Logical Reasoning

PT7 · S4 · Q10 Famous personalities found guilty of

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Famous personalities found guilty of many types of crimes in well-publicized trials are increasingly sentenced to the performance of community service, though unknown defendants convicted of similar crimes almost always serve prison sentences.

Statements

comparison (increasingly) More and more, famous people convicted of crimes are sentenced to community service.

comparison (though) Not-famous people convicted of crimes, however, almost always go to prison.

pivot (however) The principle of equality says that fame/publicity shouldn't be relevant to sentencing.

Evaluate

When we're doing Inference and the final claim is introduced by a Pivot, it normally introduces a tension that the correct answer addresses. The pivot might be setting up a rebuttal conclusion, might be setting up a math-y inference, or might be triggering the contrapositive of a rule.

In this case, it seems to be doing the final thing.

We have a rule like, .

The contrapositive would be, .

The first two sentences give us a contrast that makes it seem like fame/publicity IS relevant to sentencing. The famous people increasingly get community service while the non-famous people get prison.

Goal

By applying what we know about the equality principle to what we're told about this disparity in sentencing between the famous and non-famous people, it seems like we could output some idea like, .

10.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following conclusions?

  1. The principle of equality before

    Too Strong (only a few)

    This is close to what we wanted, but we just know of this one way in which the principle of equality before the law is seemingly violated. We don't know if it's applied rigorously in only a few types of trials. We just know there are increasingly many examples of it not being applied.

    1% picked this

  2. The number of convicted celebrities

    Trap

    Too Strong (equal) Out of Scope (should) The word "should" is pretty out of scope. We can say, "according to the principle of equality under the law, the proportion of convicted famous people assigned community service should be similar to the proportion of convicted non-famous people". But no one said we should follow that principle. More importantly, the principle wouldn't demand equal numbers, just equal proportions (after all there are way fewer famous criminals than non-famous criminals, so we would only ask their proportions of community service vs. prison to be the same).

    5% picked this

  3. The principle of equality before

    Out of Scope (overridden)

    There's nothing in the paragraph saying we have to follow the principle, nor is there anything saying that sometimes we don't have to follow the principle, so we have no support for the idea that in some cases it can be "properly overridden". It looks like we currently aren't following the principle in lots of cases, but that doesn't mean the principle was properly overridden.

    14% picked this

  4. Correct

    The sentencing of celebrities to

    Why this is right

    This is the safely worded version of what we were looking for: in these cases we just discussed where the famous get community service and the non-famous get prison, we are violating the principle.

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

    72% picked this

  5. The principle of equality before

    Too Strong (does not allow)

    What we know about this principle doesn't rule out the possibility of leniency. We could be lenient to everyone (famous and non-famous) and that wouldn't violate the principle. The principle is just saying "be harsh to all and send them all to prison or be lenient to all and given them community service, but don't allow famous vs. not-famous to get different sentencing."

    7% picked this

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