Q24

 
T.J.
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Q24

by T.J. Thu Jan 16, 2014 12:55 am

In this question, I eliminated A,C,E but ended up choosing D :x

After review, I think D is wrong because the very notion of involuntary or not should not be mixed with the business of public-policy, which is also the author's stance in this passage. However, D sounds really complicated and if somebody could parse out the meaning, it'd be awesome.

I think that the reason why B is right is that people usually think that the crash of an airplane is involuntary in spite of the fact that passengers can check the safety record and actually make a voluntary decision about which airline to fly with. Whether voluntary or not should not be what guides the making of public policies.

Please let me know what you guys think. Kinda desperate on this one. :cry:
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maryadkins
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Re: Q24

by maryadkins Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:53 pm

T.J. Wrote:After review, I think D is wrong because the very notion of involuntary or not should not be mixed with the business of public-policy, which is also the author's stance in this passage.


Yes! (D) is saying that for public policy purposes, we should define voluntary risks as risks that people wouldn't be exposed to unless they made a choice. The author thinks voluntary/involuntary analysis shouldn't be a part of public policy regarding risk, at all, so (D) is out, and (B) is correct"”it uses airplanes as an illustration of the principle underlying the author's argument. So this analysis of yours is correct:

T.J. Wrote:I think that the reason why B is right is that people usually think that the crash of an airplane is involuntary in spite of the fact that passengers can check the safety record and actually make a voluntary decision about which airline to fly with. Whether voluntary or not should not be what guides the making of public policies.


(A) is irrelevant ("socially useful purpose?"), as are (C) and (E)"”well done knocking those out quickly.
 
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Re: Q24

by andrewgong01 Thu May 25, 2017 6:47 pm

I have two follow up questions.
For "E" when it says the "main category" does main basically mean "most". I circled "E" because it did say that certain risks like the environment are truly involuntary but on second read it also said certain social issues are also involuntary.

Also for "B" a part that confuses me about the passage is what are government officials currently doing. In P1 it sounds like they are following the author where on line 11 it says policy maker tend to focus on lives at stake ... [so i.e. they do not use a lay person's metric of if the risk if voluntary]. Then at the end of the passage and the end of the 3rd paragraph it sounds like the government is NOT currently doing this and falling into the trap of using voluntary /involuntary as a metric because the passage is lamenting such a use as a metric as is recommending government "should attempt to save as many lives as possible; [and not use the voluntary.... nature of a risk]". To me it makes it sound like policy makers are using voluntary/involuntary risks as a metric since we are getting a new proposal; however, earlier on Line 11 it says government officials "tend" to do it already.

Because of this I was reluctant to bubble "B" since "B" says government experts currently already don't use the voluntary/involuntary metric, which is in line with Line 11. Yet, this does not seem to be in line with the latter half of the passage where it sounds like policy/government experts are not using the author's recommended metric; rather policy/government officials are using voluntary risks as a method and hence we get a new recommendation to follow the author's metric, which is the same metric as the one Line 11 says policy experts already use.
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Re: Q24

by ohthatpatrick Fri May 26, 2017 4:49 pm

I see your concern. I approach these a little less holistically, a little more driven by explicit words/references.

On a first pass through any question stem that says "inferred, implies, suggests, most likely to agree", I'm mainly looking out for potential dealbreaker words:
- stuff that's too strong / too specific
- goes against the author's gist
- out of scope

(A) "generally"
(B) "Usually"
(C) "ANY other kind of risk"
(D) a conditional rule
(E) "main" / "usually" / "completely"

None of these have soft, watered down wording that says, "Hey, check me out first. I seem provable. If you can find a supporting line reference, you're done."

So we'd have to figure out where in the passage each of these ideas is being discussed and research whether we have appropriate wording to justify some of these loaded claims.

For (B), we only have one mention of "policy experts" in the whole passage, line 11, and it says that "PE's tend to (usually) focus on lives at stake."

Thus, we can support (B), and say "PE's would usually NOT focus on whether people's choice to fly was voluntary/involuntary."

The fact that 44-46 makes it seem like policy makers could improve, could get FARTHER away from arbitrary judgments of voluntariness, does not negate line 11's adequate support for (B).

Maybe policy experts tend to (more than 50%) focus on lives at a rate of 60% of the time, and the author would like it to be 80% of the time.

Either way, there's still support for the "usually" (more than 50%) in (B).

By contrast, we have no line reference to justify the "main" category of completely involuntary risk. All we have is, from line 21-23, the idea that an asteroid collision is an example a completely involuntary risk. And, yes, an asteroid collision qualifies as a natural disaster, but we can't quantify whether natural disasters are the "#1 type of risk that is usually purely involuntary".