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

[Dave Killoran]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify-PR. The correct answer choice is (B)

In this stimulus, Saunders discusses two proposed plans for dealing with a particular group of abandoned houses that everyone agrees was a safety threat. Some wanted demolition while others were in favor of rehabilitating the houses. Because the demolition strategy was successful, Saunders asserts, this proves that those in favor of rehabilitation were wrong. The problem with this logic is that the choice of one option (demolition) made the results of the other option impossible to assess (because once you tear down the houses, there's no way to test if rehabbing them would have worked).

The question stem asks for the principle that would decisively prove that one of the two options was superior.

Answer choice (A): The portion that eliminates this answer is at the end: "unless the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety,"and we know from the first sentence of the stimulus that everyone at last week's meeting agreed the houses posed a threat to the safety.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. This answer proves definitively that rehabilitation should have been adopted.

Answer choice (C): This answer begins by stating, "If one of two proposals for renovating..." But, only one of the two proposals was for renovating. Further, we don't know the exact status of funding for both proposals.

Answer choice (D): First, there is no way to know if the houses were basically "sound," just that some people claimed they were sound. Second, an investigation might not change the original decision. Essentially, you are trying to prove that one decision was correct and the other was incorrect. Does this answer make that determination? No, even if you take demolition as problematic, this still does not prove that rehabilitation was the superior.

Answer choice (E): This answer only shows that maybe, but not definitely, that rehabilitation should have been chosen. Thus, it is not strong enough to meet the standard for a correct answer in this question.

[voodoochild]

Can you please help me to understand B)? It says that "If rehabilitation is the option, then go with it" However, argument says that "demolition was better than rehabilitation" Can you please help me?

[Steve Stein]

Thanks for your question. It sounds like you read that principle correctly--it would have advised rehabilitation rather than destruction.

But take a look at the somewhat unique question: which principle would determine, one way or the other, whether demolition was the right thing to do?

Clever question--let me know whether that clears this one up--thanks!

~Steve

[ltoulme]

Hi,

Could you please explain why answer choice (A) is wrong for this question? I interpreted the question stem to say choose the answer that either shows that demolition was right or else an answer choice that shows that rehabilitation would have been right. I thought that (A) showed that demolition was the appropriate choice?

Thanks so much!
Laura

[Claire Horan]

This is answer choice (A):
"When what to do about an abandoned neighborhood building is in dispute, the course of action that would result in the most housing for people who need it should be the one adopted unless the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety."

Does the principle addressed in this answer choice "determine that demolishing the houses was the right decision?"

No. Establishing that it was okay not to take the "most housing for people who need it" course of action does not establish that demolishing the buildings is the right decision.

Does the principle addressed in this answer choice "determine that the proposal advocated by the opponents of demolition should have been adopted?"

No. Some people believed that the buildings posed a threat to neighborhood safety so, according to this principle, it was okay to turn down that proposal.

[yrivers]

Could you please expand on why A is wrong? Is it because the stimulus focuses on the safety of the neighborhood in relation to whether the abandoned houses are there or not? I thought A made sense, thinking it makes a similar claim as what's state in the stimulus, "...since the city had established a fund to help people in need of housing buy and rehabilitate such buildings."

Also, why is E wrong?

If you could further explain (a bit more than what's listed above) on why B is correct, I'd appreciate it!

[Robert Carroll]

yrivers,

The problem with answer choice (A) is that it does not allow you decide which position was correct in this situation. If answer choice (A) is the principle we'd use to determine which side had the right idea, we'd have to think about the situation in the stimulus. Everyone agreed that the buildings posed a threat to safety. In such a situation, the principle doesn't tell us what to do. Think about the principle in answer choice (A) as a conditional:

adopt course with most housing believed to pose threat

This is an application of the Unless Equation.

Because the necessary condition is fulfilled here, the sufficient condition can be true or false without violating the conditional. Thus it tells us nothing about what to do.

Answer choice (E) doesn't tell you what the right thing to do is. It just says that certain conditions are not sufficient to prove a course of action is right, but it doesn't tell you what conditions would be sufficient to make a course of action the right one. We want an answer choice that proves a certain action was definitely the correct one to take.

Answer choice (B) is correct because it says that, in the relevant situation (we have two proposals and only one would preclude the other), one of those two proposals is definitely the correct one. This proves that one proposal or the other is definitely right, answering what the question asked.

Robert Carroll

[bk1111]

Why is D incorrect? I interpreted this answer choice as saying the demolishment plan should not be carried out until all other possible alternatives (in this case, this could include rehabilitation of houses) are investigated. Would this answer choice not determine which proposal should have been adopted, since if the rehabilitation is investigated and fails, the demolishing proposal should be adopted?

[AthenaDalton]

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

[biskam]

I was tempted by D but ended up choosing B. I ultimately crossed out B bc my gut saw "no plan" and thought this would be too extreme. After reading Athena's proposal I'm still not sure if I 100% understand why it's wrong.

Is it because it says "plan for eliminating a neighborhood problem THAT REQUIRES DEMOLISHING" means you've already made your decision? Meaning we ultimately have to demolish, which prevents us from figuring out which of the 2 choices was the right decision? Whereas B allows us to determine which is the right decision...

Thanks!