Q16 - There are two kinds of horror

[christinamattos]

Why is the answer not B? I eliminated E fairly quickly, but it is actually the correct answer.

[giladedelman]

Ah! This is a great problem.

So here are the givens:

- There are (exactly) two flavors of horror story: mad scientist and monstrous beast.
- Some monstrous beast horror stories symbolize a psychological disturbance.
- Mad scientist horror stories typically express the author's views that science isn't enough.
- ALL horror stories 1) describe violations of natural law and 2) are intended to produce dread.

Now, we're looking for an inference that MUST BE TRUE on the basis of these statements.

(E) is correct, because some monstrous beast horror stories symbolize something. Those stories, since they're horror stories, must describe violations of the laws of nature. So, it must be true that SOME stories with symbolism (the monstrous beast ones) describe violations of the laws of nature.

(A) is incorrect because there may be descriptions of monstrous beasts that aren't horror stories.

(B) is incorrect because although all horror stories share these two features, that doesn't mean that anything with one of the features must have the other.

For example, if I say, ALL Swedish people are tall and blond, we can't infer that any tall person is also blond.

(C) is incorrect because all we know is that some horror stories of a particular kind do this.

(D) is incorrect because of detail creep: the view that science isn't enough is not the same thing as an "antiscientific" view.

Does that clear this one up for you?

[mcrittell]

I understand that the two terms "antisci" and "sci knowledge isn't enough" are different, but would it also be fair to nix D because it's too severely unsupported to state "most" stories?

[nflamel69]

If D actually said most HORROR stories, then most would not be a problem, since it is explicitly said typical, which is more than half of the time. I think. D is almost kind of like A, may most stories about mad scientists aren't horror stories, maybe they are autobiographies( hopefully that's not true).