What kind of question is this? It doesn’t fit cleanly into any of the common question types. But! It’s also a great example of how much critical information question stems often provide. This stem alone tells us:

1: We can expect two viewpoints in the stimulus, where one responds to the other
2: Jack’s viewpoint will equivocate on a phrase Melinda uses
3: Our job is to identify the term on which Jack equivocates

(“Trades on,” by the way, just means “utilizes” or “takes advantage of” here. Good phrase to know for law school.)

So it’s a rare blend of the Disagree and Flaw / Descriptive Weakening question types. Better than that, though, it’s a question where we’re hunting for equivocation.

Equivocation often reads like a pun. Like maybe a billboard says “Looking for a sign? This is it!” Get it? Because sign can mean omen but also the billboard is a literal sign! Get it?

With some practice, identifying the exact term (and thereby anticipating the answer) in questions involving equivocation is reasonable to expect of yourself. But it’s a difficult skill that rarely comes up, so don’t worry much if you relied on testing each answer choice.

Melinda describes how insurance reduces an individual’s risk by spreading it among many others. Jack disagrees on the grounds that insurance doesn’t reduce one’s risk of an incident.

Melinda uses “risk” to mean “risk of financial ruin,” whereas Jack uses it to mean “risk of a catastrophic event.” Insurance works by having a large group of people each chip in a small amount of money, then paying out large sums to individuals who experience catastrophe.

The risk of your home burning down is small, but without insurance the consequences can be financially ruinous. Fire insurance won’t prevent your house burning down, but it will bankroll all your repairs and replacement possessions if your house does burn down, reducing your risk of financial ruin.