Smoking in bed has long been the

Answer choices

1. A

   Explains26% picked this

   Compared to other types of home fires, home fires caused by smoking in bed usually cause relatively little

   This answer is suggesting that even though smoking has gone down and smoking in bed has thus gone down, the number of people killed in home fires wasn't affected because fires caused by smoking in bed were not killing people to begin with. They usually cause very little damage before they're extinguished.

   26%
2. B

   Correct49% picked this

   Home fires caused by smoking in bed often break out after the home’s occupants

   Why this is right

   This doesn't give us any way of explaining why the number of people killed in home fires has stayed put, even though there's way less smoking. According to this answer, smoking in bed seems pretty dangerous. A fire that starts after you've fallen asleep is one that it more likely to get out of control before the sleeping person can notice it, and thus it's more likely to be a fatal fire. By making bed-smoking fires sound like a bigger threat to loss of life, this answer is doing the opposite of what (A) is doing.

   Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   49%
3. C

   Explains15% picked this

   Smokers who smoke in bed tend to be heavy smokers who are less likely to quit smoking than are smokers who

   This allows us to resolve the paradox by thinking, "Okay ... smoking has gone down a bunch in the last two decades, but primarily among teenagers who are skateboarding and stressed out adults taking cigarette breaks at work. It hasn't gone down among the committed, hardcore, smoking-indoors smokers." Thus, even though there's been a big reduction in the overall rate of smoking, there hasn't been a reduction in the overall rate of smoking in bed. So there are just as many bed fires and just as many fatalities.

   15%
4. D

   Explains7% picked this

   An increasing number of people have been killed in home fires that started

   This allows us to resolve the paradox by thinking that, yes, bed fires have decreased now that there's less smoking (and thus less smoking in bed), but other fires in the house have increased. That's how we're ending up at a comparable number of people killed in home fires.

   7%
5. E

   Explains3% picked this

   Population densities have increased, with the result that one home fire can cause more deaths

   This allows us to balance the books and end up with a comparable number of people killed by thinking, yes, there are fewer fires (because of less smoking and thus less smoking in bed and thus fewer bed-fires), but --- there are more people killed per fire. If we went from 300 fires started by smoking in bed to only 200 fires, but at the same time went from an average of 2 people per house to an average of 3 people per house, you could still end up 600 deaths either way.

   3%