Unsure of how to arrive at the correct answer: PrepTest 156 - Section 4 - Question 18

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• 1 Like

  James Weiner Alum Member

  July 30 42 karma

  I'll give it a shot:
  I think a good framing is cost benefits analysis. They give us this downside of the law that it discourages landowners from protecting species on their land because it means development is prohibited, but from that premise they make the conclusion that the species would not face any additional dangers if the law was removed.

  The unreasonable assumption is that because this law has one draw back it does nothing for the protected species. In other words it fails to consider that the law might have other positive effects that outweigh the downside such as possibly preventing the landowners from turning the species habitat into a parking lot. Choice C calls this out, that's how you might get it by hunting.

  Now if that does not happen for POE it might look this:
  B-This is a cookie cutter prescriptive to descriptive that you have to recognize this is not happening
  D-Landowners and developers may have different interests okay? What bearing does this have on the impact of the removal of the law, just an invitation for loose thinking
  E-Same sort of thing going on here as with D just assumption bait and super removed from the support structure of the argument, might has well have said it fails to take into account the reaction of space aliens.
  A-This is the real hurtle if you don't see the flaw it has the hand wavey feel of a correct flaw answer, but try and pin what its saying down to the stimulus what condition are they mistaking as being required for production with being required for prevention of some outcome. (They are not treating the law and species protection as this type of relationship at all)
  C- I don't fully understand why this is correct but I can point to concrete things that wrong with every other choice pick it move on cut my loses
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  ameliabrady02 Alum Member

  July 30 edited July 30 16 karma

  I think I can explain why C is correct.

  In the most simplified sense, the stimulus is telling is that these regulations are expensive to follow which leads some people to have an incentive to not follow them, and therefore we should get rid of them because animals would not be harmed by the removal.

  That should make you say wait wait wait.

  To use a parallel situation, we have rules about where we should dump paint/chemicals. It's a pain and kinda expensive to follow the rules so some people just dump them down the drain anyways. Using the reasoning from the arument, it would follow that if we took away the rules on how to dispose of paint/chemical substances, the enviornment would NOT be worse off.

  Just becasue not everyone is following a guideline due to its expense and incentives not to, doesn't mean that repealing it wouldn't hurt what it's intended to protect.

  Here is C edited to reflect the stimulus:

  C. It unjustifiably overlooks the possibility that even if certain factors (endangered species regulations) tend to produce a given effect (some people not following them due to negative incentives), they may be likely to produce stronger countervailing effects as well (still protect a TON of endanged species which cancels out the few people not following).