PT154 · S4 · Q14 People's antagonism to development

This is doing the classic "flip the illegal lightswitch" move that's so common in Necessary Assumption trap answers. If the paragraph says "black lives matter", the answer will say the author is assuming "non-black lives don't matter". Here, the paragraph said "if decision is made by neighborhoods, no new nightclubs will be approved", so this answer is incorrectly saying that the author assumes "if decision is not made by neighborhoods, new nightclubs will be approved". We can also pick at the quantifier "usually", which means "most of the time". The word/concept most is wrong on Necessary Assumption 99% of the time we see it. Does the author really need to assume that cities would approve new nightclubs at least 51% of the time? Would it make any difference if it was only 49% of the time? Of course not.

There's no reason the author needs to commit to this insanely extreme claim that every single neighborhood is identically opposed to new nightclubs. If there were slight variation in how strongly they were opposed, would that hurt the argument? Of course not. As long as they're opposed, it doesn't matter how much they're opposed.

This is doing the classic "flip the illegal lightswitch" move that's so common in Necessary Assumption trap answers. If the paragraph says "the boys on the chess team like to dance", a trap answer will say the author is assuming that "boys on other teams don't like to dance" or assuming that "the girls on the chess team don't like to dance". Here, the paragraph said "nightclubs tend to be unpopular because of their late hours", so this answer is incorrectly saying that the author assumes "restaurants tend to be popular because of their non-late hours". If we negated this and said that, "Restaurants that don't stay open super late are nonetheless usually unpopular with neighbors", that would hurt the argument. If anything, it might help the author's argument that people's antipathy towards development can be harmful to the city.

Too Strong: invariably City benefit vs. Neighborhood benefit The conclusion is soft, saying that antagonism towards development can be harmful to a city. The author is assuming that if we never get new nightclubs, that would be harmful. That's different from assuming that every single new nightclub provides some benefit. If we negate this and say, "Hey, author --- there is at least one new nightclub that wouldn't produce benefit for the neighborhood in which it opens", that doesn't hurt the argument. The author could say, "Sure. In that instance, people's antagonism towards the development of that nightclub would be good for their neighborhood. But opposing all new nightclubs can still be harmful to the overall city."