#6 - Engineer: Wide roads free of obstructions have been

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[AYYY]

The correct answer is A: Conditions that create a feeling of security also encourage risk taking.
I picked C: Technical fixes are inevitably temporary.

my question is how global warming slow down could give people "a feeling of security"? I get the first part, which free of obstacles give security feeling. But global warming? just because we assume it is common sense?
And regarding to C, why not?

Thanks

[Ricky_Hutchens]

Hi Ayyy,

What the stimulus does do is give us a solution that had the opposite effect than what you would expect and suggest that the same thing would happen with a solution to a totally different problem.

In the first instance, we have a solution that was suppose to reduce risky driving but encouraged more risky driving. Notice that it doesn't say that the solution ever had the desired effect, not even temporarily. In the second instance, we have a solution that would limit global warming, but would encourage people to participate in a behavior that leads to more global warming. In both cases, the solution actually leads to more of the original problem. But why?

This is where I believe you are hung up. In the first instance, the risk is to the driver and is obvious, but a risk doesn't have to be immediate bodily harm. In the case of global warming, the solution causes people to feel secured in that global warming is in check. This security causes people to behave in a way that risks increasing global warming.

[fersian]

HI there. I understand why 'A' makes sense now, and why 'C' doesn't. However, I'm having trouble eliminating my other contender 'D'. Could you help me see why that is a wrong answer?

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Sure thing, fersian! The problem with answer D is that it is way too strong a statement for this type of "Must Be True" question. Technical fixes "cannot" discourage taking risks? Or is it just that sometimes they encourage some additional risk-taking? It would be pretty hard to conclude that technical fixes can never, in any circumstances, discourage risk-taking, based solely on the wide road example and the speculation about blocking some of the sun's rays. That's not the principle at play in this stimulus. It's not about what those fixes cannot do, but about what they do.

For Must Be True questions, including those that invoke a principle like this one does, be sure to pick answers that are easy to defend based solely on the text. Extreme language should always be scrutinized, and selected only when you have extreme evidence to back it up.

[ShannonOh22]

Hi Powerscore folks,

This one has me stumped. I initially selected C as my answer choice and while I can stomach the idea of C being incorrect, I am really struggling with A as an accurate, or even somewhat defensible, answer. A) "Conditions that create a feeling of security also encourage risk taking". The example given of wider roads encouraging drivers to "take more risks" obviously follows this principle. However, there is absolutely no mention of "risk taking" when it comes to global warming. Nor would that make sense - let's assume, for example's sake, that NASA developed a technical fix to slow or reverse global warming, and (unlikely enough) the general population is made aware of this development. The stimulus in no way indicates that this would somehow cause them to spontaneously start "taking risks" with their carbon dioxide emission contributions. Truth be told, it's hard to find any "logic" at all in the second statement in the stimulus. The language used is also very different from one example to the other...with the road example, it states they "have been shown" to encourage drivers to take more risks. This implies some kind of empirical study, or at the very least some semblance of factual support for the claim. With global warming, however, the author writes it "might cause more global warming" at some point in the future. Very noncommittal, and again certainly doesn't imply any sense of risk-taking.

How is it that we are to arrive at A being a principle that is invoked by the author's two statements? I can see it for the first (wide roads), but not the second (global warming). Is its clearly defensible application to the first statement enough to make that answer right?

I normally stop half way through writing out my questions because I realize my error somewhere along the way, but this one is different. I feel like C and D are both broader and therefore more defensible than A.

Please help set me straight!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Shannon!

I certainly understand your frustrations with the Engineer's argument--it's not a great one! Unfortunately, most arguments on the LSAT are not very good. They often have gaps, inconsistencies, false assumptions, etc. But LSAT authors always think they've provided us a perfect, logically sound argument. Our task is to try to understand the author's argument as stated, while recognizing where the author may have gone wrong.

I think that's the piece missing from your current analysis: you need to focus on the argument structure. These aren't 2 totally disconnected sentences or simply 2 examples. The author is presenting an argument. The author's conclusion is the 2nd sentence: that a technical fix to slow or reverse global warming would encourage more carbon dioxide emissions, possibly causing more global warming in the future. What evidence does the author give us to believe this? He uses an analogy and compares slowing global warming to driving on a wide road free of obstruction. His reasoning is that these are similar cases (he uses the term "Likewise"), so if driving on a road free of obstructions encourages risky driving, slowing global warming would encourage risky behavior involving carbon dioxide emissions.

I agree that this is not a great argument. Analogies only work if you are comparing 2 actually similar cases and a wide road free of obstructions doesn't seem to have much in common with a technical fix for global warming. But we're not being asked to identify the flaw in this argument, to attack the argument, or even to fix the argument. Instead, we're being asked what principle the argument is invoking. So we need to understand the argument as the author has written it so that we can determine what principle he is using. The author thinks that these 2 cases are similar. He thinks increasing carbon dioxide emissions is akin to risk-taking while driving. It doesn't matter whether we agree that these are similar instances. We're essentially just describing the principle underlying the argument without passing any judgment on that argument.

(Note: Though the accuracy of the analogy is irrelevant when we're just describing the principle of the argument, an argument could be made that increasing carbon emissions is a type of risky behavior because it's a behavior that could have negative consequences. These consequences may not be as immediate as the consequences that could result from risky driving, but that's likely why the author is using an analogy in the first place: to make issues about global warming seem more concrete.)

Answer choices (C) and (D) do not describe the principle underlying this argument. Again, this argument relies solely on an analogy. So the principle has to deal with the connection between the two cases that the author is trying to make. He is not trying to connect these cases with the idea that technical fixes are temporary or with the idea that technical fixes cannot discourage risk-taking behavior. He is trying to connect them with the idea that creating a feeling of security (with wide roads free of obstruction or technical fixes for global warming) encourage risk taking (in drivers and in activities involving carbon dioxide emissions).

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[ShannonOh22]

Kelsey, thank you so much! That helps tremendously...I do need to remind myself to pull back from the argument's content, and just look at the overall structure for these types of questions. I tend to get in the "attack mode" and stay there, regardless of question stem...your response makes a lot of sense, and helps to remind me I need to treat each question individually. Thank you again!