QUESTION TEXT: Since there is no survival value in…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle
PRINCIPLE: There is no sense in having an organ with the ability to outlast the system it’s part of. So such an organ is unlikely to evolve.
ANALYSIS: Natural selection is efficient. It doesn’t tend to evolve things that don’t serve a purpose. It would be expensive, in evolutionary terms, to produce an organ that lasts 200 years, if the organism itself will only survive 50 years. So natural selection doesn’t tend to produce organs that outlast the organisms they’re part of.
This principle doesn’t only apply to evolution. In general, it’s inefficient to produce more than you need. The question asks you which answer illustrates the principle. You don’t need to look for an answer that talks about biology. An answer is correct as long as it shows that a system won’t produce something that’s more durable than needed.
___________
- The stimulus described how a system won’t produce a thing that lasts longer than other parts of a system. But there’s no time dimension in this answer. Further, the store does stock the higher quality goods, on request. You can’t order a durable organ from evolution!
- This doesn’t match at all. The stimulus was about how no organ will be significantly better than the rest. This answer merely talks about what happens if an organ is worse.
Don’t choose parallel reasoning answers based on subject matter. - This violates the principle. The stimulus said no organ would last longer. But this answer describes a car that does last longer.
- This doesn’t match at all. A proper analogy would involve a car part that lasted longer than a car. A car that lasts longer than another is like an animal that lives longer than another – which happens all the time in evolution!
- CORRECT. This matches exactly. There’s no point to either an organ or a car part outlasting the system it’s part of, so organs and car parts aren’t designed to do so.
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