Logical Reasoning

PT111 · S1 · Q26 Kim: The rapidly growing world

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Kim: The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands of food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources.

Kim's 1st Claim

The rapidly growing world population is increasing demands of food producers in ways that threaten our natural resources. Does Hampton agree?

Yes? There's nothing explicit, but in speaking about , it sounds like Hampton is tacitly acknowledging that there is a growing world population and that this population could potentially strain our natural resources.

He makes it seem like the growing population, were it not for the promise of technology, could otherwise lead us to significantly increase the % of land devoted agriculture. He might not use the word "threaten" but definitely "affect our use of natural resources".

Kim's 2nd claim

As we need more land for food production and urban areas, less land will be available for forests and wildlife habitats. Does Hampton agree?

No, here he pretty explicitly disagrees, saying technology will allow us to feed the world without significantly increasing the land we need for food production.

Evaluate

Agree questions are very rare, but within there scant history, it's pretty common that there isn't an explicit agreement. Rather, there's some background reality / assumption / motivation that both parties share.

In this case, it seems like that would be close to Kim's first sentence, although her wording might be slightly more alarmist than wording Hampton would choose.

Goal

Look for something that sounds like the mutual acknowledgement that the population is growing and that we will have to figure something out when it comes to feeding the growing population (either technological solutions or more land usage) .

26.

Kim's and Hampton's statements most strongly support the claim that both of them would agree with which one of the following?

Efforts should be taken to
No Support from Person 2
There is only weak support that Kim agrees to both of these measures. It seems more likely that she would agree to trying to reduce human population growth so that we don't need to increase the amount of land committed to agriculture, since that threatens our natural resources. But there is definitely no support for this from Hampton, who seems un-worried about our capacity to handle population growth.
2% picked this
Correct
Continued research into more-efficient agricultural
Why this is right
This is an implication of the fact that both people seem to agree with some version of Kim's first sentence: - the world's population is growing - we'll need more food (either by allocating more land or having technological breakthroughs that make food production more efficient) How do we know that these two would find "producing more food on less land" to be beneficial? Well, Kim is worried that our natural resources are threatened otherwise. Hampton refers to the promise of technology, which means the optimistic hope.
Skill tested: Agree/Disagree · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
63% picked this
Agricultural and wilderness areas need
Trap
No Support from Person 2 Too Strong: need This is a very strong claim which acts like both people would say that we must prepare urban areas for greater population density, so that we can protect agricultural and wilderness from urban encroachment. That's too strong/specific for Kim, who would otherwise probably go along with this. But it's really too far afield from Hampton. He never discusses urban encroachment at all. He only is talking about food supply.
13% picked this
In the next half century,
No Support from Person 2
It's pretty safe to sign off on Kim believing this, but Hampton doesn't discuss wildlife habitats or forests at all. He only discusses land currently devoted to agriculture. While his language allows for a "negligible increase" in the percentage of the world's land now devoted to agriculture, that's not much support for positively saying that population growth will erode habitats and will diminish forests.
20% picked this
The human diet needs to
Trap
No Support from Either Too Strong: needs They might both agree that "modifying the human diet in a way that requires less land for agriculture could be beneficial", but we can't support that either of them believes that the human diet needs to be modified. In particular, Hampton doesn't seem to believe this, since he thinks technology will save us and thus obviate any need for us to change our ways.
2% picked this

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