Q26 - Why should the government

[ebb5bdffdf]

I thought A was correct. Can someone explain why its wrong?

[timmydoeslsat]

I thought A was correct. Can someone explain why its wrong?

The argument does not have to furnish or give a solution to this problem.

The argument's conclusion is that the government should provide the money to establish a network of supercomputers.

Evidence:

Range of problems that can be attacked only with this network.

+

No business or university has the resources to purchase it by itself.

+

No business or university wants to invest in part of a network without knowing that there is a plan for establishing the entire network.
_________________________________________________

Ok, so do you spot an issue with this reasoning of why the government should be the ones to provide the money?

First, couldn't a business and a university cooperate and join together to form this network? I know they don't have enough by themselves, but together they may.

Second, why is the government the default choice for this burden? Why not non-profit groups? Why not charity? It isn't as if there are ONLY 3 are available to pay for this network.

[griffin.811]

How does this "overlook" the possibility that the universities/businesses could work togerther? It seems to consider this, then reject it.

"and no business or university wants to invest in a part of a network..."

[rinagoldfield]

This problem is subtle; its challenges and rewards lie in tricky language details.

The stimulus opens with its conclusion_ in question form, no less! The conclusion reduces to:

The government, rather than businesses or universities, should fund a network of supercomputers.

Two premises support the conclusion:

1. No business or university can afford to purchase an entire network by itself.

2. No business or university wants to invest in a part of a network if no mechanism exists for coordinating a whole network.

We want to identify a weakness in the argument... hmmm... let’s go to the answer choices.

(E) seems like it could be eliminated by the second premise. No business or university wants to invest in a coordinated whole, right? How, then, could they cooperate to build that whole? But notice that the second premise comes in conditional form. It tells us that no business wants to invest in a part of a network IF no mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole. But perhaps this mechanism does indeed exist! The argument never eliminates this possibility. Businesses and universities might want to collaboratively invest in this case. (E) is correct.

(A) is out of scope. The argument concerns who should pay for the network, not how it will be established. Also, no "dilemma" is ever outlined.

(B) is wrong, although it is tricky. The argument never defines the supercomputer network as national, so it doesn’t need address whether or not an international network is possible.

This answer choice could be temptingly taken to identify a source of $$ beyond the government, industry, or universities. Why does the inability of universities and businesses to pay for a supercomputer network mean that government must fund the network? Don’t other sources of funding exist?
However, (B) articulates the possibility of an international supercomputer network, not an internationally funded supercomputer network. (B) fails to adequately address this weakness.

(C) is similar to (A). The argument revolves around funding the supercomputer network, not maintaining it.

(D) is way, way, way out of scope. There’s nothing about science or national preeminence in the argument.

Hope this helps!

[griffin.811]

This was a great breakdown! Much appreciated! This was a tough one, I believe I fell for the trap of B. I know for a fact I immediately eliminated E though.

[WaltGrace1983]

This answer choice could be temptingly taken to identify a source of $$ beyond the government, industry, or universities. Why does the inability of universities and businesses to pay for a supercomputer network mean that government must fund the network? Don’t other sources of funding exist?
However, (B) articulates the possibility of an international supercomputer network, not an internationally funded supercomputer network. (B) fails to adequately address this weakness.

However, let's say we did have an answer choice saying something like the following: "It does not establish the impossibility of a supercomputer network funded by _____________" and we put something like "charity" "international cooperation" etc. in the blank, wouldn't that be a correct answer? After all, another flaw is that we are establishing that it is the GOVERNMENT - and the government ALONE - that should fund this supercomputer network.

Also, wouldn't the part about "no business or university want sot invest..." be primarily anecdotal information to give more detail to the main premise that "No business or university have the resource sot purchase by itself enough machines for a whole network." I think this way because, IF there is no "whole network (because the businesses/universities don't have enough $$$ for a whole network), THEN it would make sense that they wouldn't want to invest in a whole network. It just seems like that last piece of information is just giving us more stuff to be distracted by when really the core just looks like this:

Businesses/Universities don't have money for whole network
→
Govt. should provide money

[christine.defenbaugh]

However, let's say we did have an answer choice saying something like the following: "It does not establish the impossibility of a supercomputer network funded by _____________" and we put something like "charity" "international cooperation" etc. in the blank, wouldn't that be a correct answer? After all, another flaw is that we are establishing that it is the GOVERNMENT - and the government ALONE - that should fund this supercomputer network.

Absolutely! There are a number of assumptions being made here, and "assuming no one other than these three players can fund it" is absolutely one of them.

