maaku

Men and women, because of their inherent physical differences, are not equally suited for many tasks. There are physical differences between men and women that in general affect the suitability of one gender over the other for certain tasks. For this it is easy to find examples. However I find that is not enough to satisfy the claim under all possible interpretations. Compared with men, women are often smaller, have less physical strength, and have different reproductive organs. This certainly does make women candidates better on average for certain tasks such as fine craftsmanship (requiring small, dexterous hands), and less suited for tasks requiring physical strength such as search and rescue in extreme environments. And no man will ever be able to physically replace a woman when it comes to the motherly tasks of birth and nursing. In addition, it could be argued that sexual differences indirectly lead to dangerous social complications if men and women were mixed in certain professions, such as front-line infantry combat. In these cases it might be better for society to pick one gender over the other for that category of work. However much of the claim rests on the phrasing "equally suited for many tasks", in which I would place special emphasis on the word many. "Many" can mean more than two, in which case the previous examples support the claim. However a less pedantic interpretation would interpret the claim as that the number of tasks men and women are not equally suited for is comparable to the number for which they are. I argue that this is not the case, and therefore reject the claim without further clarification. Most tasks in life, whether it is choice of profession, parenthood, or simpler tasks like buying groceries or balancing a checkbook, are performed equally well by both genders. The subset of tasks where physical size, strength, or sexual organs play a role is remarkably small. Furthermore, as the information revolution continues, machinery is replacing more and more tasks that once required fine dexterity or physical prowess. More and more men and women are required to perform knowledge-work, and there is little evidence that men and women think so drastically differently so as to be better at one profession of knowledge-work than the other. For me to accept the claim, I would need clarification on what is meant by "many": more than two tasks, or a majority of tasks? Also, is the subset of tasks to be considered constrained in any way? Are we talking about the primordial tasks of early hunter-gather humans, or the modern tasks of today's information economy? Without clarification, I am forced to evaluate the claim very generally, and in doing so I find that it lacks adequate support. My opinion (please read and score the essay first): in this essay I tried to find common ground to expand upon the one-sentence issue, providing enough context to actually refute the claim. However I think this was a failed approach. I spent the whole second paragraph agreeing with the claim before disagreeing with it - a single sentence would have done fine. Spending half the essay adding to the claim and then spending the other half tearing it down sounds a lot like a strawman...

The following opinion was provided in a letter to the editor of a national aeronautics magazine: “Manned space flight is costly and dangerous. Moreover, the recent success of a series of unmanned space probes and satellites has demonstrated that a great deal of useful information can be gathered without the costs and risks associated with sending men and women into space. Therefore, we should invest our resources in unmanned space flight." The author of the opinion piece makes numerous assertions that are not backed up with evidence, and makes leaps of judgement that are not warranted from the information provided. This severely undermines his argument. The most glaring logical error in the opinion is the assertion without providing any evidence that manned spaceflight is costly and dangerous. That may or may not be the case - we are not given any reasoning for that claim. But even if manned spaceflight is costly and dangerous, we are only left to assume that unmanned spaceflight is the opposite. It is also the case that no reasoning is given to explain why unmanned spaceflight would be less costly or less dangerous than manned spaceflight. To be clear, we are told that there have been some recent successes with unmanned space probes, but there is no reason to assume that success was measured in terms of cost or risk, or even that the metric for success is the same across both programs. This is the central point of his argument, and is entirely lacking of support. Furthermore, the opinion piece makes an error in reasoning in supposing that the two space programs - manned and unmanned - are not intertwined. It could very well be that the unmanned space flight program is inexpensive because it leverages existing infrastructure from the manned space flight program, in which case terminating manned space flight would only shift the costs onto the unmanned program. The author only says that "a great deal of useful information" is generated from unmanned space flight, but does not tell us whether the same information would be gathered from unmanned and manned space flight. It may be that unmanned and manned space flight programs provide different data, in which case an unmanned-only program would leave us bereft of certain data and unable to answer questions previously pursued by the manned space flight program. Finally, the author assumes that the goal of the space flight is to gather data, and by extension the program which gathers the most or most complete data at the lowest cost and risk is therefore the best. However space flight could be driven by more intangible goals, such as the expansion of permanent human presence into the cosmos, which unmanned space flight is unable to fulfill. In this case the author could could argue that some resources should be shifted to unmanned space flight, but certainly not that all resources should be moved as seems to be his intention. The author of the opinion piece fails to make his case that our resources should be invested in unmanned spaceflight. His reasoning is based on the cost, risk, and results of the two programs, for which no relevant evidence is provided. The author also fails to recognize that there might be more differences between unmanned and manned space flight than just cost and risk, and that these difference could have bearing on a decision to adjust funding for both programs. My opinion: I actually answer questions from the public for NASA. I hope I get thrown a softball like this on the actual exam ;) However my proximity to the subject matter might blind me to looking at it the way graders do. Very interested to hear feedback.

Men and women, because of their inherent physical differences, are not equally suited for many tasks. There are physical differences between men and women that in general affect the suitability of one gender over the other for certain tasks. For this it is easy to find examples. However I find that is not enough to satisfy the claim under all possible interpretations. Compared with men, women are often smaller, have less physical strength, and have different reproductive organs. This certainly does make women candidates better on average for certain tasks such as fine craftsmanship (requiring small, dexterous hands), and less suited for tasks requiring physical strength such as search and rescue in extreme environments. And no man will ever be able to physically replace a woman when it comes to the motherly tasks of birth and nursing. In addition, it could be argued that sexual differences indirectly lead to dangerous social complications if men and women were mixed in certain professions, such as front-line infantry combat. In these cases it might be better for society to pick one gender over the other for that category of work. However much of the claim rests on the phrasing "equally suited for many tasks", in which I would place special emphasis on the word many. "Many" can mean more than two, in which case the previous examples support the claim. However a less pedantic interpretation would interpret the claim as that the number of tasks men and women are not equally suited for is comparable to the number for which they are. I argue that this is not the case, and therefore reject the claim without further clarification. Most tasks in life, whether it is choice of profession, parenthood, or simpler tasks like buying groceries or balancing a checkbook, are performed equally well by both genders. The subset of tasks where physical size, strength, or sexual organs play a role is remarkably small. Furthermore, as the information revolution continues, machinery is replacing more and more tasks that once required fine dexterity or physical prowess. More and more men and women are required to perform knowledge-work, and there is little evidence that men and women think so drastically differently so as to be better at one profession of knowledge-work than the other. For me to accept the claim, I would need clarification on what is meant by "many": more than two tasks, or a majority of tasks? Also, is the subset of tasks to be considered constrained in any way? Are we talking about the primordial tasks of early hunter-gather humans, or the modern tasks of today's information economy? Without clarification, I am forced to evaluate the claim very generally, and in doing so I find that it lacks adequate support. My opinion (please read and score the essay first): this is my first timed essay since taking the ACT for college years ago. It was part of the Princeton free diagnostic test. In this essay I tried to find common ground to expand upon the one-sentence issue, providing enough context to actually refute the claim. However I think this was a failed approach... I spent the whole second paragraph agreeing with the claim before disagreeing with it - a single sentence would have done fine. Spending half the essay adding to the claim and then spending the other half tearing it down sounds a lot like a strawman. Interested to hear others opinions of course.