Q12 - The higher a dam, the more exposed it is to forces tha

[rosemerrychill]

I would love to write out my thinking process except i have absolutely nothing when i saw this question. Help

[sumukh09]

This is a resolve the paradox question as you already know so we're asked to find an answer choice that explains the paradox in the stimulus. We need to know what the paradox is before evaluating the answer choices. In this case, the paradox is that arch dams under 100 M have collapsed in the last 40 years when we would normally expect - as stated in the first premise of the stimulus - dams over 100 M to be the ones to collapse. So we need to resolve this discrepancy and figure out why dams under 100 M have been collapsing and not dams over 100 M.

Answer choices:

A) this is of no help at all. So what if the higher dams are usually arch dams? Why are the ones under 100 M collapsing and not the higher ones when that is what is supposed to happen?

B) Complexity and the cost of the dam is irrelevant and out of scope - this has no bearing on the discrepancy.

C) is correct -- the larger/higher structures have been built more carefully and have been paid more attention to. If more care and attention has gone into building higher dams then maybe that explains why they have not collapsed?

D) Good to know but it is not of concern in this argument since it does not help explain the result

E) they're less subject to collapse than other dams under 100 M? Kinda the opposite of what we're looking for

[bbirdwell]

Nice explanation! Thanks for contributing!

[WaltGrace1983]

I'll add my two cents here.

One thing to note that I think will really simplify these answer choices is that we are simply examining two different dams of the same type: (1) arch dams that are over 100m and (2) arch dams that are under 100m. Thus, answers like (A), (B), (D), and (E) are simply irrelevant.

(A) is talking about dams in general but makes no distinctions.

(B) is comparing arch dams to other kinds of dams but we don't want this; we want to compare one type of arch dam to the other type of arch dam

(D) is also talking about arch dams in general. Yet once again we want to compare one type of arch dam to the other type of arch dam.

(E) This is getting closer! However, arch dams under 100m don't need to be compared to other types of dams under 100m high. This is simply out of scope.

The right answer has to compare each type of arch dam to the other. It has to say something about both.

(C) does this, albeit in a more indirect way. It says that the larger the structure, the more careful people were when they built/designed it. This implicitly would mean that people were less careful when building the smaller structure. In other words, arch dams over 100m received more care than arch dams under 100m, fully explaining the paradox.