LSAT 152 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q24

LR Question 24 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Taken as a whole, the computers that constitute the Internet …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The Internet will someday gain humanlike intelligence.

REASONING: It shares features of a developing human brain: complex, densely interconnected, and growing rapidly.

ANALYSIS: This is an analogy. The Internet resembles the brain in certain ways, so it will eventually become intelligent like the brain.

But do these shared features cause or guarantee intelligence? Are humans intelligent because the brain is complex, densely interconnected, and growing?

If humans are intelligent for other reasons, then the analogy doesn’t follow. Lots of things can be complex and interconnected without becoming humanlike minds. So the author has pointed to some similarities, but has not shown that these are the similarities that matter.

___________

1. Close, but not quite right. The stimulus doesn’t directly say complex = intelligent.
2. Whether some other technology gets there first is irrelevant. That does not criticize the reasoning.
3. The analogy may well be dubious, but that answer is too narrow. The issue isn’t information processing vs. transmission. It’s more generally the unjustified leap from selected similarities to intelligence.
4. CORRECT. The argument never shows why the characteristics it mentions are enough to lead to humanlike intelligence.
5. The motives of the people administering the Internet have nothing to do with whether the prediction follows.