Q23 - Candidate: The government spends

[nflamel69]

can someone go over answer choices B, D, E?

[a3friedm]

Hi nflamel69,
I'll give this a shot.

1) The government spends more money promoting Highway safety than combatting cigarette smoking.
2) There are more deaths from smoking related diseases than from high accidents.
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3) So more lives would be saved by spending more on anti smoking programs rather than highway safety programs.

There are a couple flaws with this one, but the biggest problem is that there is insufficient evidence to reach the candidate's conclusion. For example, what if money spent combatting cigarette smoking is extremely inefficient. Or the opposite, it is much easier to get someone to remember to drive the speed limit from an ad on a free way bilboard than it is to get them to quit smoking. For all we know, no matter how much we spend in smoking it wont lead to a single less smoker.

A) says we should spend more money on the phenomenon with the higher frequency, not what we're looking for.

B) Argument says investing more resources (practice time) into the phenomenon with a lower frequency would yield more results. This parallels the stimulus and we have the same problem. We don't that the musician practicing more saxaphone would increase their number of playing engagements, and we dont even know if it would make them a better saxaphonist. Perhaps time is much better spent playing guitar instead. B the correct answer

(C) We don't have the same frequency issue that we had in the stimulus ie. we're not doing one more often than the other which was an important aspect of the flaw.

(D) They are currently spending more resources on the phenomena that is receiving less results. In relationship to the stimulus, this would be like they were currently spending more money on combating smoking rather than highway safety. Opposite of what we need, get rid of it.

(E) As a whole this answer choice doesn't sync up well. I dont think the frequency issues in the stimulus aren't reflected in these profit margins and interest rates, and it has additional flaws with determining profitabilities.

Hope this helped

[wj097]

(D) They are currently spending more resources on the phenomena that is receiving less results. In relationship to the stimulus, this would be like they were currently spending more money on combating smoking rather than highway safety. Opposite of what we need, get rid of it.

On (D), I think you got the analogy reversed; spending more resources on the phenomena that is receiving less results is like spending more money on highway safety rather than combating smoking . I believe, the non-analogous part of (D) is the lap time. lap time for breaststroke and back stroke should be measured on different scale, whereas death regardless of the reason is measured on a same scale, i.e., 1 death from smoking = 1 death from swerving in highway. Hope that helps.

[maryadkins]

Good discussion! So I read this argument and I think, hmm, this is concerning as a policy argument because what if the reason there are fewer highway accident deaths than smoking deaths is because of the government campaign? Then if we shift money away from it to anti-smoking campaigns, we're going to have more people dying on the highway and who knows if we're actually going to save more lives or not. Likewise, we have no clue how effective an anti-smoking campaign would be. In sum, I'd state this flaw as: just because we allocate more resources to an area doesn't mean we're going to see improvement overall.

(B) gets at this same flaw. Just because you practice sax more doesn't mean you're going to get more engagements overall.

(A) makes an argument that doesn't make any sense. Read it carefully. More people die on freeways, so the gov't should spend more money on tollways. Huh? It's flawed, but it's not our flaw.

(C) is odd. It definitely leaves us hanging. But it doesn't give us the same reasons as we're given in the stimulus. The stimulus tells us one thing is causing more deaths than the other, so we should put money there. (C) just says, streets are bad for one reason but highways are bad for another. (So we have two bads, not one bad.) That's not a match.

(D) is tricky! But what bothers me most about it is we don't know what other strokes are involved in the swim meets. How are they going to win if there are other strokes (butterfly, freestyle?) that aren't even dealt with here? It seems to make an even bigger leap than our original argument does.

(E) is like (C)--it gives us reasons to argue in favor of either of two courses of action, then advocates for one of them. The original argument just gives us a reason to switch to anti-smoking.

[dukeag]

I think you are definitely right here: the error is the assumption that more resources = improvement.

However, I still have trouble working D out. But I think I understand your explanation. D makes a bigger leap from the premise to the conclusion then B or the stimulus does.

For example, in D, they go from the premise, which is about a swim stroke having a better lap time, to the conclusion, which makes the leap that if we devote more time to that stroke we will win more swim meets, and the relation between winning a swim meet and stroke lap times are not even mentioned in the premise.

But in B, there is talk in the premise about how she is hired more often for playing the saxophone, so the leap to the conclusion that she would be hired even more by practicing the saxophone more is a much smaller than that taken in D. Also, in the stimulus, they do talk about people dying, so the leap to the conclusion of saving lives is smaller as well.

Am I on the right track?

Good discussion! So I read this argument and I think, hmm, this is concerning as a policy argument because what if the reason there are fewer highway accident deaths than smoking deaths is because of the government campaign? Then if we shift money away from it to anti-smoking campaigns, we're going to have more people dying on the highway and who knows if we're actually going to save more lives or not. Likewise, we have no clue how effective an anti-smoking campaign would be. In sum, I'd state this flaw as: just because we allocate more resources to an area doesn't mean we're going to see improvement overall.

