QUESTION TEXT: When exercising the muscles in one’s back…
QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: To keep a healthy back it is important to exercise both sides of your back equally.
REASONING: It is important that muscles on both sides of your spine pull equally on the spine and therefore that muscle development is balanced.
ANALYSIS: This argument is assuming that equal muscle pull requires equal exercise.
On necessary assumption questions your main job is to look for where the conclusion slipped in a new concept which wasn’t mentioned in the reasoning. Here, exercise was that new concept.
___________
- The author wasn’t saying that equal exercise was sufficient to align the back. They just said it was important. Maybe other things are also required.
- CORRECT. If this isn’t true, then the conclusion has no support.
Negation: Exercising the muscles on opposite sides of the spine unequally doesn’t lead to unbalanced muscles. - This is like A. The author was saying that exercising the sides equally was important. They weren’t saying it was the only thing you need to do!
- This goes too far. Taken literally, this means that if you do even a single wrong exercise, you will permanently hurt your back. That’s insane! And more importantly, this extreme answer isn’t necessary for the argument.
Negation: It is generally bad to exercise muscles unequally, but it’s possible to do it once or twice without permanent damage. - The author didn’t say how often exercise is required. It’s possible you don’t need to do it daily!
Negation: You can exercise once every two days and still have a healthy back.
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