LSAT 149 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q17

RC Question 17 Explanation

DISCUSSION: Most of the answers compare comedians and chefs. But these answers are unlikely to be right: the passages never compare comedians and chefs. Each author only talks about chefs and comedians in isolation.

___________

1. Not necessarily. It’s true that passage A talks about violations among comedians, and how they’re punished.
    
   But that doesn’t mean chefs don’t have violations! Passage B didn’t mention presence or lack of violations, so we can’t conclude anything. (The fact that chefs need social norms to protect their intellectual property implies there is a risk of violations, after all)
2. Not necessarily. The author of passage B did describe chefs’ social norms in elaborate detail. But….he didn’t compare them to comedians. The only reason we might think chefs have more elaborate norms is because the author of passage A didn’t discuss them to the same extent.
    
   But, not discussing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and it’s very possible that comedians have extremely elaborate norms.
3. The opposite is true. Paragraph 1 of passage A makes clear that comedians at least technically have copyright protections. Whereas paragraph 1 of passage B says that chefs have basically zero legal protections for recipes. Recipes can’t be copyrighted.
4. If this had said “chefs and comedians are satisfied with the protections they have for their creations”, it could be right, because it could refer to social norms.
    
   But this answer refers to laws. And the passages are clear that the law has little or no practical protection for the creations of comedians and chefs.
5. CORRECT. This is very vague, and thus easy to support. Both comedians and chefs get two benefits from following social norms: other chefs/comedians will protect their creations, and other chefs/comedians won’t get mad at them for breaking norms.