Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S1 · Q13 Specially bred aquarium fish

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Specially bred aquarium fish with brilliant coloration and unusual body shapes may be popular with connoisseurs, but they are inferior to ordinary fish.

Statements

There are specially bred aquarium fish who have cool colors and weird shapes.

They're popular with fish connoisseurs but inferior to ordinary fish.

causal (hampered by) Their weird tails/fins mean they are slower in racing towards food than are ordinary fish, which leads to them being often underfed.

Most of their babies don't match the exotic features of the parents.

Evaluate

In terms of Overlapping Concepts, the exotic aquarium fish were mentioned in each claim, so we could potentially make an inference by synthesizing any two things we know about them.

f.e. These fish have elaborate tails that make them slower in racing towards food + These fish have babies who don't have their elaborate tails. infer: Some fish babies lack a quality that was a survival disadvantage for their parents.

Goal

It's hard to make a specific prediction here, so let's just look for the most provable answer.

13.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

  1. Specially bred aquarium fish must

    Too Strong: must receive care

    Can we support this super extreme claim that, "If specially bred aquarium fish don't receive special care, they all die"? Heavens, no. The biggest threat to survival we hear about is that "they are often underfed". That's not all of them and it's not even necessarily lethal to be underfed.

    9% picked this

  2. Connoisseurs are not interested in

    Out of Scope: not-interested One-Claim Support

    If we say that "chocolate donuts are popular with 3rd graders", can we infer that "3rd graders are not interested in plain powdered donuts"? Of course not. Just because we know that these exotic fish are popular with connoisseurs doesn't mean that they are not interested in all other fish. This answer would only be pulling support from the very first claim, and it's very rare for the correct answer to only be supported by one claim.

    1% picked this

  3. Most specially bred aquarium fish

    Too Strong: most

    We have no information at all about the demographics of who is buying these exotic fish. We're told they are popular with connoisseurs, but they might also be popular with regular people (and there are far more regular people than fish connoisseurs). We have no evidence for the idea that more than 50% of the exotic fish that get purchased are sold to connoisseurs.

    1% picked this

  4. Correct

    Ordinary fish tend not to

    Why this is right

    We heard that the exotic fish are hampered by their elaborate tails and strangely shaped fins, and so the ordinary fish out-race the exotic ones to a source of food. If ordinary fish also had elaborate tails and strange fins, then how would they be reliably winning this race? Since the funky tails/fins are identified as the Causal Difference-Maker that makes exotic fish slower than ordinary fish, the ordinary fish must have tails / fins that are different from the ones the exotic fish have.

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

    86% picked this

  5. Strangely shaped fins and elaborate

    Unsupported Causal Relationship

    We learned two things about exotic fish 1. their weird fins/tails make them slower in a race to food 2. their offspring often don't have the same exotic traits This answer choice is trying to causally connect those two things, but the passage did not. The passage connected them with the word "Also", not some causal connector like "Because of this, due to this, this results in, etc." Also, we never really heard that an exotic fish has any inability to reproduce. They're able to have babies, so they're able to reproduce just fine. The babies just don't have all the same exotic traits.

    3% picked this

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