Argument220 dganggang(kito) 机井高频 超常发挥 超时1min 630w

dganggangUID: 2125101

220The following appeared in an article in a magazine for writers.
'A recent study showed that in describing a typical day's conversation, people make an average of 23 references to watching television and only 1 reference to reading fiction. This result suggests that, compared with the television industry, the publishing and bookselling industries are likely to decline in profitability. Therefore, people who wish to have careers as writers should acquire training and experience in writing for television rather than for print media.'

提纲：钱不是唯一
            不能证明print就将没钱
            study不可信
            还露了一条：赚钱的公司不意味着薪水高，可能是建立在底薪基础上

In the article, the author suggests that those who wish to have careers as writers should prefer writing for television rather than print media. His assumption is that publishing and bookselling are likely to decline in profit compared with the TV industry and the evidence is the statistics in a study describing a typical day's conversation.

This argument is well-presented for us to understand the author's idea. However, the author fails to convince us that the inference between the conclusion and the assumption as well as the evidence is logically sound.

Primarily, the author wrongly limits the pursuits of the people who wish to have careers as writers into simply hunting for profits. Based on our common sense, the targets for anyone's career should be various. Admittedly, money is a major concern but it is not always the whole thing for most of the people. Therefore, the author offers no consideration for the other elements that will influence people's decision in choosing their careers and just focus on profitability as the only factor. Moreover, his assumption may be true if only he can give us a research report with objective statistics to support his assumption. In sum, the shortage of a comprehensive thinking undermines his major assumption in the argument, which also makes his advice invalid.

Secondly, even assuming most people aim at earning more money in their careers only, nevertheless, the author still fails to convince us that print media will be so deflated that people should have no hope for being rich working for it. On the one hand, the author gives us no evidence that television industry has increased rapidly in their profitability, which makes the comparison groundless. On the other hand, he overlooks the real condition of print media by simply drawing his conclusion based on a specific recent study. However, there should be more aspects of problems that can decide whether print media will be profitable or not. Even assuming the overall condition of publishing or bookselling is down, it does not promise that it will last forever and every corporation of it will shrink in their business. Thus, for demonstrating that print media are likely to decline and lose their market to TV, the author has to find more details and sufficient information to support it.

Last but not the least, the quotation of the study as the basic evidence shall be put into questions. First, the author gives us neither the sample size, the establishment of the questions, nor the information of the sample of people who answer the questionnaire. For that reason, the credibility of the study is questionable. Secondly, even if the recent study is trustable, nonetheless, the number of the times of the reference that people mention in their conversation is far from concluding that print media will decrease in their profitability and TV media will increase. It may shows that people find the TV programs more controversial to talk about or just because they have get used to the newspaper so much that they want to talk about more vivid subjects which are shown more on TV. However, we can not conclude that those who refer to TV for 23 times have no interest in print media any more. Moreover, the only 1 reference is for the reading fiction, which is just one kind of the print media, therefore, it can not cover the whole story in this case.

In sum, the logical deduction of the evidence, assumption and the conclusion is unconvincing because the author has neglected so many other elements that really matter. Furthermore, he seems to beg the question by missing the necessary links between his steps that organize the whole argument. The author may have to reconsider his suggestion and try to get as well as evaluate more substantiated evidence concerning the topic.