#20 - Saunders: Everyone at last week's neighborhood

[Claire Horan]

Hi Biskam,

I don't think I can explain better than Athena did here:

Answer choice (D) states up front that no plan that "requires demolishing . . . houses" should be carried out until all other alternatives have been investigated. However, we know that the neighborhood association went ahead and demolished the Carlton Street houses without considering other alternatives. So there's no way that we can know whether demolishing the houses was the right decision, after all.

The question stem asks us to apply a principle to the stimulus that will determine what decision "should have been adopted." We are asked to do this after the events in the stimulus have already taken place. At this point, answer choice (D) will not help us figure out definitively which decision was the right one.

In contrast, even though the houses are already demolished, the principle in answer choice (B) would lead us to conclude that the opponents of demolition were right because demolishing the houses foreclosed the opportunity to rehabilitate them.

I hope this helps!

[sherrilynm]

Hi bk1111,

This question asks us to find a principle that, if established, would definitively prove one of the two sides of this debate right.

Answer choice (D) is incorrect because, by its own terms, it makes it impossible for us to determine whether demolishing the houses was the right decision.

Answer choice (D) states up front that no plan that "requires demolishing . . . houses" should be carried out until all other alternatives have been investigated. However, we know that the neighborhood association went ahead and demolished the Carlton Street houses without considering other alternatives. So there's no way that we can know whether demolishing the houses was the right decision, after all.

Answer choice (B), by contrast, can be applied to what happened (demolishing the houses without prior investigation of alternatives) and give us a conclusive answer that the pro-demolition group was wrong.

I hope this helps!

Athena Dalton

I've been thinking about this question for a while, because I was also tripped up by D. Is my thinking here correct: according to D, we should investigate other options (eg: rehabilitation of the houses) but D doesn't specify what the next step after that will be. So we've investigated our options - now what? Should we (continue to) rehabilitate, or should we demolish? Is that correct?

[Shannon Parker]

Yes. Answer Choice D merely states the principle that all the options should be investigated, it does not definitively determine which proposal was correct.

Good work.
Shannon

[andriana.caban]

Hi!

This question appears in the LR Training Type, page 235 as a Flaw in Reasoning question.

Can someone explain why answer choice (D) is correct? I chose (C). Am I wrong because the author describes vocal dissent in sentences like "some people tried to claim..." and "those who claimed that the problem could not be solved"?

What would it look like if (C) was correct? Would the author not even mention the opposition then?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Andriana,

I've added a comprehensive explanation as the first post in this thread

[Katherinthesky]

How exactly does this type of question stem fall under "Justify the Conclusion" rather than under, say, Principle?
I've never seen this type of "curveball" question stem before and therefore I fell back on the idea that the correct answer choice would be proving the conclusion stating the majority were right in their assessment that demolition was the way to go - hence my answer A.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Katherine,

Well, this is a Principle question, as evidenced by the "PR" appended to the Justify classification in the first post in this thread, so you are spot on there! But, Principle is not a standalone question type; the Principle designation simply overlays other types, such as Must, Weaken, Strengthen, etc. that's because having Principle in there doesn't ask you do to anything by itself, you still need a task. So, you never see Principle sitting alone by itself, it always adds on to something else. In this case, the wording of the stem indicates that a justification process is occurring ("would determine"), where you are proving/establishing a certain conclusion.

The task is always to follow what they said, and in this case they gave you two possible outcomes to consider, so you couldn't assume they'd go with the majority (and, in fact, it's less likely they'd go that direction simply because the other direction causes more work).

All that said, this is indeed an unusual stem, and really has occurred infrequently. Thanks!

[emmakate]

This is the only question I've encountered that I genuinely do not understand. I've read the stimulus, stem, and answer choices multiple times and been through the forum. Originally, I was between A and B. I struggle to understand how A does not decisively prove that demolition was appropriate.

Does A only prove that rehabilitation was not the correct choice and not prove that demolition was then appropriate?

Is there any podcast episode or YouTube video or anything that walks through this problem specifically? I am struggling even to break this problem into its proper components and use that formula to figure out the answer with the Mechanistic Approach.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi emmakate,

This question is unusual and tricky. While it is categorized as a Justify-Principle question, it is not a "normal" Justify question. In a normal Justify question, you are trying to find the answer that justifies/proves the conclusion in the argument. Here, we'd normally be trying to justify the argument's conclusion that demolition was the right strategy in this situation.

However, this question stem instead asks for a principle that would allow us to determine which of the two strategies (demolition or rehabilitation) would have been correct. In some ways, the question is more similar to the rare Evaluate the Argument question type, which asks for an answer that would be most useful in determining whether the argument is good or bad.

To make matters even trickier, the correct answer (Answer B) actually determines that the rehabilitation strategy should have been the one that was tried first, which is the opposite of what the argument concludes. In other words, Answer B doesn't actually justify the argument in the stimulus (and in fact weakens it), but it does determine which strategy should have been tried first, which is what the question asks.

As for Answer A, there are several problems with this answer.

First, it's important to realize that we need an answer that, when applied to the facts in the stimulus, provides a definitive answer to which strategy should be used. Answer A starts by recommending "the course of action that results in the most housing for people who need it should be the one adopted." Checking the facts in the stimulus, do we have any idea of which strategy results in the most housing? No, this is not addressed at all and you do not want to make assumptions about this.

Second, Answer A ends with "unless the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety." Since this is the situation stated in the stimulus, this means that the first part of the rule regarding providing the most housing is no longer in play. When the necessary condition occurs, the sufficient condition can either occur or not occur, the conditional rule is satisfied either way.

In other words, Answer A does not determine at all which strategy should have been used. You might assume that the fact that "the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety" would indicate that demolition is the right choice, but this is not actually stated anywhere except the conclusion of the argument. Perhaps rehabilitation would also remove the threat just as effectively as demolition?

Answer B, on the other hand, definitely determines that rehabilitation should have been tried first because that way, if rehabilitation doesn't work, then they could always fall back on demolition as Plan B, but not the other way around. If the demolition turns out to be a bad idea, they can't then change their minds and try rehabilitation because the buildings are now completely destroyed.