Q16.

[creek1262]

Hi guys, so I saw that we don't have any discussion about Q16.
On my PT, I picked A and in my BR, I chose B. Both times I didn't go back to the passage but upon review, I found support for E, which is the correct answer.
That support can be found in lines 21-26 "growth beyond ideal point..increase the cost to the environment at a faster rate than the benefit to producers and consumers." It's almost verbatim so I feel really stupid for missing this question but hope this helps someone to find the support in the passage quickly!

[ohthatpatrick]

Thanks for writing an explanation!

Let me reinforce a couple things you said, not to add to your self-loathing but to underscore some takeaways:

The answer was "almost verbatim"
That's something we expect more out of questions that say
"according to the passage / the passage cites / the passage states"

It's useful to remember that these question stems usually lead to easier to verify answers.

The question stem wordings that make us think, "This answer will be a hard-to-decipher rewording of something we know from the passage" are
inferred, implies, suggests, most likely to agree

Both times "I didn't look back to the passage"
This might be the most important thing you could change to affect your RC accuracy!

I spend most of my time teaching RC trying to get students to do more thinking / researching / prephrasing before they look at answer choices.

For most of these question stems, there are keywords in there that allow you to find the "Proof Window": the sentence or sentences from the passage that this question is testing.

I would see the keywords on Q16 of "steady-state economists ... unlimited economic growth ... dangerous ... because"

In lines 26-28, I see a match for these keywords:
"Steady-state economists thus believe that ... an ever growing economy is dangerous".

I *know* that I'm looking at the right spot, because of the tight correspondence between question stem keywords and passage wording.

We were asked to look for WHY they find it dangerous. Since this sentence say "they THUS believe that it's dangerous", I know that the preceding sentence must be where the reason WHY is located.

Looking at line 21-26, it looks like they're saying "if we kept growing beyond the optimal size, it would increase the cost to the environment faster that it would benefit us, and we would generate cycles that impoverish rather than enrich".

ANSWERS
(A) there was nothing in that Proof Window about "replacing" one resource with another
(B) nothing in that Window about "converting into products faster other stuff can compensate for"
(C) nothing in that Window about "generating new markets"
(D) nothing in that Window about "income inequities and capital needed to fix them"
(E) Yup.

If you're thinking to yourself, "Who has time to look back on every question?!"
1. That's fair ... many/most people don't have time to finish all of RC
2. This method doesn't necessarily take more time; it just allocates time differently. By always finding the Proof Window in the passage and re-reading it before I look at answers, I spend way less time on the answer choices. I'm not tossing and turning, agonizing over which answer feels better than another. I have pretty quick, black-and-white reactions to the answers, because I know the test can only be testing me on the Proof Sentence they pointed me to.

Hope this helps.