#5 - Marisa: Existing zoning regulations must be loosened

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[15veries]

So is D right because in Marisa's argument she talks about property's value, but not the how valuable an area is?
But I thought although they refer to different things, they use the dictionary definition about "value" and in that sense they do not misrepresent the meaning...

(I chose C but I did not like this either)

[TigerJin]

What kind of question would this be categorized as? These misunderstanding questions used to be very common, but it looks like they are bringing them back now. I got it wrong on test day, but have it figured out now. My concern is that I will freeze up/panic again when one of these show up in December again. They are perhaps the hardest logical reasoning question for me, as. they normally look like no real misunderstanding has occurred, to me. What method does Powerscore have for solving these questions?

[Claire Horan]

Hi 15veries,

The question asks how Tyne "misinterpreted" Marisa's remarks. Misinterpretation (not to be confused with misrepresentation) doesn't mean that either person is wrong about the dictionary definition of a work. Rather, misinterpretation occurs because the listener fails to grasp the speaker's meaning. In this example, Tyne misses the contextual information that would lead him to realize Marisa is referring to properties' economic value. In his response, Tyne includes a type of aesthetic or inherent "value" that is irrelevant to the economic point that Marisa was making. Although these are both types of value/values, they are very different concepts, so Tyne's response is ineffective.

TigerJin,
This question makes use of an "Uncertain Use of a Term or Concept," a topic which is discussed in as part of the list of common errors of reasoning. To tackle this kind of question, look for the repetition of a word in both speakers' comments and ask yourself whether they are using it in the same way. Notice that some words are more capable of being used in different ways than others. For example, (A) "regulations," would be an unlikely choice because the term is not susceptible of a variety of meanings. On the other hand, choice (E) "significantly" has both a statistical meaning and a more general meaning as "importantly."

I hope this helps!

[mN2mmvf]

I struggled a lot with this question and ultimately picked randomly on the test, and then chose (D) on blind review.

(D) seems like the best answer by process of elimination, but I burned a ton of time trying to understand why it was so likely that Tyne misinterpreted anything. I can see how his statement about the "value of natural, undisturbed areas" could be understood as non-economic, but I thought it made a lot more sense understood as economic.

If, for example, a bunch of developers were building hotels on a beach, without zoning restrictions the developers would over-run the land and, in doing so, cause each of their own properties to become less valuable, because the quality of the beach declines with excessive development. Some natural, undisturbed land actually increases the value of the land that is developed. This seems to me like a foundational premise of all zoning regulations.

What confused me so much about this question is that, to me, Tyne's statement only makes sense if it is understood as economic. If he's talking about the natural non-economic value of undisturbed land, why would he preface his argument with "Though it is true that the recent increase in...regulations...could be seen by developers as merely an activists' ploy to restrict development"...in fact, X-Y-Z? If we understand his argument as talking about something non-economic, then it seems necessarily true that the regulations *are* activists' ploys to restrict development. That's the whole point!

But if we take Tyne to be talking about economic value, his "though...but" construction makes perfect sense. Though it may seem like a ploy to redistrict development, it's actually an attempt to preserve the economic value of the surrounding development.

You'll probably say I'm bringing into way too much outside information and assumptions to my analysis. But what's the point of "though...could be" if he's not disputing the purely economic logic of Marisa's argument?

[James Finch]

Hi M,

Understanding the misinterpretation means very precisely identifying the scope of the two uses of the word. You're correct in noting that none of the other answer choices have any amibguity about their uses in the respective arguments ((C) and (E) don't even recur in Tyne's statement at all), and thus (D) can be chosen on the basis of a process of elimination alone. But if we look closer at the respective usages of "value," we can distinguish between Marisa's use of "property values," which implies a very narrow focus on potential or actual sale price, and Tyne's more broad "value, which could be economic or non-economic. Even if Tyne only uses it in an economic sense, he still uses it more broadly than Marisa, as economic "value" can encompass much more than sale price.

Consider the possibility of a plot of land set aside as a redwood preserve, with limited logging allowed to thin the growth of the trees. The sale price/market value of the land may immediately plummet, but over the long term more economic value may be extracted from even the limited logging allowed than would occur if it was subdivided into lots for single-family homes, for example. It's still a broader usage of "value" than "property values."

Also, the dismissal of the "activist's ploy" argument is hedged, as he implies that the zoning regulations are not merely an activist's ploy, but holds open the possibility that they may be partially such. So his use of the term "value" could still contain both economic and non-economic elements.

[mN2mmvf]

Thank you James! That helps.

[LawSchoolDream]

Doesn't value in the second speaker refer to NATURE driven like the value of having nature around? Is that the same as Asthetic, as the staff noted?

[Chandler H]

Hi LawSchoolDream,

You could say that "value" in Tyne's response could either relate specifically to nature, or to aesthetics, or to both. They're not exactly the same, but the important thing is that "value" in Marisa's comment definitely relates to the economic value of land, not the aesthetic or natural value.

Hope that clarifies things!