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[交流] argument 137,大家来砸砸

ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
字数：420 用时：0:30:00 日期：2006-7-26

The arguer contends that the Mason City (MC) council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River (MR) because of the assumption that the public need to use these lands for recreation. To strengthen his viewpoint, he cites a survey to show the public's interest in water sports and fact that the agency has announced to clean up the dirty water in the river according to the public's complaints about the water problem in the river. At first glance, this argument seems sound, but a careful examination reveals that it commits several fallacies and ultimately it remains unconvincing.

In the first place, since the validity of a survey are closely related to such aspects as whether the procedure of the survey is random sampled, whether the respondents are objective enough, and so on. However, all of these aspects, which can not be verified by the arguer, lead to undermine the reliability of the survey. Thus, whether the majority in Mason City put water sports as a favorite form of recreation is doubtful.

Even if a lot of people really like water sports very much, there are many other possibilities concerning the cause that residents avoid the river, other than the unclean water. First, the river in the Mason City may not be suitable to water sports at all. For supporting examples, the water in the river is torrential and the water is so deep that it is dangerous to swim. People tend to choose safty forms of recreation on a large whole. Second, there are a lot of other forms of recreation, such as video games, card games and so on, which are more attractive than the water sports, even if people rank the water sports as their favorite recreation.

last but no least, even if people avoid the river because of the unclean water and people will increase use the river after the river is cleaned, it is not reasonable to take it for granted that the we should increase budget for improve the publicly own lands along the MR. It is sure a large expenditure for the Mason City to improve such lands and this expenditure is a great risk because the people’s need for such lands are still not sure. At the same time, no signs of the public's appeal to improve these roads, and these improvements may be just lost labour.

All in all, the arguer's conclusion is still unconvincing as it stands. To better propose his idea, a comprehensive investigation is needed to narrow down and find the actual cause of the reason why people avoid the river even if they like water sports. In addition, the arguer should weighing the benefit and expenditure for improving the publicly owned lands. Only after considering these matters above, a more convincing conclusion will be made.

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