Logical Reasoning

PT131 · S3 · Q1 New technologies that promise

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New technologies that promise to extend life and decrease pain involve innovations that require extensive scientific research.

Background

Investing in new life-saving and life-extending tech is pretty risky: You have to put up a ton of money (capital) to pay for the research, and there's only a small chance you'll get the kind of breakthrough that would make money.

Surprising Claim

Some people are willing to invest in this stuff.

Goal

Given that investing in life saving/extending technology requires lots of up front money with a low probability of making money back, why do people invest in it?

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain why some people are willing to invest in new technologies that promise to extend life and decrease pain?

Correct
When investments in new technologies
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% picked this
A large variety of new
No Impact Reinforces Background
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% picked this
The development of certain new
Out of Scope: "certain other 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% picked this
Some investments that initially seem
Too Weak
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% picked this
The scientific research necessary to
Out of Scope
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% picked this

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