Regulating Voluntary Risk

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong: whenever42% picked this

   Whenever an activity involves the risk of loss of human life, the government should intervene to reduce the

   The author certainly never said anything as strong as, "the government should intervene in 100% of cases where an activity involves the risk of losing human life". The author hedged her wording, "in general, the government should try to save as many lives as it can, subject to the limited public and private resources allocated to risk reduction".

   42%
2. B

   Correct28% picked this

   Some environmental risks are voluntary to a greater degree than

   Why this is right

   The support for this comes from the second sentence of the 2nd paragraph. Although voluntariness may be entirely absent in the case of an unforeseeable collision with an asteroid, with most environmental, occupational, and other social risks, it is not an all-or-nothing matter, but rather one of degree. These sentences were not ones we thought about in pre-gaming these answer choices, so it serves as a reminder that it may not be worth doing too much pre-gaming if the question stem has no keywords. It also reminds us that when we're shopping for answer choices that seem like contenders (to invest the time of looking up their potential supporting sentences), we want to prioritize answers with more provable / supportable language. The burden of proof on "some" is extremely low. You only need to one example of one environmental risk being a greater degree of voluntary than another. If the author is saying that "with most risks, voluntariness is a matter of degree", then she's definitely thinking there are different degrees.

   Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   28%
3. C

   Semi-Contradicted14% picked this

   Policy experts are more likely than laypeople to form an accurate judgment about the voluntariness or

   Although the author clearly doesn't trust lay people's judgments about voluntariness, she never says she trusts experts' judgments about voluntariness more. In fact, in the first paragraph, she's saying that experts don't actually think about voluntariness. The public thinks that's the main issue surrounding whether governments should intervene, but this is "the chief difference between lay and expert judgments about risk. Policy experts tend to focus on aggregate lives at stake; laypeople care a great deal whether a risk is undertaken voluntarily." So as far as we've been told, policy experts don't make judgments about voluntariness, and thus we don't have any support for this claim that their judgments about voluntariness would be more accurate.

   14%
4. D

   Out of Scope: should increase12% picked this

   The government should increase the quantity of resources devoted to protecting

   The first sentence of the last paragraph is where the author advises governments on what they should do, and she just says, "Try to save the most lives, given the limited budget you have for risk reduction". She never says, "We should raise the budget allocated for risk reduction."

   12%
5. E

   Semi-Contradicted3% picked this

   Government policies intended to reduce risk are not justified unless they comport with

   In the last paragraph, the author is saying that governments decisions should be justified based on saving as many lives as they can, given their finite budgets. And when we depart from this principle, it shouldn't be in order to comport with most people's janky beliefs about "allegedly voluntary or involuntary risk".

   3%