Q14 - People's antagonism toward development in

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: People's antipathy towards seeing development in their neighborhood can be harmful for cities.

Evidence: Building a club in a neighborhood is usually unpopular, because the club keeps late hours. If neighborhoods are allowed to block new clubs, then cities will never get new clubs.

Answer Anticipation:
What kind of missing links can we find?
If we're trying to get from "a city never gets new clubs" to "can be harmful to a city",
we're assuming something like "having new clubs is a benefit to cities".

If we're trying to get from "neighborhoods are allowed to block new clubs" to "a city will never get new clubs",
we could make several objections: does a new club have to be built in a neighborhood? just because neighborhoods would be allowed to block new clubs, all neighborhoods would block every new club? (they only TEND to be unpopular)

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) "Usually" is too strong. "At least sometimes" would have probably been fair.

(B) Ha. Impossibly strong: "all 'hoods are identical".

(C) YES, this just connects the "consequence" in the example to the conclusion language of "harmful to a city". If never getting another new club wasn't a bad thing, then the author's example doesn't show any harm to a city.

(D) Fake opposite. (Stimulus says: "small children love their moms", wrong answer says: "large children don't love their moms). We only know that clubs, which DO keep late hours, are usually unpopular. We have no idea what the author thinks about venues that don't keep late hours.

(E) "Invariably" is hopelessly strong.

Takeaway/Pattern: This one follows some classic Necessary Assumption patterns:
A new term/concept in the conclusion was a quick way to find the correct answer (The evidence covers antagonism towards development in one's neighborhood, but it never says anything equivalent to "can be harmful to a city").
Strong language is an easy way to get rid of lots of answers.
Fake opposites are very common.

#officialexplanation

[DariusI803]

isn't answer choice C too strong, considering that the conclusion only says that people's antagonism... CAN be harmful to a city? I feel like this assumption is only necessary if it says.. "It could be a bad thing for a city if the city never gets new nightclubs."

[smiller]

When working on a Necessary Assumption question, being suspicious of strongly-worded answers is definitely helpful. But unlike choice (B), choice (C) isn't strong in a way that creates a problem.

To understand why choice (C) is necessary, we have to consider what would happen if it is not true. If choice (C) is not true, then this statement would be true: "if the city never gets new nightclubs, that might not be a bad thing for a city." This would seriously weaken the argument. It would cast significant doubt on the conclusion.

The wording you suggested also works. It would be a necessary assumption. If we negate your suggestion, we get this statement: "it is not a bad thing for a city if the city never gets new nightclubs." That really knocks the wind out of the argument.

But again, answer choice (C) as it was originally written is still necessary.

The takeaway here is that we should be suspicious of strong language in the answer choices of Necessary Assumption questions, but strong language by itself is not an automatic reason to eliminate. We have to consider exactly how that strong language impacts the argument.

[HowieeeC76]

Wondering if anyone can confirm my reason/train of thought for eliminating (E).

I was down to (C) and (E) and correctly chose (C) because upon negating the answer (E), the language did not seem to match the stimulus: "New nightclubs will produce NO benefits for the neighbourhoods in which they open". Just because it produces NO benefit, it doesn't mean that it will be HARMFUL i.e. it can have zero effect.

Greatly appreciate any feedback