Self-study
Consumer advocate: The manufacturer's instructions for assembling a product should be written in such a way that most consumers would find it much easier to put the product together if the instructions were available than if they were not.
Objective: Miscellaneous?!?
In this question, the stem itself is both difficult to parse and immensely informative. It might be confusing at first glance, but take the time to work through its meaning and it gives us much more information than usual about what’s in the stimulus and what our correct answer needs to accomplish.
The stem starts off like a strengthen question (“which of the following, if true, would provide the strongest…”), but then moves to a very specific, highly informative twist.
It tells us the stimulus will involve a principle – a general rule that the author wants to apply to all situations. It also tells us this principle is open to a specific form of criticism – there will be some situations in which it is impossible to follow the rule.
This is much more direction than we usually have heading into a stimulus. We know our job is to find the rule, then brainstorm situations that would make the rule impossible to follow.
Anticipating The Answer
The entire stimulus is the principle, and it’s about assembly instructions. It says a certain relative claim must always be true: the assembly experience with instructions must always be much easier than the assembly experience without instructions.
To make it impossible for this claim to be true, we need a situation that pushes those two experiences closer together. If assembly is maximally difficult no matter how good your instructions are, it becomes impossible for the “with instructions” experience to be much easier than the “without instructions” experience. Or vice versa, if it’s maximally easy no matter what, instructions can’t make the experience easier.
It’s doable to anticipate those specific scenarios – in general the way to break relative claims is to push the two things together – but as long as you’ve taken the time to frame the task squarely in your mind, you should be in good shape to recognize the correct answer when it appears.
24.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ███████ ███ █████████ ██████ ███ ████████ ████ ███ █████████ ████████ ██ ███ ████████ ████████ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████
a
The typical consumer ███ █████████ █ ███████ ████ ██ █████ ███ ██████████████ █████████████ ███ █████ ███ █████ ███████████
A few lenses on this. First, there’s no indication that the instructions we’re talking about in (A) abide by the consumer advocate’s principle. That is, maybe the typical consumer’s difficulty comes from how poorly written instructions usually are, hence our author’s demand that instructions be better written.
There’s also a classic “relative vs. absolute” dynamic going on here: we’re given the absolute claim that using instructions involves great difficulty, but that still leaves room for the relative claim that attempting assembly without instructions involves even greater difficulty.
Let’s say Dingbert is much taller than Pungus. But what if Pungus is very tall? That doesn’t mean Dingbert can’t be much taller than Pungus, it just means Dingbert is very VERY tall.
At this point perhaps you’re salty because (C) uses absolute language as well. And it does! It’s just that (C) also tells us people don’t even use the instructions. That last bit is the key.
b
Often the store ██ █████ █ ████████ █████████ ██ ███████████ ███████ ████ ██████ ███ █ ████ ██ ████████ ███ ███████ ███ ███████ ███
Consumers assembling these products themselves is baked in to the author’s rule. The rule says it needs to be “much easier to put the product together”. Paying professionals to assemble the product for you doesn’t make it easier to assemble.
If the rule said it must be much easier to end up with an assembled product in your house, then maybe we’d be cooking.
c
For the typical ████████ ████ █████████ ███ ████████ ██ ██ ██ ████ ██████ ███ ███████ ████ ██████████ ███ ██████████████ █████████████
Here we’ve pushed our “with instructions” scenario and our “without instructions” scenario together by putting them both at one extreme: assembling products is typically so easy that people don’t even look at the instructions. Pretty hard for well-written instructions to make things easier when the task itself is so easy no one will even read them.
d
Usually a consumer ███ ██ ██████ ██ ████████ █ ███████ █████ ███ ██████████████ ████████████ ███ ██ ██████████ █████████████ ███ █████████████
This is best understood as a subtly different version of our correct answer. If (D) said “... no difficulty assembling the product” we’d be pointing in much the same direction as (C), where easy tasks don’t benefit much from good instructions.
Easy to read instructions, though, are fantastic for the advocate’s rule. If instructions are usually clear and concise, holding all instructions to that standard feels quite doable.
e
Some consumers refer ██ ███ ██████████████ ████████████ ███ ██████████ █ ███████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██████████ ██████████ ███ ████████
(E)’s logic works a lot like (C): if no one is reading the instructions because assembly is so easy, it’s hard to write instructions that make the process easier.
A few lenses on this. First, (E) only works if we assume people very rarely have difficulty assembling the product (because assembling products is usually very easy). So (E) operates much like (C), except without (C)'s explicit claim that assembly is easy.
Second, (E)’s “some” claim is too weak to counter our rule, which applies to most consumers. Maybe some consumers (i.e. carpentry nerds) read instructions very rarely because they’re great at assembling products and seldom encounter any difficulty. Our author’s rule, though, is that instructions should make it easier for most people, and most people aren’t carpentry nerds.