Q8 - When weeding a vegetable garden

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Match the Implied Principle (match the reasoning)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: You shouldn't try to remove all the weeds in your garden.
Evidence: Even though weed make the garden less productive, there's a point of diminishing returns, where it takes way more pain/struggle to achieve minimal benefit.

Answer Anticipation:
We can probably try to just paraphrase "the moral to the story", without reference to the weeds/garden.

Maybe something like …
"Don't go for perfection, for 100%.
There's a certain point at which you're getting a bad value for your time."

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Good conclusion, but the premise doesn't have that "at a certain point it's a bad value for your time".

(B) Similar to (A), the conclusion is a match, but the evidence doesn't sound like "at a certain point, you don't get enough benefit for it to be worth it". It sounds like "It will MESS .. YOU … UP."

(C) This is closer than the first two, but saying "it's no longer worth it, if there are only a few left" doesn't seem like a strong match for "it's no longer worth it, because for the few left, the pain/effort of getting them is not worth the reward." Ultimately, though, this is the closest answer we get. At least it still captured the "don't go for 100%, because towards the end it's just not worth it." that was in the original.

(D) Also close, but again the reason doesn't seem like a great match. The original author didn't say it was IMPOSSIBLE to remove all weeds, just not worth it in the end.

(E) No, this doesn't even get the conclusion right.

Takeaway/Pattern: Only (E) gave us a conclusion shortcut. For the other four, we had to really figure out which one was the closest available match for the idea of "diminishing returns", or "avoiding the effort more than compensates for losing the benefit", i.e. "not worth it".

#officialexplanation

[WaltGrace1983]

This is a parallel reasoning questioning that is based on the idea of diminishing returns.

The more weeds, the less productive
+
BUT the painstaking effort compensates for the garden's productivity loss
→
One shouldn't try to remove all the weeds

(A) Not about diminishing returns.
CORRECTION: "It is a mistake to try to remove every imperfection from one's personality. Personality imperfections make life difficult sometimes, but it is incredibly hard to perfect one's personality and slight flaws in personality is not worth the effort."

(B) The original argument was never about being "worse off." We know that one's garden will be inherently better off by removing the weeds, it is just not worth the effort.
CORRECTION: "One should not try to change every aspect of one's personality. While one would be better off with every changed aspect, the effort one must bring forth in order to do this becomes increasingly less worth it."

(C) Yes! "It is no longer worth one's time" is the key thing to notice here!

(D) This was so close! However, the argument never says anything about it being impossible to remove the weeds (as this one does), just that it wasn't likely to be worth it.

(E) This is much too extreme. The original argument says that each removal will be better; this one says that each removal will be worse. Eliminate.

[daijob]

So the premise says it's not worth the effort?
I was confused by the sentence "more than compensates for the slight productivity loss resulting from leaving a few"
Anyone can paraphrase this sentence?

[maryadkins]

I was confused by the sentence "more than compensates for the slight productivity loss resulting from leaving a few"
Anyone can paraphrase this sentence?

It means that if you leave a few weeds, it's going to cost less productivity than if you try to pull them all out. In other words, it costs MORE to pull them all out than just to leave a few.