Logical Reasoning

PT157 · S2 · Q1 One should not do anything

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One should not do anything that has the potential to produce serious harm to one’s society.

Facts

conditional (anything) has potential to → shouldn't do it seriously harm society

many people → serious harm refrain from voting to society

facts

The actions/inactions of celebrities / widely respected people are widely emulated.

Some celebrities do not vote.

Evaluate

Since this is a Must Be True question, we prioritize looking for conditionals and overlapping concepts. The first and last claims are both rules and both involve the concept of "serious harm to society".

They chain together to tell us that, .

Do the middle two claims provide any facts that trigger this rule?

Sure -- they're talking about celebrities who don't vote and telling us that people widely emulate celebrities' public actions.

If a celebrity's public action is to refrain from voting, it could lead to many people emulating that and refraining from voting themselves.

Goal

The correct answer will probably be getting at the idea that it's bad for celebrities to make a public action of not voting, because if many people emulate that, it will produce serious harm to society, and we shouldn't do anything with the potential to produce serious harm to society.

1.

Which one of the following principles can be properly inferred from the statements above?

  1. A society should require all

    Too Strong: require all

    The stimulus never makes prescriptions about what society should require; it only states what an individual "should not do." This is definitely picking up on the stimulus' vibe that it's problematic for celebrities to not vote. But we can't derive this extreme claim about what society should do.

    5% picked this

  2. One should vote only if

    Too Broad: one

    Too Strong: only if Opposite (if anything) This rule says "if you don't think that your vote will cause many others to vote, then you shouldn't vote". We definitely can't derive that. This rule would lead to many people refraining from voting, which is what we're trying to avoid.

    3% picked this

  3. Celebrities who do not vote

    Too Speculative

    This answer is trying to derive that someone shouldn't be widely respected. The stimulus didn't give us any rule to prove who should / shouldn't be widely respected, so we have no way to derive that outcome/judgment. The only "should" we can derive is about "doing something w/ potential to produce serious harm".

    4% picked this

  4. People should not emulate celebrities

    Too Speculative

    This answer is trying to derive that someone shouldn't be emulated. The stimulus didn't give us any rule to prove who should / shouldn't be emulated, so we have no way to derive that outcome/judgment. The only "should" we can derive is about "doing something w/ potential to produce serious harm".

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    Widely respected people should not

    Why this is right

    Since public actions of famous people are widely emulated, if widely respected people publicly refrain from voting, many others will copy that. And if many people refrain from voting, serious harm befalls a society. Since one should not do anything that could produce serious harm to one's society, that means that celebrities / widely respected people shouldn't publicly refrain from voting.

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

    86% picked this

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