Q15 - Columnist: Shortsighted motorists learn

[maryxli]

I cannot figure out why B is correct. Can someone explain it to me? Appreciate your help!

[Yp2014]

B weakens because it simply says that other cities that have devoted resources to economic development and earned large return had started these ventures at an earlier time (when there population was let say 10,000) Then the columnist city .... I.e the columnist city started late in the game ...( when population was 1 million)

It is like if you say Fred has been investing that is why he has a lot saved ... Same as Ashley who has been saving since her first pay check ... However Fred started saving and investing in high school but Ashley after college ( starting point ... Is like 8 years later)...

And Ashley now has all these loans ... Lool ... Hope that helps

I.e the comparison was not fit and the city council like always is shortsighted !!!

[joseph.m.kirby]

Conclusion: City Council should be praised. Why?
Evidence: (1) analogy: motorists who don't do preventative maintenance (PM) pay the price; this maintenance almost always pays off, (2) an investment in hiring an advisor is likely to have a big ROI in several years, (2) Other cities have earned large returns using this means

This is a weaken question. So we want to go after the connection between the evidence and the conclusion (the assumptions).

(A) is wrong because it doesn't necessarily weaken the argument. It says *some* break down (with PM, perhaps most don't though). If one doesn't do preventative maintenance, perhaps all or most will break down. On weaken questions, be wary of answers with "some" because these answers can still be consistent with strengthening the argument.
(B) Correct. One of the assumptions is that the situation of the columnist's city is similar to the other cities that have hired advisers and had big returns. This answer weakens that assumption by letting us know that the cities are not similar. Perhaps the columnist's city has 100 people where the other cities were 20 million+ people.
(C) Incorrect. Out of scope. *EDIT* This answer doesn't directly relate to the conclusion of the argument that we are trying to weaken (that city council should be praised). [A special thanks to Patrick for pointing out my original, misinterpretation of (C).]
(D) Incorrect. So what? If you want a high probability of quality results, in this case (and many other cases), you might have to pay for it.
(E) Incorrect. This answer is consistent with the stimulus and doesn’t necessarily weaken. Perhaps after 3 years returns triple.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation. Although we still should read the two answers that deal with the car analogy, I was convinced on my first read that the car analogy was there to waste our time and fill out the trap answers.

(A) and (E) are very common types of trap answers on weaken questions, in that on the face of them they seem to go against the gist of the argument ... however, their weak strength ("some", "many", etc.) is often perfectly compatible with the evidence presented.

The columnist said that preventive maintenance "almost always" pays off. So the fact that (A) says that "sometimes" it doesn't can't weaken the argument.

The columnist said that the investment is "likely to have a big payoff in several years". So the fact that (E) says that you don't get an immediate payoff can't weaken the argument.

Although this is a completely irrelevant correction, the previous poster misread what (C) was saying. It does not say that people didn't have the money to conduct preventative maintenance. To the contrary, it says people who elect not to get preventative maintenance are choosing to do so for nonfinancial reasons. It's still completely out of scope, but the fact that these motorists have the financial means to maintain their cars but elect not to would probably only strengthen the columnist's claim that these motorists were shortsighted (and not just poor).

Keep up the good work!

[alandman]

Great explanations guys. This is a certainly tricky argument. Here how how I got to the right answer:

Premise 1: Shortsighted motorists learn the hard way
about the wisdom of preventive auto maintenance;
such maintenance almost always pays off in the
long run.

Premise 2: Other cities in this region that
have devoted resources to economic
development planning have earned large
returns on such an investment.

Sub Conclusion:In hiring this adviser, the council made
an investment that is likely to have a big payoff
in several years.

Conclusion: Our usually shortsighted city council
should be praised for using similar wisdom when
they hired a long-term economic development
adviser

As you see, premise 1 is just there to waste our time.

So the real core is between the P2, sub-conclusion and conclusion.

The conclusion is based on the sub-conclusion which in turn is based on P2, hence the assumption of the argument is that the columnist's city can achieve a big payoff because the other cities did.

Answer choice B weakens the argument as it says that the factors influencing whether a city can a achieve a big payoff are not present in the columnist's city.

[kaseyb002]

I don't like (B) because it seems like we have to assume that the Columnist is saying that their payoff will be equally large as the other cities when s/he uses the term, "large" and "big". How are we to know if "big" means "just as big as the other cities" or "big relative to our city"? It seems more natural for me to go with the latter.

