LSAT 131 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Those who claim that governments should not continue to

QUESTION TYPE: Principle

CONCLUSION: It is wrong to say that governments should stop spending money on space exploration.

REASONING: There are few direct benefits to space exploration, but the spinoff technological benefits have improved society.

ANALYSIS: Space exploration didn’t have intended benefits, but it did have surprise spinoff benefits. The principle must be that if something has produced past unintended benefits, then we should keep supporting it.

(I just checked the answers and saw this was more or less word for word the right answer. I swear I predicted this in advance. If you are clear about exactly what the situation is, it becomes easy to figure out the principle. If the conclusion says “We should do X because X caused Y”, then the answer will be: “we should do things that caused Y.”)

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1. This tells us when we shouldn’t stop a government from doing something. But the stimulus was about what a government should do.
2. The author didn’t say that we can never predict benefits. They just said that in this case, we didn’t.
3. This is a weird statement. It would mean that, say, building a giant toothpick tower should be expected to be incredibly beneficial to society. The more useless the better!
4. CORRECT. See the analysis above. The author basically says we should support space exploration, and the only reason given is that it once produced a surprise benefit. This answer connects those two statements.
5. This is too broad. The author only made an argument about space exploration. They didn’t say whether all ambitious technological projects should be supported.