Argument 14 求意见
14) The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
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This article states that if a business would like to prosper, it should hire those who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night by quoting a recent study and the research of the advertising firms. It appears to be logical, but there are some assumptions in the argument need to be further assessed.
Firstly, the argument quotes the recent study rating 300 male and female mentian advertising executives. The argument assumes that this study believable. However this study only contains 300 attendees and this number seems not large enough to represent all the working men and women. Also, the selection of the attendee needs to be assessed to make sure that they are representative enough. The method and the output of the study are also need to be evaluated.
Secondly, this argument raises the study on the advertising firms in order to draw a conclusion of all the careers by assuming that the advertising firms can represent all the careers. But that maybe not true. However, in some careers someone needs to devote a large amount of his/her sleeping time in order to make themselves totally calm down and seek for the so-called inspiration to make their work to be efficient such as art or building design. Advertisement design may require their practitioners to work at night and sacrifice their sleeping hours to finish their work with great inspiration. But for some other careers, the conditions are totally different. One cannot imagine a bus driver or a nuclear power plant controller can work successfully with little sleep.
Thirdly, this argument attributes the success of the advertising executives to their less than 6 hours of sleep and assumes their are no other factor make them success. This assumption is not reasonable. If the advertising executives with less than 6 hours of sleep are more talented, with better education or training, more hardworking and work more efficiently at daytime; we cannot only attribute their success to their short sleep.
Lastly, the argument suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night. In this suggestion, this argument assumes anyone whose sleeping hours are less than 6 hours will make the business they take part in prosperous. That is not reasonable, one cannot imagine such a guy who works with very low efficiency at daytime and play computer games at night will make a company prosperous even though his sleeping hours are less than 6 hours.
In conclusion, this argument is partly reasonable, but its unwarranted assumptions need to be further assessed.
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