I would think (D) would weaken, because it gives some hint that since many aren't willing to pay for a qualified econ adviser, it reduces the likelihood of this city council hiring a qualified econ adviser. I realize though that it takes quite a leap to get there.

[rbkfrye]

I am dissatisfied with these explanations :/

If E says all the comparison cities with large growth had no returns for the first few years, then this necessarily weakens either the premise about payoff in several years being likely or the assumption of the premise of comparison cities having large returns that their city could too, because E implies that historically those two premises don't coincide in the region.

B seems like a stretch. Every time other weaken questions offer answers that describe groups the author compares as different, but not different in a way that directly, causally affects the outcomes the author describes, the answers always seem to be wrong.

Except here...

[ptewarie]

I am dissatisfied with these explanations :/

If E says all the comparison cities with large growth had no returns for the first few years, then this necessarily weakens either the premise about payoff in several years being likely or the assumption of the premise of comparison cities having large returns that their city could too, because E implies that historically those two premises don't coincide in the region.

B seems like a stretch. Every time other weaken questions offer answers that describe groups the author compares as different, but not different in a way that directly, causally affects the outcomes the author describes, the answers always seem to be wrong.

Except here...

No E, by saying that the city did not earn any returns in first few years, is consistent with stimulus b/c author actually mentions that the pay-off occurs in the long-term(and not in the short term). Thus, it does not weaken the stimulus.

This is not as difficult of a stimulus as some are thinking it to be.
The author is just saying that the council of a town X made the right choice in hiring the economic adviser b/c other towns had success when they hired an adviser.

Well this is ripe for weakening. The most important thing to do is to find the assumptions the author is making. One of the most important one is:

The towns mentioned are similar in important respects that would allow us to compare them( for example their economic needs/population size etc etc are similar)

In the LSAT, the author will often try to establish one thing to be true by relying on it being true in a different case. Well that can only work if both cases are similar enough.
Answer choice B gets at the heart of this assumption by noting that the columnist city is NOT equal in many respects to the other cities. That said, it would weaken the assertion that just because it worked in the other city, it will work in this city( After all, they are so different).

It's like saying: Studying with flashcards will ensure that John gets an A on his test because Jack did that and got an A. Well what if John has completely different needs, comes from a different environment, etc. than Jack. Then the two cannot be compared.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation of (E). Like (A), it fits within the negative space of what we're already told in the stimulus.

Just want to go back to (D) --- someone was saying that this suggests that this city council is NOT as likely to hire the long term planner.

Make sure you're clear on the conclusion:
the long term planner has already been hired. We're questioning whether hiring that adviser was a good move.

So (D) is irrelevant, because apparently this city council WAS willing to pay the adviser's salary. This doesn't help us make the counterargument that doing so might not help this city in the long run.

[alex.cheng.2012]

Hey everyone. After reading the responses, I am still not satisfied with why (B) is the correct answer choice. I hope someone can provide some further insight.

Incorrect Answers:
(A): The whole thing about cars and preventive maintenance ends up being a smoke screen and is actually not too relevant to the argument's core. Finally as ohthatpatrick previously stated, the answer choice hinges on some, and is just not strong enough to weaken the argument
(C): Similar to A. Also it says most, which wouldn't be strong enough, in this case, to weaken the argument. Also, how is failing to do preventive maintenance due to non-financial reasons even relevant? How does this even weaken the argument? It doesn't.
(D): I originally chose this as my answer choice. The answer says generally, and similar to A and C, it's not strong enough to weaken the argument. Perhaps the city council hired one of the advisers that didn't charge a price higher than they are willing to pay.
(E): This is pretty easy to eliminate because the argument says it will pay off in several years. Even if they don't pay off within the first few years, it doesn't weaken the argument, because the argument already concedes that it could take longer

Correct Answer (B): I now see how this is the best answer choice, due to POE, but I still don't quite see how it is correct. I guess the general idea is that, because the city's conditions is not the same as the other cities that reaped benefits, there remains the possibility that the outcomes for the other cities will not be the same as for the columnist's city. The LSAT is supposed to be written so that outside knowledge is not required to answer the questions. So, if you were entirely oblivious to how economies work in a general sense, how would you even know that the population and the current state of the economy are even relevant factors? If we do bring in outside knowledge, there have been cases where small countries with a relatively small population and a third world economy have made massive gains, propelling them to the status of an industrial, first world economy (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore come to mind. I think Iceland is also an example as well.). Finally, as one of the previous users stated, perhaps the gains they make are large for their city, even if it's not large for other cities.

