QUESTION TEXT: One should not do anything that has…
QUESTION TYPE: Must Be True
FACTS:
- One should not do anything with potential to produce serious harm to one’s society.
- Actions or inactions of celebrities are often emulated.
- Actions or inactions of people who are widely respected are often emulated.
- Some celebrities do not vote.
- If many people refrain from voting, society will suffer serious harm.
ANALYSIS: Here, there are a couple things to notice. We can combine facts 1, 2 and 3 to infer that if the emulation of an action would cause serious societal harm, a celebrity or widely respected person should not take that action. Even though it’s not certain that the action would be emulated, it has the potential to be emulated and therefore cause serious societal harm.
The next thing that you should notice is that fact 5 does give us such an action that, if emulated, would cause serious societal harm. We can integrate this to conclude that a celebrity or widely respected person should not refrain from voting, because doing so may cause others to emulate that action. This in turn would cause serious societal harm, and so should be avoided.
___________
- The stimulus does not say that a society should require everyone to not do things with the potential to cause harm. It just says that people should not do those things. The idea of society requiring certain action (or inaction) is completely absent from the stimulus. With enough practice, you learn how to immediately discount answers that introduce new concepts.
- This does not follow. None of the facts indicate that the sole benefit of voting is influencing others to vote. All we know about voting is that some celebrities do not, and that if many people do not vote then serious harm will befall the society.
- This is incorrect. The question does not make any judgments about who should be respected or not respected. Like A, this introduces a new concept that cannot be inferred.
- This answer tries to trap you by preying on the use of “celebrities and widely respected people”. You may have interpreted this clause as saying “widely respected celebrities”, but they are actually treated as two separate groups in the question, as reflected by the separation into facts 2 and 3 above. Either way, the stimulus does not give us a reason that people should not emulate celebrities who are not well respected. It just tells us that people do often emulate them.
- CORRECT. See analysis above.
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