Q24

[hwsitgoing]

Could someone please explain why A is incorrect for number 24 and C is correct? It seem to be supported by lines 20-21. The word "every" in choice C seemed to extreme to me, which is why I didn't chose it.

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Sure, (C) has "every," but (A) has "all."

Which answer is actually easier to prove? Notice that (C) is just about rules that determine which side of the road to drive on. The author tells us that in this particular situation, any rule is better than no rule at all, and that makes sense. A rule that says we must all drive on the right side is arguably as good as a rule that says we must all drive on the left side, but if there were no rules about this there would be chaos.

(A) is about ALL activities that require humans to agree on a common mode (such as driving on one side of the street, or stopping/going at certain colored lights, saying a basketball thrown through a hoop is worth 2 points, or walking into bathrooms that have male or female symbols) and (A) says that for all of these situations, any rule is just as good as any other rule -- we can just decide on anything and it would be just as good as any other decision. Certainly there are situations in which certain rules work better than others! This is actually much more extreme than (C), and not justifiable.

[jimmy902o]

could you please go over why D is wrong?

[hyewonkim89]

I also picked D for this question and would like to know why D is wrong.

Thanks in advance!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Happy to help on this one!

Answer choice (C) can be inferred from lines 17-21.

Incorrect Answers
(A) is too extreme as Mike pointed out above. This seems to come from lines 33-35, but strengthens the claim from "some" situations to "all" situations.
(B) is contradicted. The example of the private organization (lines 37-38) is actually contains a more complex relationship to the goal of preventing harm than does the criminal statutes coordinating the side of the road we drive on.
(D) is unsupported, because simply acknowledging the need to coordinate does not actually accomplish the goal of coordination. We'd still need a rule to know what side of the road to drive on!
(E) is unsupported. The passage only discusses the coordination of activities from which "harm" could result.

[esthertan0310]

I still can't figure out which part of line 17-21 supports the "cause less harm than it would prevent" clause...

[sarahejlee]

Hi,

I guess you could argue that in (C) 'a rule ... would likely cause less harm than it would prevent' is indeed supported since the passage explicitly states that 'any fair rule, then, would be better than no rule at all.'

If it did not cause less harm that it would prevent, in other words, if it caused as much harm or more harm that it would prevent, the author couldn't possibly be arguing that imposition of such a rule would be better than no rule at all.

For example, say, an author was to argue that imposing an environmental regulation would in long-term contribute to the betterment of the local economy, and plus for some other reasons, thus would be better than no environmental regulation at all, we can infer that such an environmental regulation would do cause less harm to the local economy than it would prevent, right?

Well, that may have been a bad analogy, but I hope you get the gist of it.

[Dtodaizzle]

The explanation in Manhattan LSAT makes sense, and I understand that "every fair rule concerning which side of the street to drive on would prevent more harm that it would create. " What I don't understand is how does the latter part of this sentence translates into "a rule would likely cause less harm than it would prevent."

Prevent what? If it is to "prevent harm," then the sentence wouldn't make sense, since how would a rule cause less harm than it would prevent harm? If the latter part of the sentence were "a rule would likely cause less harm than it would create," then that would make sense and match the explanation given in the work book.

Could somebody please elaborate? Is this perhaps some idiomatic expression that I have never heard of? I grew up in the Northeast, so maybe this is an expression used by people living in Cali or down in the dirty South?

[tommywallach]

Not an expression, I just think you're confused on the logic. If I said "Nobody can have a relationship," this would both CAUSE problems and RELIEVE problems. People wouldn't heartbreak anymore, but they'd get lonely. Etc. Etc.

That's all the passage is talking about. Let me know if this didn't answer your question.

-t

[dontmesswmeow]

I would like to explain the issue here in my way.

At first, I was also confused about the meaning since such tricky sentence is something you won't encounter on a daily basis.

"The implementation of the fair rule mentioned in (C) would likely cause less harm than it would prevent" can be more easily understood by dividing the sentence into two parts.

(1) the rule would likely cause less harm: (read (2) first ---->the extent or amount of harm such fair rule would 'cause' ? maybe just the coercion inflicted by the enforcement of the law?

(2) the amount/number of harm the rule would prevent: (such fair rule as that on driving on one side)---> prevent a lot of harms (which would have happened without the rule!)

That is to say that on balance, The harm that will be prevented by the rule is more in quantity, quality or degree than the harm/disadvantage that might be caused by implementing the rule.

So it means 'better to have a rule than not,' which is what the passage is essentially saying.

[snoopy]

I eliminated C for the same reason. Then, I read the answer choice multiple times. Remember that the rule in question is about prescribing which side of the road to drive on.

"Every...rule [implemented dictating which side of the road to drive on]...is a rule whose implementation would cause less harm than it would prevent [less harm]." The rule implemented harms less than preventing less harm. Preventing less harm is helping more harm. So, every rule implemented is a rule whose implementation harms less than harms more.

Does that make sense now?

[JeremyB86]

I think the aspect of this answer that's confusing for people is the phrase "less than would prevent". I don't think this answer choice can simply be interpreted from the line "Any fair rule..." However, there is a line in the passage which is more directly linked, beginning with "This is because prevention of harm underlies... all the way down to the end of paragraph 2 (sorry my version doesn't have line numbers). I am no expert, but the author says this example (the rule about driving on one side vs. the other) is "not inherently harm-producing", but also the "prevention of harm applies less directly than to other problems". In other words, this rule might not necessarily prevent harm as much as it would in another situation, but it's not going to cause harm either. Ergo, it would cause less harm than it would prevent.

Does this make sense?

[Misti Duvall]

I think the aspect of this answer that's confusing for people is the phrase "less than would prevent". I don't think this answer choice can simply be interpreted from the line "Any fair rule..." However, there is a line in the passage which is more directly linked, beginning with "This is because prevention of harm underlies... all the way down to the end of paragraph 2 (sorry my version doesn't have line numbers). I am no expert, but the author says this example (the rule about driving on one side vs. the other) is "not inherently harm-producing", but also the "prevention of harm applies less directly than to other problems". In other words, this rule might not necessarily prevent harm as much as it would in another situation, but it's not going to cause harm either. Ergo, it would cause less harm than it would prevent.

Does this make sense?

It does! I think you still need the "any fair rule..." line to justify the strength of answer choice (C), but what you've noted makes sense as well and fits with the rest of the answer.