I can kind of see why B is correct. City X says it will reap gains similar to City Y because City X has adopted measure A that City Y has adopted as well. But the conditions of City X are different than City Y, so we cannot conclusively anticipate that the City X's gains will be similar to City Y.
The more I think about it, the more I understand why answer B is the correct answer, but not without bringing in my outside knowledge regarding economies in relation to population size and current economic status.

[drewogdon]

I find answer B to be very vague.

The argument is that hiring this economic adviser will likely payoff big time in several years, right?

[“Other cities in the region”] Ok, we all know cities can be proportional and disproportional to each other as far as size and economies... [“that have devoted resources to economic development planning have earned large returns on investment.]"

Ok. So were looking to find what weakens this argument.

I find nothing weak at all about how if City A (let’s assume it’s a small, struggling city) [“usually shortsighted city council”] were to hire a long-term economic advisor, that it WOULDN’T have a big payoff in proportion to that city.

Maybe City A has a population of 50k, and a economic development budget of $500k. Maybe they’re return in several years is 40%. ($200,000). Maybe that’s HUGE compared to years prior in that city... (maybe its always been 10% ROIs).

City B-- The [“other cities in the region”] (i.e. Los Angeles) has a population of over 1 million people, and a budget of $5,000,000.
They ALSO made a return of 40%, because they similarly devoted resources to econ development.

Ok... so they both made large returns/big payoff.

The main argument that we are trying to weaken is that,
[“In hiring this advisor, the council made an investment that is likely to have a big payoff in several years.”]

Saying that it is “likely” indicates that this method of reasoning tends to be effective. We are looking for EFFECTIVE results.

So if City A, a small rural city, hires this guy and gets a ROI of 30-40% more than usual, then how is that NOT a big payoff, in proportion to that city’s own population and economy.

We need to look at this problem in terms of percentages. It’s that whole numbers-percentages conflict that the LSAT teaches throughout. Just because City B, (LA), makes way more $ numbers-wise, does that in turn make City A’s ROI less meaningful even if both receive the same ROI percentage-wise?

This to me seems like a direct contradiction of what the LSAT teaches us about numbers-percentages.

Had the problem mentioned, “Other LARGER, and more POPULOUS cities in this region...” or “cities in the region have devoted VAST resources to econ development”...I might have considered it.

[rachellewrx]

Let me add my two cents here.

The flaws I see here is improper analogy and improper comparison. Because Motorist is not the Columnist's city. And there is little to none similarity between them. What's true about the motorist is not necessarily true about the Columnist's city. Similarly, other cities in this region are not the Columnist's city either. We cannot adopt any policy that is good for other city in the Columnist's city, unless we know both of them are identical, or at least similar.

So any answer choices about car or the motorist is incorrect. They are irrelevant to the Columnist's city. We can eliminate A and C.

Any answer ONLY talking about other cities are irrelevant. We can eliminate E.

And we really don't care about the advisor'' salary. He could earn $1,000,000 for all I care. So D is out.

That leaves B. B is actually saying that the Columnist's city is not identical to the other cities. So what works in other cities may not work in the Columnist's city. Therefore it is the flaw in the Columnist's argument. B is just using specific examples like population and other stuff to illustrate the flaw.

Not sure if my reasoning here is flawless. But it worked here. Any suggestions?

[Mab6q]

Great explanation of (E). Like (A), it fits within the negative space of what we're already told in the stimulus.

Just want to go back to (D) --- someone was saying that this suggests that this city council is NOT as likely to hire the long term planner.

Make sure you're clear on the conclusion:
the long term planner has already been hired. We're questioning whether hiring that adviser was a good move.

So (D) is irrelevant, because apparently this city council WAS willing to pay the adviser's salary. This doesn't help us make the counterargument that doing so might not help this city in the long run.

I actually read D quite differently, even though I choose B as the correct answer. I thought D was getting at the idea that qualified economic advisers are not typically hired because their asking price is too high, which means that the adviser that was hired by this city is not qualified. I eliminated D because I thought it was limited in scope by "many city councils" and "generally".

What do you think?

[ohthatpatrick]

I see where you're going with (D) -- you're saying that its intended effect is to lure people into telling themselves that "THIS guy we hired is probably not qualified, thus our investment in him is unlikely to have a big payoff".

I can see that. And, as you implied, interpreting (D) that way requires some BIG leaps.

(D) tells us that "most qualified advisers have a salary that at least 5 city councils would be unwilling to pay".

