http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-60-section-3-question-18/I had a lot of trouble with this question picking between A/C (reasons outlined below) and am hoping someone could point out the error in my logic.
The stimulus states activities that pose a risk are acceptable if and only if they satisfy any of two conditions
1) the net benefit outweigh the risk
2) the person bearing the risk does so voluntarily
Starting with the answer I chose first
(C) A motorcyclist rides without a helmet and the RISK is acceptable because he's doing so voluntarily. At first glance this seemed to definitely fit as an application of the principle stated in the stimulus. The motorcyclist is choosing to ride without a helmet. However, the answer states the risk is acceptable while the principle is talking about whether the activity that poses this risk is acceptable. One might argue that an acceptable activity necessarily implies the risk is acceptable. However, here all we're told is the necessary condition is satisfied and we can't conclude anything about the sufficient condition.
Therefore, I changed my answer to (A) though I had a lot of reservations:
(A) a salesperson voluntarily and therefore this activity is acceptable. This didn't seem to fit the stimulus too well. How do we know the risk the salesperson, by not replacing his old car with a new one with new safety features, is imposing a risk on his life? I felt (C) was blatantly wrong (stating that the risk is acceptable rather than the activity) while (A) seemed a little less wrong since it didn't seem too large a leap of faith to assume his old car may pose a risk on his life. After all, isn't driving always posing a risk on your life?
Between these two, I ended up picking (A) which happened to be the wrong answer of the two. Could anyone point out what I'm missing here?
Thanks in advance,
Peter
Comments
You're just missing one thing. The stim says Activities that pose risks TO LIFE are acceptable.
It is not clear whether or not a door not being replaced is a risk to life, but "C" says explicitly that riding without a helmet does pose a fatal risk.
Hope that helped.
Activities that pose risks to life are acceptable (Riding without a Helmet) if and only if (<-->) Gains net benefit (Not mentioned in answer choice) or Bears risks voluntarily (motorcyclist incurs this risk willingly).
Maybe it's the double arrow conditional that threw you off your game.
It just seems to me (C) is completely irrelevant to the stimulus. Could you speak more to this point?
Answer choice "A" has more problems with it than just having no risk of life. It assumes that "lack of decision" is an activity. I guess you can say that at the very least, thinking about replacing or not replacing his car with a newer one might be considered an activity. In that light, I guess that Incurring a risk could qualify as an activity also. So maybe the Risk that the test writers are referring to is the risk of the activity of deciding whether or not to incur a risk to life. If that is the case, then I misinterpreted the argument as I was taking the PT (but got the question correct).
I hope this helps.
as @socal said above, "...the risk of fatal injury to the motorcyclist (riding without a helmet) is acceptable..." That I think is what we need to look at, more importantly his parenthesis. By riding without a helmet we conclude(from the AC) there is risk of fatal injury... so with this in mind, when they say "the risk of fatal injury to the motorcyclist" we know what they are referring to... riding without a helmet. its a bit referential, subtle but there. just imagine JY talking to you reading it... "the risk of fatal injury... what risk to fatal injury? The fatal risk of not wearing the helmet" so it's safe to substitute the phrases... which is done on purpose, LSAC makes the wrong AC look right and the right AC look bad, you just need to make the connections