Logical Reasoning

PT23 · S3 · Q23 Candidate: The government spends

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Candidate: The government spends $500 million more each year promoting highway safety than it spends combating cigarette smoking.

Conclusion

The government would save lives by shifting funds from highway safety programs to antismoking programs.

Evidence

Currently, the government spends $500 million more on highway safety than on antismoking. But currently, many more people die from smoking than from highway.

Evaluate

The author is thinking that since there are more smoking deaths, if we spent $500 million there, we'd end up saving more net lives.

But we would have to compare how many smoking deaths we would save by putting $500 million more into that problem with how many extra highway deaths we would get by taking away $500 million from that problem.

The author is also failing to consider that highway safety is a problem that people have less freedom to avoid. Smoking deaths might be categorically different, in that they spring from people engaging in an activity (smoking) that is known to be bad for their health. Driving on the highway, meanwhile, is a necessary evil for most people based on their employment.

Goal

Since this is Parallel Flaw, we have to figure out how to put this more into the abstract. The author is recommending that we divert resources from one problem to another, because problem #2 currently has a bigger death count (a bigger source of the problem of deaths).

The author's flaw is failing to consider that by shifting resources from one problem to another, the first problem will likely get worse.

23.

The flawed reasoning in which one of the following arguments most closely parallels the flawed reasoning in the candidate’s argument?

  1. The government enforces the speed

    Topic Trap

    Topic Trap: government / highway Bad Premise Match In this argument, we put more resources into Problem 1 than Problem 2. Problem 1 is worse than Problem 2. And the author concludes that we should divert funds away from Problem 1 and towards Problem 2. This would match if the original argument had said this: We spend $500 million more on highway than smoking. More people die from highway than from smoking. Thus, we should spend less on highway and more on smoking. We should have been very suspicious of this answer choice as soon as we saw they were re-using a similar topic like highways and governments.

    12% picked this

  2. Correct

    A certain professional musician spends

    Why this is right

    We put more resources into Thing 1 (guitar) than Thing 2 (saxophone). But Thing 2 seems like a bigger opportunity (more sax gigs). Thus, we should divert resources away from Thing 1 and towards Thing 2. This definitely takes some massaging in order to match it up with the original, but this would fit the original too: We put more resources into Thing 1 (highway) than Thing 2 (smoking). But Thing 2 seems like a bigger opportunity (more smoking deaths). Thus, we should divert resources away from Thing 1 and towards Thing 2. I feel good that we can make it structurally match, but I'm not sure what flaw they think we should be considering with both of these ideas. The conclusion is by no means something that follows logically, but is there some name for what's wrong with the argument? Is there a common objection? In both cases, the author is assuming that the extra resources would actually make a difference. - would spending more money on smoking do anything, or are smokers going to stubbornly continue either way? - would spending more practice time on sax actually do anything to book more gigs, or is she already good enough that she'll get the same number of gigs regardless of how much extra she practices? In both cases, the author is failing to consider how Thing 1 might get worse without the resources. - if we spend $500M less on highway, will we end up getting a lot more deaths from that? - if we practice less on guitar, will we end up getting fewer guitar gigs from that?

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

    49% picked this

  3. Automobiles burn more gas per

    Bad Conclusion Match Topic Trap: highways

    We spend more resources (gas) on Thing 1 (highway driving) than on Thing 2 (residential driving). I guess we could construe the second premise as Thing 2 is the bigger opportunity, since it's saying "but fuel economy is worse on residential streets". But then the matching conclusion would be something like, "thus we should divert resources (gas) from highway and put it into residential driving." This conclusion is the opposite of that. And this conclusion is really kind of contradicting itself. If we drive more time on the highway, then we're not saving gas (since we burn more gas per minute on the highway). Of course if we interpret "drive less" as drive fewer miles, then the conclusion would be correct. But that means our logical problem with this argument is really about how to define "drive less". Defined as "less time", the conclusion is contradicted by Premise 1. Defined as "fewer miles", the conclusion is justified by Premise 2. We should, again, have been suspicious of this answer choice since it's recycling the topic of "highways".

    6% picked this

  4. The local swim team spends

    Bad Premise Match

    We put more resources into Thing 1 (backstroke) than Thing 2 (breaststroke). Looks okay. Thing 2 seems like a bigger opportunity? no, this says Thing 1 (backstroke) is a bigger opportunity, since our lap times for breaststroke are already better.

    22% picked this

  5. Banks have a higher profit

    Bad Premise Match

    We don't really have a premise that sounds like "we currently spend more resources on Thing 1 than on Thing 2". This is really similar to choice (C). The two premises are sort of like, "in regards to this, Thing 1 is a bigger opportunity. in regards to that, Thing 2 is a bigger opportunity". This is saying, when it comes to profit margin, high rates are a bigger opportunity. when it come to size of loan, low rates are a bigger opportunity. The original argument didn't have this sort of tradeoff when it comes to opportunity. It was saying "more resource towards 1 than 2, but seemingly bigger opportunity for improvement with 2."

    11% picked this

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