Q3 - Mayor of Plainsville: In order

[b91302310]

The conclusion of citizen's group is that the mayor must have interests other than our economy in mind. So, why answer (C) is incorrect since by this assumption, the citizen group could eliminate the possible reason which will weaken the conclusion itself.

However, answer (B)(the correct answer), seems like the stated premise by citizens' group and I could not figure out why it requires "the mayor accepts"?

Could anyone help ?


Thanks

[tamwaiman]

This question is different from my "PT5-S1-Q13".

[b91302310]

It's Q3. Thanks for the correction.

[tamwaiman]

IMO, (C) is too absolute, we do NOT know how much benefit the highway plan brings according to the stimulus.

(B) establishes what the citizen's group says the mayor "MUST have interest other than economy in mind", which implicitly means that the group assumes the mayor knows the business park is more benefit.

[monygg85]

This one was a little confusing for me. I think a combination of the question stem asking for the assumption in the Citizens' Group argument and what the actual argument said factored into my confusion.

Mayor states that in order to help the economy he will use some of the tax revenues to build a major highway in town so new business can be attracted.
Citizens' Group states that the mayor has interests other than the economy on his mind because if he really wanted to help he would build a business park which would attract 2x more business than the highway.

Initially I thought the assumption would be something to do with the idea that the Citizens group assumes the major highway proposed by the mayor would not grow exponentially, reaching and/or surpassing the amount of business that would be attracted by a business park. BUT that wasn't an option. In fact it was the somewhat opposite of my idea (Answer B).

Now that I see the reason, its easy. The first sentence of the Citizens Group argument says that the mayor MUST have interests other than their economy. That alone right now serves to tell me that they assume the mayor knows their business proposal is better than his but due to his "other interests" he is after the highway. I picked this answer through elimination but even after I negate it I cant see how it attacks the Citizens Group conclusion for some reason. Any help on clarifying this last bit for me?

[lakeshow2010]

I still don't understand why (C) is the wrong answer. The following reasoning led me to choose (C) over the credited answer (B):

The citizens' group must assume "(C) the new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business" in order to claim "[the mayor] must have interests other than our economy in mind" because if the new highway DID have other benefits (economic benefits, such as increased tourism, are a subset of benefits), then the mayor could have chosen the highway for precisely those benefits, and the group's contention that the mayor has reasons unrelated to the local economy would be unjustified.

In other words, if the mayor predicts that the highway would bring other economic benefits, he may choose the highway over the business park, EVEN IF he "(B) accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than the new highway."

On the other hand, even if the mayor does NOT accept "(B)...that a new business park would bring in more new business than the new highway," it could still be true that the mayor has other motivations beyond the local economy.

It seems to me that (C) is a necessary assumption, while (B) is not. Please help.

[ohthatpatrick]

Your rationale concerning (C) would be on point, except you started treating "other benefits" as "other economic benefits".

Not every benefit is an economic one. Maybe cities that have a major highway running through it get to appoint a representative to the state's Transportation Commission. That could be a political benefit, but not an economic one.

Maybe cities that have a major highway running through it get wildflowers planted along the highway. That could be a cosmetic or even environmental benefit, but not an economic one.

On Necessary Assumption, be very wary of extreme language.

Why does the Citizens' Group have to assume that the ONLY benefit of the new highway to Plainsville is attracting new business?

They don't. I agree that if there are other economic benefits besides attracting new businesses, that would indeed weaken the Citizens' Group's argument. BUT, the negation of (C) is not "the new highway would have some ECONOMIC benefits other than attracting new business". The negation of (C) is just "the new highway would have SOME benefit other than attracting new business." That statement is not precise enough to hurt the Citizens' Group's argument.

The core of the CG's argument is:
P: new business park would bring in twice the business that the highway would
thus
C: The mayor, in suggesting to build the highway, must have some interest beyond the city's economy in mind.

(A) "No" is too extreme. It doesn't matter whether there are currently no major highways or some. It could still be true that building the new major highway would attract new business.

(B) This is a weird answer, but the CG does need to believe that the mayor is aware of and in agreement that a new business park would attract more business than the new highway.

Here's a quick analogy:
Paul: I'm gonna ask Betty to the prom.

Dave: Well, you must be picking your prom date for reasons beyond attractiveness, because Veronica is more attractive than Betty.

Dave is assuming a couple things:
1. Paul is aware that Veronica exists (if he isn't, he could very well be picking Betty based purely on attractiveness; Betty just happens to be the most attractive girl he knows)

2. Paul would agree that Veronica is more attractive than Betty (if he doesn't, then he could still be picking Betty based purely on attractiveness).

Now, obviously, attractiveness sounds more subjective than "which proposed course of action would bring in more business". But those are still speculative ideas, not facts. So both of these assumptions still apply to the Mayor.

Has the Mayor ever heard of this new business park idea? If not, then she might be picking the highway based on it being the most economically beneficial proposal she's aware of.

Does the Mayor accept that the new business park would bring in more business? If she doesn't, then she might be picking the highway because she believes it to be the most economically beneficial proposal.

(C) We discussed above.

(D) is out of scope; whether the mayor is "required to get approval" is irrelevant to the CG's argument.

(E) This is again extreme ("unless"). The CG acknowledges that the economy would be helped by the new highway, just half as much as the new business park would help.

Hope this helps.

#officialexplanation

[akrawls]

thanks for the detailed explanation. My prephrase for this question was something like "of the two options the citizens group thinks the BP will bring in more business than the highway and thereby attract more revenue".

I narrowed the answer choices down to B and E and ultimately chose E. After reading your explanation I can see why E is too strong. The CG thinks the new highway will help the economy, just not as much as the BP.

