PT14.S2.Q24 - Between 1951 and 1963 it was illegal in the country..

Comments

• jaea6195 Core Member

  May 2021 67 karma

  C- If the death rate from alcohol related diseases was high before this prohibition period and after this prohibition period, then the conclusion (prohibition merely made people want and use alcohol MORE than they would have if it had not been forbidden) is much less likely to be true.. since people were dying from alcohol related diseases at similar rates. There's flaws within this view, of course, but you don't need to completely demolish the argument.. just make the conclusion a little less likely to be true.

  D- Well when did they consume the alcohol? Did they consume it in the years before the prohibition because it was popular to illegally import alcohol? Do we know that it was completely legal to important alcohol made with the same methods as in Geronia prior to this prohibition? Does this answer truly address the conclusion -> prohibition making people want to drink alcohol MORE than before?
• WinningHere Member

  May 2021 417 karma

  Hi,
  D - makes us make assumptions that we do not want to make with weaken questions. In addition to what @jaea6195 has noted, C is a weak answer choice in the word "many". Too weak.
  C - nicely outlines the fact there were sharp increases before the period as well as after, thus weakening the argument about increases within the period.
• Lime Green Dot Member ⭐

  March 2022 edited March 2022 1384 karma

  hello~ just wanted to add my 2 cents in case anyone is still around to discuss it.

  (1) Language-wise, I agree with @WinningHere that "many" in an ARG that's so sure of itself just won't cut it to prove to us anything more than what may be the case for one or two folks; possibly more, but it's just not that clear.

  (2) Content-wise, I found myself fallen into a weird trap of my own making when I gave (D) an unfortunate free pass... I think the problem that happened here is that I strayed too far from the ARG and wound up allowing (D) to be the answer to some RRE Q this was clearly not.

  I was thinking something along the lines of "ah, so the death rate climb was higher during the 1st 5 of the PROH than it was prior to the PROH, because of illegally imported alcohol beverages, not b/c of the PROH!" Which, of course, doesn't even make sense at all since the PROH was the ostensible cause of the illegally imported alcohol. Which is also completely in line with the STIM.

  Other thoughts:

  • Would those "many" have died of alcohol-related diseases anyway were it not for the PROH? We don't know, so the dial doesn't move to 'weaken' on this angle.

  • Would it even make a difference if (D) had said "most"? I'd say no, it wouldn't, b/c knowing how a handful, or most, or all P acquired ALC during the PROH doesn't by itself make me think any less of an ARG concerning the relative use and desire of a substance (and the resulting increase in related deaths) before vs. during that period. In other words, (D) seems to just tell us a fact about some of the P who died as a result of the ALC, not that they died as an indirect result of the PROH.

  • If, on the other hand, it had said, "Most who died... consumed illegally imported ALC produced with very different methods than those in G," well... I think we'd have ourselves an alternative explanation (it's the method, not the PROH, that led to an increase in ALC use & related deaths) that in turn might weaken!

  (C) in contrast tells us that we weren't panning our view wide enough -- if we were to look at the entire period of the PROH, and put that side by side the 10 +/- years surrounding that period, we'd see that the initial rise seen during the 1st 5 years of the PROH doesn't turn out to be such a striking statistic after all; when taking the long view, that rate evens out.

  Open to hearing further opinions on this!