Logical Reasoning

PT106 · S2 · Q26 Smoking in bed has long been the

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Smoking in bed has long been the main cause of home fires.

Given that ...

Smoking in bed has long been the main cause of home fires.

and that ..

Over the last two decades, there's a significant decline in cigarette smoking.

How can it be that ...

There has been no comparable decline in the number of people killed in home fires?

Evaluate / Goal

On EXCEPT questions, we have to get rid of four answers that work. However, to make that final down to 2 more confusing, they usually make 3 of those four answers work one way, and 1 of them work a different way.

So we want to be open to different ways to resolve this paradox.

Maybe there's been a decline in smoking, so there's been a decline of smoking in bed, so there's been a decline of house fires caused by smoking, but here has been an increase in house fires that are started some other way.

Or maybe even though there's been a decline in smoking, there hasn't been a decline in bed-smoking or in fires caused by smoking.

That's just a potential example of how 3 answers might resolve it by giving us a "new source of non-smoking fires" but 1 might resolve it by helping us see that there are "just as many smoking fires".

The correct answer, which won't help resolve anything, might be one of those "timeless" facts that doesn't draw any distinction between now and two decades ago.

26.

Each one of the following statements, if true over the last two decades, helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy above EXCEPT:

  1. Compared to other types of

    Explains

    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% picked this

  2. Correct

    Home fires caused by smoking

    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% picked this

  3. Smokers who smoke in bed

    Explains

    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% picked this

  4. An increasing number of people

    Explains

    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.

    6% picked this

  5. Population densities have increased, with

    Explains

    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% picked this

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