict people’s access to accurate information. The conclusion also makes no mention of whether it’s possible to implement regulations, just that ideally they should be in place.
b
Even if information ██ ██████████ ████████ ███████████ ██ █████ █████████████████ ████ ███████████████
(B) would weaken the argument by implying that regulations would not succeed in their goal of distinguishing accurate from inaccurate information.
c
Regulation of information █████ ██ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ███████████ ███████ ████████ ███████████ ███ ███████████████
(C) bridges the gap between regulations and distinguishing accurate from inaccurate information, so it strengthens the conclusion. Unlike many other PSAr questions, this answer choice doesn’t fully prove the conclusion, as it still doesn’t clarify whether we should do this. It still supports the conclusion far more than any other answer, however, so it is our best option.
d
It is acceptable ███ ██████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ █ ████ █████ ██ ██████████████ ████ ██ ████████ ███████████ ██ █████ ██████████ ██ █ ███████
Wrong trigger and wrong conclusion. The premises only tell us that accurate and inaccurate information are hard to distinguish, not whether accurate information is ever overlooked. This would also only allow us to conclude that people shouldn’t have access to vast amounts of misinformation, which provides no connection to regulation.
e
It is usually ████ █████████ ███ ██████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ ████████ ███████████ ██████████████ ████ ██ ██ ███ ████ ██ ████ ██████ ████ ██ ████████ ███ █████████ ████████████
(E) weakens the argument by implying that regulations are bad. We want to prove that we do want regulations, not that we don’t.