Q11 - The most vocal proponents

[luke111234]

Can someone run through each of the answers?

After reading the argument, I initially prephrased my answer to be something like "no permanent resident's interests will be served by the law." Which I didn't see.

I chose C because if none of the island's summer residents would benefit from the law (which is the negation of C) then anyone supporting the law could not be serving the interests of the outsides because the outsiders would not benefit and have no interest (I guess, as I write this, I'm assuming benefit = interest, which is invalid, but I feel is also reasonable. I feel like common sense association between words is ok for some questions but is not ok for others).

[maryadkins]

Be careful about negating...the negation of (C), which uses the word "most," is not "none."

The negation of "most" is "not most" (or "less than most").

This means that some of the island's residents could definitely still benefit. So in sum, (C) doesn't do anything to the argument.

(B), on the other hand, says the cons outweigh the pros for the permanent residents. If we negate this to read "The cons DON'T outweigh the pros for the permanent residents," the argument falls apart.

As for the others:

(A) makes it about average income, which is out of scope.

(D) is a premise booster.

(E) is also a premise booster.

Note that if we negate both (D) and (E) the argument remains intact.

Hope this helps!

[LolaC289]

I think I have a problem concerning "at the cost of" in the conclusion here.

If we negate (B), the problems doesn't outweigh the benefits, so what? The problems would still exist, we would still be "at the cost of creating problems", right? The answer seems to imply if the benefits equal or outweigh the problems, the problems are just automatically erased.

If we claim: We shouldn't eat too much sugar, because it leaves us at the cost of obesity.

Then someone says: But eating much sugar makes us so much smarter that whatever bad effects may brought by obesity would at least be counteracted.

...But, we are still left at the cost of being obesity. Isn't it?

[JeremyK460]

I think I have a problem concerning "at the cost of" in the conclusion here.

If we negate (B), the problems doesn't outweigh the benefits, so what? The problems would still exist, we would still be "at the cost of creating problems", right? The answer seems to imply if the benefits equal or outweigh the problems, the problems are just automatically erased.

If we claim: We shouldn't eat too much sugar, because it leaves us at the cost of obesity.

Then someone says: But eating much sugar makes us so much smarter that whatever bad effects may brought by obesity would at least be counteracted.

...But, we are still left at the cost of being obesity. Isn't it?

Here are my thoughts on this...

Negating the answer: the problems of the law don’t outweigh any benefits of it.

This negation can also mean that the problems of the proposed law and the benefits of the proposed law are balanced; one doesn’t outweigh the other (it’s a net-zero). If that’s the case, that achieving an overall balance between benefits produced by the proposed law and problems produced by the proposed law then how could anyone who supports it be serving the interests of only one side of the equation?