I think that's why Rina is saying the answer is tempting - because it would be easy to misread it to say that it assumes the impossibility of international funding, which would weaken it just like your charity example!

Also, wouldn't the part about "no business or university want sot invest..." be primarily anecdotal information to give more detail to the main premise that "No business or university have the resource sot purchase by itself enough machines for a whole network." I think this way because, IF there is no "whole network (because the businesses/universities don't have enough $$$ for a whole network), THEN it would make sense that they wouldn't want to invest in a whole network. It just seems like that last piece of information is just giving us more stuff to be distracted by when really the core just looks like this:

Businesses/Universities don't have money for whole network
→
Govt. should provide money

Be careful here not to turn premises (that we must accept as gospel truth) into "anecdotal information" that is by definition suspect. The last statement is essentially a conditional statement that breaks down to:

if no coordination mechanism exists --> no business/university will invest in a part of a network.

We can't assume there would be no 'whole network', just because they each can't buy it on their own - that's the same error the author makes! They could always cooperate to set it up. This statement is trying to show us in what circumstances the universities/businesses would NOT cooperate to build the network.

This is a meaningful restriction. If we found out that there could be no coordination mechanism, then we COULD safely conclude that universities and businesses would never cooperate to set up the network. The kicker is that we don't know if that condition has been satisfied!

Don't dismiss this statement so easily - it is significant, and if the conditional is misread to have been triggered, it would lead you to eliminating the correct answer!

Does that help a bit?

[obobob]

This problem is subtle; its challenges and rewards lie in tricky language details.

The stimulus opens with its conclusion_ in question form, no less! The conclusion reduces to:

The government, rather than businesses or universities, should fund a network of supercomputers.

Two premises support the conclusion:

1. No business or university can afford to purchase an entire network by itself.

2. No business or university wants to invest in a part of a network if no mechanism exists for coordinating a whole network.

We want to identify a weakness in the argument... hmmm... let’s go to the answer choices.

(E) seems like it could be eliminated by the second premise. No business or university wants to invest in a coordinated whole, right? How, then, could they cooperate to build that whole? But notice that the second premise comes in conditional form. It tells us that no business wants to invest in a part of a network IF no mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole. But perhaps this mechanism does indeed exist! The argument never eliminates this possibility. Businesses and universities might want to collaboratively invest in this case. (E) is correct.

Fantastic explanation! After reading your explanation, I am now seeing this stimulus much deeply with considering the conditional statement at the end of the argument. I have another quick question in addition to accepting your explanation why (E) is the correct answer:

While I was solving this question for the first time, I totally missed the fact that the second premise ("[I]f no mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a while[,] no business or university wants to invest in part of a network") is in conditional statement and that the conclusion is overlooking a possibility that there is a way to coordinate establishment of the whole network thus some possibility that industry and universities to provide money together.

Nevertheless, I still chose the correct answer (E). I was thinking that the argument is committing "Part vs. Whole." I thought the stimulus' argument is assuming that there is no possibility that industry or universities will cooperate as a group, because individual university or industry does not have resource to purchase for whole network nor wants to make partial investment. In addition to Part vs. Whole, I realized that the argument also commits "False Choice" ("what if there is some other entity or a group that could provide the money instead of the government, industry, or universities?"), so those two factors played in my mind in choosing (E).

Now that I've learned from your explanation @ringagoldfield that my thinking process is not quite right, as I missed the conditional part of the stimulus' argument and its impact in assessing the argument as a whole.
But I wonder if my thinking process, as stated above, can actually be helpful in anyway or if it was just a coincidence that my thinking process lead me to choose the correct answer.

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

I had the same reaction to the first premise:
just because no business or university BY ITSELF has enough money to buy the whole network, doesn't mean they couldn't gang up and have enough resources TOGETHER.

That's the Part vs. Whole flaw you were talking about.

But --- the 2nd premise actually DOES account for that and attempt to rule it out. If they were to work together, then no business or university would be paying for the whole network by itself. Instead, they would each be paying for "part of the network."

And the 2nd premise is saying, they won't be willing to gang up either, unless there's some mechanism for coordinating the network.

So the Part vs. Whole is a good instinct, but it's not a relevant flaw since the 2nd premise addresses the contingency of "what if business and universities TOGETHER tried to do it?"

The False Choice is seemingly a valid concern, although the conclusion is sort of restricting the discussion to govt vs. industry or universities.

The conclusion is technically, "The government, rather than industry or universities, should provide the money", which is a little different than saying "The government should provide the money", which would make us wonder "Hey, what if there are other options?"

So both of your instincts were solid, because both of those flaws seem at first blush to be present. But technically both are irrelevant here for reasons that are hard to see initially.