#15 - Columnist: Shortsighted motorists learn the hard way

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (B)

This stimulus argues in favor of the actions of a local city council in hiring a long-term economic development advisor. The columnist remarks that near-by cities that have invested in long-term economic development have seen results from their investments. Therefore, the columnist concludes that the city council should be praised for making a strong investment. In Weaken questions without causal reasoning, you can often weaken the argument by attacking the link between the premise(s) and the conclusion. Here, the author supports the conclusion in two main ways. First, the columnists draws an analogy between long-term economic planning and preventative car maintenance, implying that just as preventative maintenance pays off in the long run, so too will the economic investment. Second, he or she remarks that other local cities have benefited from similar long-term planning and investment. To Weaken the argument, we will want to argue that the actions of the local city-council are in some way importantly different from the cases the columnist tries to cite for comparison.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice is not inconsistent with the facts of the analogy, and it does not serve to attack the link between the analogy and the conclusion. The columnist stated that “almost all” preventative maintenance pays off in the long run, and not that it would necessarily pay off in every case. Further, the cars could still require expensive repairs, so long as the repairs were less than what would have been required in the absence of the maintenance. Therefore, this answer choice does not weaken the columnists’ argument.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. The columnist’s argument is supported by comparing the actions of the city-council to the actions of city-councils in neighboring cities. By differentiating the columnist’s city from the neighboring cities, this answer choice suggests that the author’s city may not see the same positive results from the investment in long-term economic development as the neighboring cities did.

Answer choice (C): The discussion of car maintenance was just an analogy. The reasons behind why people chose not to perform maintenance on their cars are irrelevant to the issue of if it would be valuable to perform the maintenance in the long run.

Answer choice (D): In this stimulus, the city has already acted and hired an advisor. Therefore, it is not relevant that some cities cannot afford to hire an advisor as this city already has.

Answer choice (E): The conclusion of the stimulus is that the investment will pay off in several years. This answer choice does not impact that conclusion because the conclusion allows for there to be a time lag between the investment and the positive results.

[melissa27]

For this question I was able to pick to correct answer but did so by eliminating the other four which I knew were incorrect. However, I didn't really understand how this answer choice weakened the argument. Could you please explain how answer choice B weakens the argument?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Melissa,

Answer choice (B) is saying that the situation between the "other cities" in the argument and the columnist's city is dissimilar enough to make a comparison between them unhelpful.

With this answer, I like to describe it as if the analogy between the cities doesn't hold. That is, they are too different to allow for proper comparison. It's kind of like this example:

• Argument: Here in Smallville we should build a subway system because New York city built one and that has really helped their transit situation.
  
  Objection: But Smallville has only 750 residents where NYC has millions.

Sure, the idea is extreme, but it the objection above is similar to what (B) is doing in this problem.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[netherlands]

Hey there PS,

I was stuck between A and B on this one and don't understand why B is better than A.

[Ron Gore]

Hi netherlands!

To make sure I help you get as much out of this exchange as possible, would you mind telling me what your prephrase for this question was, and what you find compelling about (A) and (B) as answer choices?

Thanks!

Ron

[netherlands]

Hm, looking back I don't think I had a prephrase!

I guess I just saw a conclusion based off two premises:

Concl: The council is likely to benefit.
Premise one: An analogy stating that motorists benefit from preventive care
Premise two: An example of another city doing the same thing and having benefited.

So I looked for something showing that it was unlikely that the council would benefit.

Since the conclusion was partially based off the motorist analogy I though between A/B the answer weakening that analogy also weakened the conclusion. To me B said that the columnist's city was different in size from the cities that were successful, but doesn't necessarily mean his city can't also benefit.

Maybe I should be paying more attention to the "big payoff" and "large returns" phrases.

[Steve Stein]

Thanks for your response; your first sentence provides a valuable insight--prephrasing can be very beneficial!

In the example in question, your breakdown is accurate:

Premise: Preventative car maintenance almost always pays off in the end.

Premise: Other cities have derived benefit from an economic development adviser.

Conclusion: By hiring such an adviser the city is likely to see a big payoff in the end.

The question asks for the choice that will weaken the author's argument, so the right answer will probably either make it less likely that such an investment will pay off, or point out a reason why the premises offered don't provide support.

Correct answer choice B provides a reason to believe that the second premise offered might not actually apply that well to the decision at hand; the greater the difference between those other cities and this one, the less applicable that premise is, and the weaker the argument.

I hope this is helpful! Please let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve

[netherlands]

Ok I JUST realized that the stimulus said that preventive maintenance "almost always pays off. That completely makes "A" irrelevant and "B" the correct answer choice. I didn't realize that until I saw where you rewrote it in your explanation!

I was confused bc I hadn't realized it said that - so it was difficult for me to understand why different circumstances between cities would hands down trump the fact that preventive care doesn't always work if that disclaimer (almost always) wasn't in there.

BUT-since, the stimulus does say "almost always" then saying that even some breakdown literally has not effect on the argument - it's just a restatement of what was already said in the stimulus, thus the fact that the cities differ from one another makes B stronger.

Omitting small details accidentally can have such a huge affect on the answer!

[jrafert]

Can someone explain why "E" is wrong?

I feel that I am doing much worse since studying and it's very confusing to me:/ I chose E because of what I thought I had learned from the power score books, which is that you need to pay very close to the language in the question stem and the language in the answers, IE if a word in the question stem implies a certain amount of time or degree (in this case, 'maintenance almost always pays off in the LONG TERM') you need to be very aware that the language in the answers matches this length or intensity.

I chose "E" because the car analogy implies that investment in economic development will not pay off for a long time (long term, see above).

Then, in the question stem the author says "The council made an investment that is likely to have a big pay off in SEVERAL YEARS." (not long-term).

Then, "E" says that "cities the that have earned large returns did not earn any returns during the first FEW YEARS of employment."

If they aren't getting returns for the first few years, that indicates that the city cannot expect a big pay off in several years. Because there is no pay off during the first several years. Also, the analogy that was originally used involved a long term investment, not an investment over a few years. So the expectation of quick pay off is not realistic.

How is my reasoning wrong?

[jrafert]

I would also add that I would NEVER pick B. It makes no sense to me. It assumes a bunch of things that are not present in the question stem.

Who says the size of the city matters? WE're told we're not supposed to bring in 'outside assumptions' when answering LSAT questions but this certainly involves bringing in new information. At what point is it indicated in the question that small and large cities don't function in the same way or that an economic planner will have a different impact in a large or a small city? I'm sorry but I never would have assumed that, it seems like economic planners would have an impact regardless, so I immediately discarded this answer choice as totally irrelevant. I still don't understand why it makes sense.