Logical Reasoning

PT138 · S3 · Q18 The chairperson of Acme Corporation

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The chairperson of Acme Corporation has decided to move the company from its current location in Milltown to Ocean View.

Conclusion (So)

Once the company has moved, most Acme employees will have a commute of more than 30 minutes.

Evidence

Most Acme employees cannot afford housing within a 30-minute commute of Ocean view, the location where the company is moving.

Evaluate

We can name the Missing Link here by saying the author is assuming that, .

But since this conclusion involves a Prediction it's probably more likely that the test wants us to mentally fight that prediction by thinking of some Objection (setting us up for a Defender answer that says the author is assuming that Objection isn't true).

Given that ... most of the employees won't be able to afford housing within a 30-minute commute of Ocean View,

How could we still argue that .... in the world where the company has moved to Ocean View, most employees will not have a commute of more than 30 minutes?

Maybe the current employees who can't afford housing within 30 minutes of Ocean View will hit up their friends that live closer to Ocean View and ask if they can crash on the couch every night, so that when they wake up they're already close to work.

Maybe the current employees who can't afford housing within 30 mins of Ocean View will just quit their job when the company moves, not willing to tolerate such a long commute.

Maybe there's a workforce of 100 currently, but once the company moves to Ocean View, they're going to hire another 200 local workers. Thus, even if those original 100 employees now have a commute of more than 30 minutes, most ACME employees (200 out of 300) will have a commute of less than 30 minutes.

Goal

Look for an answer linking "can't afford housing within 30 mins" to .

Or look for an answer ruling out an objection: - many employees will not crash at the house of their Ocean View friends on work nights

- the current employees won't just quit their job and find another job closer to Milltown.

- once moved, ACME won't hire so many new local workers that the majority of workers ends up being local Ocean View residents

18.

The argument requires assuming which one of the following?

All Acme employees can afford
Too Strong: all
The author certainly hasn't said anything that commits her to the extreme idea that every single ACME employee (the janitor, the intern, the part-timer) can afford housing within a 30-minute commute of Milltown. The negation of this answer, "at least one current employees can't afford housing within 30-minutes of Milltown" wouldn't hurt the conclusion in the slightest, because the conclusion is about Future World when the company is in Ocean View. The author isn't making any assumptions about Present World when the company is in Milltown.
3% picked this
The chairperson of Acme has
Out of Scope: reason for moving
The author isn't assuming anything about why Acme is choosing to move. This argument is purely about the future commute of most ACME employees. The potential reason that ACME moved has nothing to do with the typical commute time. The negation of this answer, "The chairperson does not have good financial reasons for wanting to move" doesn't hurt the conclusion at all, because it has nothing to do with the commute times of most employees once ACME is in Ocean View.
1% picked this
None of Acme's employees except
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: in favor of moving The author isn't assuming anything about what proportion of employees are in favor of the move. She is only assuming that a lot of the current employees will continue to work for ACME even once they move (whether they were in favor of the move or not). The negation, "at least one employee besides the chairperson was in favor of moving" doesn't hurt in the slightest.
0% picked this
Currently, most Acme employees have
Out of Scope: current commute
This argument doesn't care in the slightest whether the current commute is 1 minute or 6 hours. No matter what the current commutes are, they will be different once ACME moves to Ocean View, and the author is only claiming something about what will be true once they move to Ocean View.
29% picked this
Correct
Acme's move to Ocean View
Why this is right
This answer comes from a surprising angle, so we better be aware that on Necessary Assumption, it's super lovable to see an answer ruling-out an idea with the word "not". We stop and negate these, because they're so frequently correct and because they are usually offering an idea we didn't necessarily predict. The negation here says, "ACME's move to Ocean View will be accompanied by a significant pay raise for Acme employees". Does that hurt the argument? Does that help us argue that most Acme employees will have a commute of less than 30 minutes? Yeah, that weakens somewhat. The author was saying that most Acme employees can't afford housing within a 30 minute commute. They can't currently afford housing near Ocean View. But if the company is giving the employees a huge pay raise, knowing that the cost of living is so much higher in Ocean View, then once the company has moved, these employees may have changed from people who cannot afford to live near Ocean View into people who can afford to live near there. Weakening arguments based on Predictions often involves pointing out that "something else will be different in that Future World, author, and that changing factor might mess up your conclusion". Overall, this is an unusual answer because the negation weakens to a decent degree, but not to the usual strong degree that we expect when we negate the correct answer. Still, if we go by the standard of, "Which answer, when negated, most weakens", we'll never pick the wrong answer on Necessary Assumption.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
66% picked this

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