argument234--有拍必回拍

emteddybearUID: 2699606

234.The following appeared in a newspaper feature story.

"There is now evidence that the relaxed manner of living in small towns
promotes better health and greater longevity than does the hectic pace of
life in big cities. Businesses in the small town of Leeville report fewer
days of sick leave taken by individual workers than do businesses in the
nearby large city of Mason City. Furthermore, Leeville has only one
physician for its one thousand residents, but in Mason City the proportion
of physicians to residents is five times as high. And the average age of
Leeville residents is significantly higher than that of Mason City
residents. These findings suggest that people seeking longer and healthier
lives should consider moving to small communities."

现有证据表明，在小城市的悠闲生活方式比在大城市快节奏的生活更有利于健康和长寿。小城镇Leeville的商业行业所上报的员工病假天数比邻近大城市Mason要少。而且，Leeville每千人只有一名医生，而Mason市医生的比例是Leeville的五倍。Leeville居民的平均年龄显著高于Mason居民。这些数据表明寻求更健康更长寿生活的人应该考虑移居到小型社区。
审题：
Conclusion: living in small towns with relaxed life style can make better health and greater longevity than living in big cities with hectic pace of life.
Evidence: comparison between L and M
1.
sick leave: L<M
2.
L: one physician per thousand residents, while fife physician per thousand residents
3.
Average: L>M


In this newspaper story, the author claims that living in small towns with relaxed life style can make better health and greater longevity than living in big cities with hectic pace of life. To support this claim, the author cites the comparison between Leeville, a small town, and Mason, a large city, in several aspects. However, with a careful examination, there are several critical flaws.

Primarily, the threshold problem with the argument is that the author attempts to warrant the general conclusion by simply limited samples. There is no evidence that these two places mentioned above are comparable. Before contrasting them, the author should make sure that they can typify the small town with slack-pace life or the big city with fast-pace life. Plus, the portion of the employed local residents in both places should be nearly the same. Without the preparation mentioned above, this argument is somewhat meaningless.

However, even if the Leeville and Mason are comparable, what the author points out cannot convince me that people in Leeville are healthier and have longer life than people in Mason. Firstly, when talking about the distinguish of sick leave between two places, we should list the percentage of each place, but not the exactly number. And we also donnot know if there is the situation of goldbrick. If so, there is no need to consider this aspect. Secondly, by using the evidence that Mason has five times physicians than Leeville, the author wants to hint that there are more patients in Mason, in order to justify citizens in Mason is less healthy. But in most cases, the conditions in big city are much better than small town, which make many exotic residents go for help. So it is possibly that the big city needs more physicians not because the local citizens are less healthy. Thirdly, in order to support that people living in small town has greater longevity, the author cites that the average age of residents in Leevills is much higher than that in Mason, while neglect some other alternatives. For example, Leeville is somewhere especially for retired people, while Mason is mainly for young people to do efforts for their enterprise.

In summary, the conclusion reached in this argument is invalid and misleading. To make the argument more convincing, the author should make a good preparation before comparing this two place, and provide the real percentage of sick people, and their regularity. In addition, the real reason for the difference of average age in the two places should also be mentioned.