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- Wed Mar 30, 2016 6:43 pm
#22660
Question #14: Parallel Flaw, #%. The correct answer choice is (D)
Branson’s argument is a simple one, but deeply, and one hopes obviously, flawed. Branson begins with two facts: most of the air pollution in the country comes from the largest cities, and these cities would pollute less with fewer inhabitants. Reasonable so far.
The third sentence gives us the conclusion, and it’s dubious at best. Branson believes that, because big cities generate the most pollution and would pollute if less populated, an overall reduction in pollution would occur if many people in those cities moved out of the cities and into rural areas.
But think about what net pollution (pollution “as a whole”) from people really means. It’s the total amount that all the people in the country pollute, wherever they are. If each person pollutes X amount, and a city has a million people, then that’s one million X polluters. Now imagine half of those people move to rural areas as Branson advises. You’ve got 500,000 X polluters left in the city...and 500,000 X polluters elsewhere. That’s still a total of one million X, just like you had before when the city was more populated.
In short, people pollute a given amount, and there’s no reason to think that spreading them out would produce less pollution than clustering them together. The cities themselves might appear to contribute less pollution, but the net amount of pollution is the same since the net amount of polluters is the same.
So we need an answer choice that parallels Branson’s faulty logic, confusing wider distribution with net amount.
Answer choice (A): This is a bad argument, but for a different reason than Branson’s. The mistake in (A) is to go from saying she’ll likely spend more on housing in a city with high housing costs, to saying she’ll spend most of her salary on housing. An increase does not automatically guarantee a majority. However, this is not about net amounts like we saw in the stimulus, so it is incorrect.
Answer choice (B): This argument makes a decent amount of sense (which is immediately cause to eliminate it). If Karen’s family moves from an apartment to a home that is likely to be larger, then it seems fair to think the family will have more room. I take some issues with the strength of language in the conclusion (the family would have more space is more absolute than a word like “typically” supports), but for our purposes here it doesn’t matter. The argument is sufficiently different from Branson’s that we can discard it right away.
Answer choice (C): is another bad argument, but not bad in the same way as Branson’s. The flaw in (C) is assuming that just because most of the fields in Ward’s county are planted with corn then most his Ward’s farm is planted with corn. There’s no reason to believe Ward must behave the same as the majority of the county. Notice though that (C) has nothing about redistributing a total amount and concluding the total amount would change, and without that parallelism it is incorrect.
Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. This answer provides an excellent duplication of Branson’s faulty reasoning. We’re told that Javier can reduce his overall (notice that word is a synonym for “as a whole”) daily calories by spreading those calories out among a lighter breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then eating the remainder as snacks. This would undoubtedly spread the calories out, but the net calories consumed each day would be the same, just as the net pollution in Branson’s country would be the same even if the people were more spread out.
Answer choice (E): First off, the use of pollution as a topic worries me. Same-subject answer choices are almost always a trap, and (E) is no exception. Specifically, the argument in this answer is much more reasonable than that in the stimulus—if public transportation legitimately reduces pollution by automobiles, and people would use public transportation instead of driving, then it seems fair to believe pollution would be reduced. So that’s more than enough to cross off (E).
I should point out for (E) that the argument is still flawed, however: to conclude that “most of this city’s air pollution would be eliminated” is far too strong; we could argue that some reduction is to be expected, but a reduction of more than 50% simply cannot be known.
Branson’s argument is a simple one, but deeply, and one hopes obviously, flawed. Branson begins with two facts: most of the air pollution in the country comes from the largest cities, and these cities would pollute less with fewer inhabitants. Reasonable so far.
The third sentence gives us the conclusion, and it’s dubious at best. Branson believes that, because big cities generate the most pollution and would pollute if less populated, an overall reduction in pollution would occur if many people in those cities moved out of the cities and into rural areas.
But think about what net pollution (pollution “as a whole”) from people really means. It’s the total amount that all the people in the country pollute, wherever they are. If each person pollutes X amount, and a city has a million people, then that’s one million X polluters. Now imagine half of those people move to rural areas as Branson advises. You’ve got 500,000 X polluters left in the city...and 500,000 X polluters elsewhere. That’s still a total of one million X, just like you had before when the city was more populated.
In short, people pollute a given amount, and there’s no reason to think that spreading them out would produce less pollution than clustering them together. The cities themselves might appear to contribute less pollution, but the net amount of pollution is the same since the net amount of polluters is the same.
So we need an answer choice that parallels Branson’s faulty logic, confusing wider distribution with net amount.
Answer choice (A): This is a bad argument, but for a different reason than Branson’s. The mistake in (A) is to go from saying she’ll likely spend more on housing in a city with high housing costs, to saying she’ll spend most of her salary on housing. An increase does not automatically guarantee a majority. However, this is not about net amounts like we saw in the stimulus, so it is incorrect.
Answer choice (B): This argument makes a decent amount of sense (which is immediately cause to eliminate it). If Karen’s family moves from an apartment to a home that is likely to be larger, then it seems fair to think the family will have more room. I take some issues with the strength of language in the conclusion (the family would have more space is more absolute than a word like “typically” supports), but for our purposes here it doesn’t matter. The argument is sufficiently different from Branson’s that we can discard it right away.
Answer choice (C): is another bad argument, but not bad in the same way as Branson’s. The flaw in (C) is assuming that just because most of the fields in Ward’s county are planted with corn then most his Ward’s farm is planted with corn. There’s no reason to believe Ward must behave the same as the majority of the county. Notice though that (C) has nothing about redistributing a total amount and concluding the total amount would change, and without that parallelism it is incorrect.
Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. This answer provides an excellent duplication of Branson’s faulty reasoning. We’re told that Javier can reduce his overall (notice that word is a synonym for “as a whole”) daily calories by spreading those calories out among a lighter breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then eating the remainder as snacks. This would undoubtedly spread the calories out, but the net calories consumed each day would be the same, just as the net pollution in Branson’s country would be the same even if the people were more spread out.
Answer choice (E): First off, the use of pollution as a topic worries me. Same-subject answer choices are almost always a trap, and (E) is no exception. Specifically, the argument in this answer is much more reasonable than that in the stimulus—if public transportation legitimately reduces pollution by automobiles, and people would use public transportation instead of driving, then it seems fair to believe pollution would be reduced. So that’s more than enough to cross off (E).
I should point out for (E) that the argument is still flawed, however: to conclude that “most of this city’s air pollution would be eliminated” is far too strong; we could argue that some reduction is to be expected, but a reduction of more than 50% simply cannot be known.