LSAT 112 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: People who have political power tend to see new…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Technical ingenuity bring benefits to people who have this ingenuity. Ethical inventiveness only brings pain to those who are ethically inventive.

REASONING: People with political power tend to see new technologies as an advantage and new ethical arguments as a threat.

ANALYSIS: We need something that tells us that politicians act on these beliefs and actually do bring benefits to technical inventors.

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1. The stimulus talked about extending or protecting political power. This answer choice talks about justifying it. It sounds similar but it is a different concept. 
2. CORRECT. This shows that politicians are likely to reward those with technical ingenuity and punish ethical innovators. 
3. This doesn’t matter. If a person was inventive in both ways then they would get a benefit and a drawback. 
4. This weakens the argument slightly. It seemed to be implying that only those with power would affect inventors. We don’t know if this new development will hurt inventors (because politicians attack those who help their enemies) or help them (because inventors will be rewarded by the people striving to defeat those with power.)
5. This is very tempting, but we’re not actually told if the fear these inventors have is based on an actual danger of retaliation or if they are just paranoid.