PT17 S3 Q12 - ad's effect on cigarette smokers

CoolHumanPerson

Hey! I am having trouble understanding why A is incorrect. I do see how and why D works but I can't understand why A doesn't.

Here, we are given a correlation between the ad, price increase and drop in smoking. From the correlation, we get a causation that the ad is what caused the drop in smoking.

The flaw here is that the author overlooks all other alternate causes of the drop in smoking. In a strengthen question, an AC that denies an alternate causal explanation wins. For example, an AC that says or implies that X, an alternate cause for the drop in smoking, did not actually happen or that it can't be the cause will be the correct AC. And any AC that knocks out an alternate explanation for a given phenomenon automatically strengthens the proposed explanation.

Coming to AC A which says that the residents did not increase use of other forms of tobacco. Here, X i.e. the alternate cause, is given as people's increased use of other forms of tobacco. AC A denies this alternate cause.

The explanation that the 3% decrease in smoking happened because people switched over to other forms of tobacco seems like a valid alternate cause for the drop in number of smokers. (Cause: people switched to other forms of tobacco; effect: drop in smoking) It is such a small percentage and it is entirely reasonable that people switched how they wanted their tobacco kick. So, "3% people stopped smoking because they had switched over to other forms of tobacco instead" is a wonderful alternate causal explanation. Denying this alternate explanation increases the likelihood of ad causing the drop being true.

I get that D is better because it deals with the alternate explanation mentioned right there in the stimulus but how is A irrelevant?

TIA!

Casey.scott1312

Hi @CoolHumanPerson ! I thought something similar to you, but I think what was helpful for me was understanding that A only works if you also assume that people switched to use another product, but we don't have any evidence in the stim to support this assumption. Maybe people in group A stopped smoking, but people in group B started using snuff. Here, it's not necessarily true that people in group A switched to another product. In fact, if there are two different demographics (A and , for instance, there could still be another alternative explanation even if AC A is true. Also, I know J.Y. says it in the explanation video, but the conclusion is about people who smoke cigarettes. Even if people decreased their usage of other tobacco products, it wouldn't matter if the conclusion in the argument only applies to cigarettes. Hope this helps!

Casey.scott1312

idk why it changed B to a sunglasses emoji, but I meant to say B!

CoolHumanPerson

@"Casey.scott1312" said:
Maybe people in group A stopped smoking, but people in group B started using snuff. Here, it's not necessarily true that people in group A switched to another product. In fact, if there are two different demographics (A and , for instance, there could still be another alternative explanation even if AC A is true.

@"Casey.scott1312" thank you for responding! This part! Yes! It makes so much sense now. AC A says that "residents" have not increased their use. But this AC doesn't clarify the members of the set of "residents" it speaks of; could means just 2 guys chilling by the lake who have nothing to do with anything or it could mean literally all of the residents. I assumed it included the people who stopped smoking.

This realization is enough to eliminate AC A. As J.Y. often warns, we need to carefully consider the set of people the answer choice refers to. I missed that detail here.

@"Casey.scott1312" said:
I thought something similar to you, but I think what was helpful for me was understanding that A only works if you also assume that people switched to use another product, but we don't have any evidence in the stim to support this assumption.

@"Casey.scott1312" said:
Also, I know J.Y. says it in the explanation video, but the conclusion is about people who smoke cigarettes. Even if people decreased their usage of other tobacco products, it wouldn't matter if the conclusion in the argument only applies to cigarettes. Hope this helps!

I am still a little unsure about this part though. Before proceeding, I would just clarify that I agree 100% that D is better and use of "residents" is an automatic elimination for AC A. Even if we fix the residents bit in A, D still wins.

I understand that you, J.Y., and others share the view about AC A also being irrelevant because the conclusion in the stimulus is about cigarette smokers but hear me out?

"Residents" is what kills this AC so I am going to request you to replace "residents" with "the people who stopped smoking". If this was a weaken question, an AC that said "The people who stopped smoking increased their use of other tobacco products such as snuff and chewing tobacco since the campaign went into effect." would work in my opinion. A strengthen AC would just deny this.

Let's take an analogy? There is an ad which says stop using fax machines, they are harmful (I know I know, but please don't stop helping). At the time when the ad came out, 100 people were using fax machines. 1 year later, only 97 were; 3 people got off the fax bandwagon. The author concludes from this that the ad -c-> 3 people to stop using wax..

To weaken this argument, we can literally pick any one of the 1000 alternate explanations of why those three might have stopped using the fax machine. AC A swoops in and says "the three people who stopped using the fax machine increased their usage of text messages and emails since the ad went into effect." This works for me because even though the stimulus says nothing about emails and text messages, we must, on the LSAT, make reasonable assumptions every now and then. Text messages and emails are different beings from a fax but what they have in common is their purpose of delivering a message. It is very reasonable to assume here that it wasn't the ad, that was asking them to stop using fax, that made them stop; it was this increased usage of emails and texts. (No causal explanations proves our point 100%, remember the dead dolphins/ whales example?).

In a stimulus where the conclusion is about fax users, why does AC A matter when all it talks about is emails and texts? In my opinion, it is because the stimulus is a causal explanation of what got those 3 people to stop using the fax machines. It’s not about whether the new method (emails or texts) is the same as the old one (fax machines), but about whether this new factor could have led to the observed effect. I get what you are saying in that these are two different groups but that would be a different question type; in a question where the stimulus makes a case that people, who use fax machines, are cool. Here, an AC that talks about people who use email is irrelevant. But that's not the kind of stimulus we have.

Similarly, I would argue that although smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco or snuff are different concepts, they do have something in common: they are all methods to consume tobacco. And an AC that provides an alternate causal explanation in a way of telling us that their usage of other forms of tobacco has increased does weaken the likelihood of the offered causal hypothesis.

In case the analogy with fax and emails sound weird, I asked AI to come up with more examples of different things that share the same fundamental usage. Some other examples to consider: car and motorcycle, smartphone and landline, hard copies and audiobooks, vacuum cleaner and broom.

Thanks again for your insights, I was struggling so much with this for some reason—would totally understand if you need to take a coffee break before and after tackling this wall of text! 😄