LSAT 149 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q9

RC Question 9 Explanation

DISCUSSION: In the fifth paragraph, the author argues conventional methods are too narrow minded. Scientists only change one law at once. But the author thinks we can change multiple laws at once, and thus find multiple combinations of physical laws that could support life.

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1. The author wouldn’t go this far. The scientists are looking for the relevant thing: can a different universe support life? It’s just that the author thinks they’re doing this search inefficiently.
2. The scientists are quite focussed. They’re just focussed on an inefficient method. If the scientists were unfocussed, they might hardly even manage to run simulations.
3. The scientists are making a new universe with new physical laws, and running a simulation. That sounds like it demands rigour! The author never said the scientists do sloppy work.
4. CORRECT. This matches. The scientists are only changing one physical law at a time. The author suggests it would be better to change multiple physical laws at once.
    
   If you only change one law at once, you have a very tiny set of alternative possibilities.
    
   E.g. Imagine you started with a photo of you, and wanted a computer to make multiple versions based on the photo where the faces were different from yours. But the computer could only make faces with one thing changed. So, one photo would be your face, but with new eyes, rest of face the same. Another would be your face with your face, same eyes, but new ears. And so on: everything kept the same except for a single change. You’d have a very limited set of other possible human faces.
5. The author isn’t convinced of this. By only changing one law at once, the scientists limit the range of other possible sets of physical laws. It’s possible they’ve limited the range so much that there are no possibilities within the (over restrictive) constraints they have set.