Q2 - Since there is no survival value

[LSAT-Chang]

Wow, I thought this was a pretty tough problem for #2!
I couldn't extract a general principle from the argument and so just tried to match it to the answer choices, and ended up choosing (C) when in fact, it turned out to be going to against whatever the principle is in the argument...
How did you guys approach this problem??

[maryadkins]

Principle: Because there is no overall survival benefit for one organ to outlast the others, the efficiency of natural selection has made it so no organ is likely to outlast the others. We can boil this down even further to:

X has no overall benefit, therefore, not efficient to have X

(E) mimics this principle.

(A) just says a store stops ordering goods unless someone asks.

(B) is about one thing compensating for others (and is trying to distract you with organ talk).

(C) is about a single component being much LONGER than the others, and being preferred for that reason--this is the opposite of what we want.

(D) just tells us there are bad effects to excessively paying attention to one component of the body.

[dukeag]

Hello maryadkins, can you please tell me how you arrived at the conclusion that "X has no overall benefit, therefore, not efficient to have X" is the principle of the passage? And could you please tell me how you approach these kind of questions in general, a.k.a, how do you figure out what is the overall principle of this passage?

For some reason I did not think that was the principle. I thought the principle was "X has no value for something, so therefore X does not exist." And that's why I had such a hard time trying to find the answer choice which matched the question.