(B) gets at this same flaw. Just because you practice sax more doesn't mean you're going to get more engagements overall.

(A) makes an argument that doesn't make any sense. Read it carefully. More people die on freeways, so the gov't should spend more money on tollways. Huh? It's flawed, but it's not our flaw.

(C) is odd. It definitely leaves us hanging. But it doesn't give us the same reasons as we're given in the stimulus. The stimulus tells us one thing is causing more deaths than the other, so we should put money there. (C) just says, streets are bad for one reason but highways are bad for another. (So we have two bads, not one bad.) That's not a match.

(D) is tricky! But what bothers me most about it is we don't know what other strokes are involved in the swim meets. How are they going to win if there are other strokes (butterfly, freestyle?) that aren't even dealt with here? It seems to make an even bigger leap than our original argument does.

(E) is like (C)--it gives us reasons to argue in favor of either of two courses of action, then advocates for one of them. The original argument just gives us a reason to switch to anti-smoking.

[pewals13]

Any chance someone could extrapolate on the (D) v. (B) comparison?

It appears to me that they both advocate investing effort into the area that is already successful whereas the original argument suggests greater overall results can be yielded from investing more in the area producing lesser results.

Does the uncertainty about how a swim meet operates turn the tables on this one?

Much appreciated.

[maryadkins]

Yep! Exactly. We have no idea what is even involved in a swim meet. These two strokes could be only 5% of the whole thing.

[oscey12]

Hi, I don't really see the judgments being made on (D). I see how it's wrong, but I thought that it was because seeing how the breaststroke is already better, they're saying that they should spend even more time on it to win more... The stimulus wants to shift money away from the program with more money and better survival statistics, to the program with less money and poorer survival statistics (flawed but you can follow their meaning); (D) on the other hand wants to shift funds away from the program with more time and POORER statistics to the program with less time and BETTER statistics. This reasoning is different because it begs the question, if the backstroke is already better than the breaststroke why take time away from it? That's why I see a mismatch, not necessarily because of the role the strokes play in a meet. I'd love to see other opinions!

[Mab6q]

Be careful here. The stimulus actually says that we are going to shift money away from the program with more money but poorer survival stats [b] to the program with [b] less money and better survival stats

I think you had the two mixed up. D was wrong from me because as others alluded to, it there is a mismatch between the premise and the conclusion. The conclusion talks about winning more, whereas all we are told in the premise is lap times. We don't know what leads to better winning chances. Maybe there are more backstroke than breaststroke laps.

Hope that helps.

[WaltGrace1983]

I'm also a bit confused on all of this discussion on (D). Unless I am missing something, I think we might be getting a bit too far into it.

(P1) More resources are spent on (highway safety) than (cigarette smoking)
(P2) Less results from from (cigarette smoking) than (highway safety)
(C) Shift funds from the (highway safety) - the better results one - to (cigarette smoking) - the less results one

Now if we compare this to (D):

(P1) More resources are spent on (backstroke) than (breaststroke)

So (backstroke) = (highway safety); (breaststroke) = (cigarette smoking)

(P2) Less results from from (backstroke) than (breaststroke)

This is the problem right here. As per the original argument, we SHOULD BE getting less good results from the thing that has less resources spent on it. However, in (D), we are actually getting less good results from the thing that has MORE resources pent on it.

This is how I eliminated (D). However, i will add that this problem was incredibly time-consuming, obnoxiously so.

Is that all right?

[seychelles1718]

I'm also a bit confused on all of this discussion on (D). Unless I am missing something, I think we might be getting a bit too far into it.

(P1) More resources are spent on (highway safety) than (cigarette smoking)
(P2) Less results from from (cigarette smoking) than (highway safety)
(C) Shift funds from the (highway safety) - the better results one - to (cigarette smoking) - the less results one

Now if we compare this to (D):

(P1) More resources are spent on (backstroke) than (breaststroke)

So (backstroke) = (highway safety); (breaststroke) = (cigarette smoking)

(P2) Less results from from (backstroke) than (breaststroke)

This is the problem right here. As per the original argument, we SHOULD BE getting less good results from the thing that has less resources spent on it. However, in (D), we are actually getting less good results from the thing that has MORE resources pent on it.

This is how I eliminated (D). However, i will add that this problem was incredibly time-consuming, obnoxiously so.

Is that all right?

I disagree with Walt on his explanation for eliminating D...

I think his points on D definitely show how D is different from the stimulus. But they do not explain why we can eliminate D. If we can eliminate D on the basis of that D discusses getting less good results from the thing that has MORE resources spent on it, while the stimulus discusses getting less good results from the thing that has less resources spent on it, we can do the same thing for B as well.

B also discusses getting less good results from the thing that has MORE resources spent on it (being hired less often to play guitar, even though more time is spent on practicing guitar).

I think what really makes D wrong is its leap from better lap times to winning more meets.

Thoughts anyone?!

[maryadkins]

Wow, good catch! Agreed.

I'm going to tweak the thread here so that people aren't confused. Thanks for chiming in!