Logical Reasoning

PT15 · S3 · Q26 When the manufacturers in a

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When the manufacturers in a given country are slower to adopt new technologies than their foreign competitors are, their production costs will fall more slowly than their foreign competitors’ costs will.

Statements

Conditional (when) Slower to adopt new tech → production costs fall more than foreign competitors slowly than theirs

Conditional (if) Costs fall more slowly → cannot lower prices as rapidly as foreign competitors

Conditional (when) Cannot lower prices as rapidly → squeezed out of the global market

Evaluate

We always read Must Be True primarily to see if there is any conditional logic. In this case we get three rules, each ending where the next begins, so we can see they chain together.

slower to adopt → costs fall → prices fall → squeezed out new tech slower slower global market

Goal

Trap answers will probably offer illegal reversals or negations of these relationships.

The correct answer will likely reward us for having assembled the chain, either going from head to tail,

contrapositive head to tail

or some other indirect connection, like thing 1 to thing 3, or thing 2 to thing 4.

26.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?

  1. If the manufacturers in one

    Unknown Trigger

    Nothing in the statements concerns raising prices. Every rule is about failing to lower prices and the consequences of that. A claim about why manufacturers raise prices has no rule to draw on.

    2% picked this

  2. If manufacturers in one county

    Reversal / Negation

    We know "if slow to adopt, then squeezed out". slower to adopt → costs fall → prices fall → squeezed out new tech slower slower global market This goes backwards and says "If squeezed out, then slower to adopt". The rules say slow adoption leads to being squeezed out, not that being squeezed out can only come from slow adoption. A country could be squeezed out for other reasons.

    12% picked this

  3. If a country’s foreign competitors

    Reversal / Negation

    We know "if slower to adopt new tech, then costs will fall slower" slower to adopt → costs fall → prices fall → squeezed out new tech slower slower global market But this is saying "if a country's costs fall slower than foreign competition, then we know the country was slower to adopt than the competition". This reverses the first rule. The rule says slow adoption causes slow cost reduction, not that fast cost reduction can only come from adopting new technology.

    8% picked this

  4. If a country’s manufacturers adopt

    Reversal / Negation

    We know "If we're slower than our competitors, we'll get squeezed out" slower to adopt → costs fall → prices fall → squeezed out new tech slower slower global market This is giving us an illegal negation: "If we're not slower, then we won't get squeezed out" Equal technology does not rule out one side being squeezed out for other reasons, such as costs or prices moving differently for reasons unrelated to technology.

    10% picked this

  5. Correct

    If a country’s manufacturers can

    Why this is right

    This is the contrapositive of going from 1 to 3. 1 to 3 is saying "If slower to adopt new tech than competitors, then prices fall more slowly than those of competitors." slower to adopt → costs fall → prices fall → squeezed out new tech slower slower global market By contrapositive "If our prices aren't falling more slowly than those of our competitors, then we weren't slower to adopt new tech."

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

    68% picked this

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