Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S1 · Q9 Technological improvements will enable food

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Technological improvements will enable food production to increase as populations increase.

Statements

Conditional (unless)

Signif Food production increase → societies more centralized

Volume Dial / Implicitly Causal (the more...the greater)

More centralized society >> greater percentage perish when it collapses

Causal (will exacerbat, will enable)

Centralizing society >> worsen disasters assoc (for sake of more food prod)) with societal collapse

Technological improvements >> More food production

Evaluate

Since Most Supported mainly deals with causality, it behooves us to interpret and assimilate this paragraph in a causal mentality. Do we understand the story we're being told?

We have technological improvements that allow us to produce more food, but they only work if we further centralize society, so we do. Unfortunately, the more centralized society is, the worse things are if society collapses.

The final sentence basically announces this causal chain, which means they're stealing our inference from us! We would have proudly picked an answer saying that the technological improvements ultimately led to society being more screwed in the event of a collapse. But they basically synthesized that story in the final sentence.

Goal

So, it's hard to predict what the answer will be saying, but it's very likely we'll be rewarded in some way for understanding this causal chain the paragraph was describing.

9.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  1. The more centralized a society

    Unsupported Relationship

    The passage says "meaningful increases in food production" require more centralization. It never says more centralization creates more need for food. The relationship runs one way in the passage, and this answer runs it the other way with a volume-dial claim ("the more...the greater").

    12% picked this

  2. Correct

    Not every problem associated with

    Why this is right

    This incredibly weak language makes this instantly enticing as an answer. Whenever we see the "Not all A's are B" form, we translate into the positive equivalent, "Some A's are not B". So we start by translating this sentence into the positive: "Some problems associated with the collapse of a centralized society would not be prevented by technological improvements." Do we know of at least one problem associated with the collapse of centralized society? Honestly, not really. We know that when centralized societies collapse, a higher percentage of people perish than when less centralized societies collapse. But, are we supposed to say, "one problem associated with the collapse of a centralized society is higher percentage of people perishing?" I guess so. That just seems dumb to me. Nevertheless, answers don't have to be perfect on Most Supported. Our causal chain told us that technological improvements would ultimately exacerbate the disasters associated with societal collapse. If they exacerbate the disasters, then they clearly make at least one problem worse. And if they're making at least one problem associated with the collapse of a centralized society worse, then they're clearly not preventing that problem. That's all we need to pick (B).

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

    75% picked this

  3. The rate at which the

    Too Strong

    The passage mentions populations increasing, not the rate of growth, and says nothing about how long any trend will last. "Continue to increase indefinitely" means that human population will continue growing even after the Sun has ceased to exist.

    1% picked this

  4. The production of food can

    Too Strong

    This is a classic Only Thing Mentioned → Only Thing trap answer. The only means of increasing food production that was mentioned was technological improvements. But that doesn't mean that the only thing that increases food production is technological improvements.

    4% picked this

  5. Societies have become more centralized

    Unsupported

    This is a pretty strong Volume Dial idea saying that the more tech improves, the more society becomes centralized. The passage described one specific sort of technological improvement that would motivate us to further centralize society, but that's it. We can't invent such a bold connection between these two concepts from that.

    8% picked this

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