Logical Reasoning Problem Set 1 question 97

[salsaden]

I had a question about problem #97 about the neighborhood association meeting. I can not understand what the stem is asking me to find- answer choice B and answer choice D both seem to determine that rehabilitating the housing may have been a better option, and answer choice A seems to determine that demolishing the houses was the right decision.

Is the answer supposed to prove one or the other? Or both? Why is answer choice A wrong?

[WestDakota]

Okay, forgive me here, because I don't have this question in front of me, and I'm relying on memory. (Many, many people have had problems with this question, so it's etched pretty deeply onto my brain!)

But to get you started, the question is asking which answer choice would mean EITHER that demolishing was the better option OR that rehabbing was the better option. The key with this question is to realize that an answer choice describing how rehabbing was a BAD idea is not the same thing as an answer choice saying that demolishing was the RIGHT idea. In other words, just because you weaken one option doesn't mean that you strengthen the other option. For example, does answer choice A clearly say the buildings should've been demolished? Or does it really just say that rehabbing was a bad idea?

I hope that gets you on the right track. If you're still stuck, I'll be able to get where I can look at the actual question a bit later and try to help you more specifically.

[WestDakota]

Now I actually have the question in front of me.

Answer choice A says that rehabbing is right choice "UNLESS the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety." Since the stimulus tells us that these abandoned houses DID pose a threat to safety, we are in the realm of the exception (the "unless" clause), and thus, rehabbing is NOT the proposal that should have been adopted. But this answer choice doesn't even address demolishing as an option, so it can't be the right answer; in other words, it doesn't "determine that demolishing the houses was the right decision," as the question stem commands.

Answer choice D says, in a nutshell, "Don't demolish, until all other possible alternatives have been tried." And they didn't try all possible alternatives (such as rehabbing), so this answer choice basically translates as "Demolishing shouldn't have been done." But just like (A), this answer choice only mentions one option: demolishing. Rehabbing isn't referred to in any way. So because it doesn't "determine that rehabbing was the right decision," it can't be the answer either.

Answer choice B, on the other hand, mentions "two proposals" and says that when only one of them prevents trying the other one later, then the approach that doesn't foreclose the other (in other words, rehabbing, which doesn't foreclose trying demolition later) should be the one adopted. In short, "rehabbing should be the proposal adopted." Because it endorses a proposal, rather than merely frowning upon the alternative proposal, it's the only one that answers the question stem.