However for B. I do not understand even after your example how this can definitively be the correct answer. How is one supposed to be able to predict what's in the Mayor head? It seems too 50/50.

[akrawls]

here is why I think B is bullshit.

If I spoke to a math professor and we were thinking of ways to get more people to major in math, and the math professor said I think we should build an new building just for math.

I argued that's crazy. The University on behalf of the Math department should cut all math majors tuition by 50%. That way more people major in math.

Now, based on this argument it is UNREASONABLE to conclude that the math professor had even thought about the strategy I put forth of decreasing tuition.

In a similar manner this question assumes that the Mayor is fully aware of the idea the CG put forth of constructing the new building.

What if the Mayor is an idiot or a drunk? How can we conclude that he has knowledge of the building or how it will impact the economy?

[jones.mchandler]

here is why I think B is bullshit.

If I spoke to a math professor and we were thinking of ways to get more people to major in math, and the math professor said I think we should build an new building just for math.

I argued that's crazy. The University on behalf of the Math department should cut all math majors tuition by 50%. That way more people major in math.

Now, based on this argument it is UNREASONABLE to conclude that the math professor had even thought about the strategy I put forth of decreasing tuition.

In a similar manner this question assumes that the Mayor is fully aware of the idea the CG put forth of constructing the new building.

What if the Mayor is an idiot or a drunk? How can we conclude that he has knowledge of the building or how it will impact the economy?

So I had a similar thought process as this, until I realized that I didn't fully understand the conclusion of the citizen group.

Their conclusion is that the mayor MUST have interests other than the economy in mind because a business park would attract twice the business.

Now, when I saw that argument, I thought "well the mayor doesn't necessarily think that, maybe they have different evidence for their conclusions." However, that is an incorrect thought process for such a question. We want that conclusion to be true (the mayor MUST have other interests in mind). How do we make that true? By ensuring the mayor knows that a biz park would bring more business.

It's just really just a weird argument to find a NA for, bc the gut reaction (at least mine) was to assume that the opposite of the conclusion (that the mayor did not necessarily think that).

[kclol20]

I have read this question a few times now and I am still having some trouble eliminating E. The logic seems flawless to me. I annotated it to something like this.

If the mayor was interested in helping the economy then he would allocate revenues to the new business park.

But!

The mayor didn't do that.
He is allocating the revenues to a highway instead.
Through the contrapositive, since he didn't allocate revenues to the business park, he is not interested in helping the economy. (At least from the citizens groups' perspective)

The only reason I can think to eliminate E in my mind is because E is explicitly stated in the passage and therefore not really an assumption but a premise. Am i wrong on this? Maybe somebody could explain.

[kclol20]

On review of my question i discovered that E went too far. The requirement (of the sort envisioned by the citizens' group) is an exaggeration that the argument doesn't support. It is just a new business park that the group is asking for.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, in regards to (E), we want to always be wary of extreme language on Necessary Assumption questions.

(E) makes it sound like a new business park is the ONLY thing that could possibly help Plainsville's economy.

But the 2nd dude isn't saying THAT. He actually concedes that the highway would bring in business. (He just thinks that the new business park would bring twice as much).

=====

in regards to (E), people were saying, "How can we be mindreaders? How can we assume we know what's going on in the mayor's head?"

You're exactly right. We DON'T know what's going on in the mayor's head. Neither does the Citizen. He has to ASSUME what he thinks is going on in the mayor's head.

In order for the Citizen to believe that the mayor has picked the highway plan for interests BEYOND just economic ones, the Citizen has to assume that the mayor knows of / accepts that there is an economically better plan out there, but the mayor is choosing the highway plan anyway.

If the highway plan is the most economically beneficial plan the mayor knows of / accepts, then picking the highway plan seems to the mayor like putting economic interests first.

We need to believe that the mayor knows of / accepts that the new business park is economically better than the highway plan. Only then can we accuse the mayor of thinking, "I know the new business park is more economically beneficial, but I'm going to go with the highway plan anyway."


Finally, let me address the awesome analogy given by a previous poster:
====
If I spoke to a math professor and we were thinking of ways to get more people to major in math, and the math professor said I think we should build an new building just for math.

I argued that's crazy. The University on behalf of the Math department should cut all math majors tuition by 50%. That way more people major in math.

Now, based on this argument it is UNREASONABLE to conclude that the math professor had even thought about the strategy I put forth of decreasing tuition.
====

I wouldn't go that far. We wouldn't know for sure whether the math professor had every considered decreasing tuition.

There are three options:
1. The MP never considered that option
2. The MP considered that option, but in HIS judgment, building the new math building would be a more effective strategy for attracting new math majors.
3. The MP considered that option, and KNOWS that decreasing tuition IS a more effective strategy than building a new math building, but has some ulterior motive for endorsing the math building plan (beyond the stated goal of attracting math majors).

This whole question is testing us on those three possibilities.

Person 1: Plan X is the best way to achieve A.
Person 2: Plan Y is the best way to achieve A. Thus, if you're endorsing Plan X, you must not really be after A.

Three possibilities (at least):
- Person 1 has never heard of Plan Y
- Person 1 has heard of Plan Y but thinks that Plan X is better at achieving A.
- Person 1 thinks Plan Y is better but wants to pick Plan X for reasons beyond achieving A.

So when you said:
===
In a similar manner this question assumes that the Mayor is fully aware of the idea the CG put forth of constructing the new building.
===
You're right!

That IS another assumption.

Naturally, Necessary Assumption isn't about finding a magic bullet to prove the conclusion (that's SUFFICIENT assumption). NA is about protecting the argument from unraveling.

If the mayor has never heard of the new business park, the CG's accusation unravels.

Similarly, in (B), if the mayor does not agree that the business park is a more economically beneficial plan than the highway, the CG's accusation unravels.

Hope this helps.