Q9 - Ellen: A group of economists and ecologists

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Identify the Disagreement

Stimulus Breakdown:
Ellen: Some people estimated the biosphere to be worth $33M. So, we should protect it.
Santiago: Estimating the $ value suggests that part is the most important thing about it. So, I'm uncomfortable with using that as the reason to protect it.

Answer Anticipation:
Santiago is uncomfortable with something Ellen just did in her argument - using the dollar value as a justification for the protection of the biosphere. Classic form of disagreement - person 2 says "I don't like [X thing you just did]."

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Almost an exact match for our prediction (and for part of Santiago's first sentence). Santiago says he's uncomfortable using the dollar value, which means he does NOT think it's "an appropriate way" to justify it. Meanwhile, Ellen's argument is based on this directly - the dollar value is her premise, while protecting the biosphere is her conclusion. In order to make that argument, she must believe that her premise is "an appropriate way" of justifying her conclusion.

(B) While Santiago might agree with this, Ellen never weighs in on what the biosphere's 'most important value' is - all she does is note that the $ value has been estimated. She never compares that value to any other value it might have.

(C) It might be tempting to argue that Ellen agrees with this, but viewing this through inference glasses, her text can't support the double strong language of "most effective way to ensure." And Santiago doesn't say anything about this approach's effectiveness.

(D) Ellen probably disagrees with this, since she's buying in to the dollar value estimation and using it to support an argument, but Santiago is silent on the estimation's accuracy. He disagrees with it's appropriateness, not it's realisticness.

(E) This is super tempting, as it's very close to what Santiago says. But Ellen hasn't had a chance to weigh in on this particular idea even remotely. (And we could even quibble with Santiago's agreement here - what he actually said was that using the dollar value as justification for protecting the biosphere was what would imply the 'most important value' stuff. Not the act of calculating the value all by itself. But this is harder than we need to work to eliminate this one, since Ellen is flat out silent.)

Takeaway/Pattern:
On Identify the Disagreement questions, the most dangerous traps are answers that one person aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalmost has an opinion on. It's easy to get stuck waffling back and forth on whether they do or don't, all the while missing that the other person definitely does not weigh in - and as such, it's an autokill. Don't do the heavy lifting on an edge case unless you really have to!

#officialexplanation