(note: there's no actual threshold for 'many', but "at least 5" is a nice working one)

It's hard to interpret (D) as "OUR advisor is unqualified" when

up to 49% of qualified advisers DON'T charge that much.
and when
our city council could easily NOT be one of those 5 cheapskate city councils.

===== quick, complete explanation =====

Task: Weaken

Core ---------

Conclusion: Hiring this adviser is likely to have a big payoff in several years (CAUSAL)

Evidence:
(ANALOGY)
investing in an economic adviser is somehow like doing preventative maintenance on a car

(CORRELATION)
elsewhere in this region, there's a correlation between spending $$ on an adviser and earning huge ROI's.

Analysis -------
Well, both pieces of evidence are famous LSAT patterns. So who knows whether LSAT will 1.weaken by showing that the analogy is a poor fit
or
2. weaken by undermining the correlation->causation part of the argument.

The author is definitely assuming causality in the last sentence ... to reach his conclusion, he has to believe that it's BECAUSE they spent $$ on an adviser that they got huge ROI's.

Answer Choices ------

(A) Does this weaken the analogy? No, because the author freely admitted that preventative maintenance almost always pays off. Beware the weakness of "some" on STR/WEAK questions.

(B) Does this weaken the correlation -> causality part of the argument? Yes.

In order to believe that ADVISER is the cause of LARGE RETURNS, our ideal science experiment would compare two identical cities, one with an ADVISER, one without, and see how they each do in terms of RETURNS.

Any difference between the two cities being compared weakens our science, because THAT difference (and not the ADVISER-difference we're attempting to measure) might really be accounting for the outcome of the experiment.

(B) is essentially making OUR city "less fair to compare" to the OTHER cities mentioned in the correlation.

Is it strong enough to worry us?

Yes, potentially. OUR city has a much smaller population and economy than the OTHER cities.

It is possible that an adviser would have a similar effect on our, very different, city?

Of course! But (B) is weakening the argument by attacking the relevance of one of its premises.

We could attack the CAR ANALOGY for its relevance.

Similarly, we can attack whether the CORRELATION cited is relevant to us. Someone arguing with the Columnist might say, "our city is too small and uncomplicated to merit hiring a long term financial adviser ... of COURSE you benefit from having one for a large, complex, populous city ... but we're basically just a sparsely strewn town of mobile homes, off the freeway, with a gas station and a McDonald's.

Make no mistake, this answer IS very, very weak in what it does. It almost does nothing. But it does do something. It raises an eyebrow at the applicability of the columnist's most direct piece of evidence: the correlation in OTHER cities.

(C) WHY motorists or city councils would choose not to do preventative maintenance is out of scope. The conclusion cares about the potential effects of hiring an adviser.

(D) So weak that it's useless ... "many city councils", so like "at least 5 city councils are unwilling to pay as much as most qualified advisers would charge." Great. Why would that super weak statement influence my assessment about whether OUR hired adviser is going to make us money?

(E) Tempting because it's relevant ... but the conclusion's PAYOFF is "in several years", so it's perfectly consistent with that to say that we didn't see a ROI immediately.

[WesleyC316]

Still don't see why E is incorrect.

Sub premise: Other cities which did the same had huge returns.
Sub conclusion/ major premise: In hiring the adviser, we are also likely to have a big payoff in several years.
Conclusion: City council did a good job.

E says in the first few years there are no returns at all, directly contradicting the "have a big payoff in several years" part in the major premise.

In case someone disputes me about the term "several" here, I would like to cite the definition in Collins Dictionary: "Several is used to refer to a number of people or things that is not large but is greater than two. " So "several" here definitely doesn't refer to a long term, instead it's closer to "first few years".

What am I missing here?

That being said, I think B is definitely a good and typical weakening answer choice. For analogous situations, nothing wrecks the argument more than pointing out the differences between the two.

[HannahM495]

Quick question about rachellewrx 's post:

In reference to AC E -- I'm a little confused on the reasoning for its dismissal. Not that I disagree that it's wrong (though I did agonize over this question between B and E for longer than I'd like to admit), but I'm unsure of the reasoning. Is the fact that this AC only references OTHER cities than the columnist's sufficient to discredit it as an option?

If the answer were to say something like, "While those cities that hired economic development advisors earned large returns during their programs' initial years, economic development advisors exude destructive Godzilla monster-attracting pheromones, leaving those regions economically devastated in the long term," would that not be an acceptable (albeit strange ) answer to weaken the columnist's argument?