New technologies that promise

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct93% picked this

   When investments in new technologies that promise to extend life and decrease pain do provide financial return, they generally return many times the original

   Why this is right

   This gives us a reason that people would invest in life extending/saving technologies. As our common sense may have expected: high risk, high reward. These investments are like recording contracts for musicians in the 70s/80s/90s: most of the bands that got signed never paid back all the money spent on recording and promoting them, but a few of those signed artists would blow up and reap the record company millions in profits.

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

   93%
2. B

   No Impact Reinforces Background2% picked this

   A large variety of new technologies that promise to extend life and decrease pain have been developed

   Yes, we know that people are investing in these technologies, so presumably some of them have materialized into actual new technologies. But this doesn't answer the question of why investors are willing to gamble lots of up front money on a low probability of return.

   2%
3. C

   Out of Scope: "certain other technologies"2% picked this

   The development of certain new technologies other than those that promise to extend life and decrease pain is also very risky, because these technologies

   If this answer said that "all new technologies involve lots of upfront capital and a likelihood that you won't get any financial return from it", then it could act as a reason why people invest in life saving/extending technologies -- sure they're a gamble, but everything's a gamble. But this answer is only saying "there are some other investments that are also risky like this investment is". That doesn't provide a reason why investors are willing to take this risk.

   2%
4. D

   Too Weak1% picked this

   Some investments that initially seem likely to provide reasonably large financial return ultimately provide

   According to this answer, people are willing make this risky life-tech investment that is unlikely to provide a financial return, because investments that are likely to provide a return sometimes fail to do so. That's too weak. "Some" means at least one. We know that when we use words like "likely" and "unlikely" that there will be exceptions to the trend, so it changes nothing to know that "sometimes, less-risky investments don't pan out".

   1%
5. E

   Out of Scope1% picked this

   The scientific research necessary to develop new technologies that promise to extend life and decrease pain sometimes leads to no greater

   Out of Scope: "greater understanding of the world" This doesn't come close to giving us a reason why people are willing to invest in life-tech, because this says that investments in life-tech do not always lead to something positive. Also, a greater understanding of the world is probably not on the mind of an investor, so that concept would be tough to utilize in terms of explaining an investor's behavior.

   1%