LSAT 154 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q21

LR Question 21 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Engineer: Air bags in automobiles occasionally cause…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The new control system will worsen problems with accidental air bag inflation.

REASONING: The more complex a system is, the more ways there are in which it can fail.

ANALYSIS: This argument is confusing the number of ways in which something can fail, with the likelihood of it failing. This new system could be so complex that there are now 100 more ways that it could fail. But it could be that the manufacturers did really good work and made them all fail-safe. In that case, it wouldn’t increase the likelihood of the system failing.

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1. CORRECT. This matches our prephrase. There’s no direct correlation between the number of ways something can fail and the likelihood it would fail.
2. This is extreme. It doesn’t have to be that “any” failure will cause accidental inflation.
3. This is out of scope. We’re only concerned with whether the new system would fail more than the old system did.
4. We don’t care about advantages. This has nothing to do with whether or not the new system would cause more failures.
5. This is similar to D in that it’s saying “even though there are accidents, there are more benefits”, which is besides the point.

Recap: The question begins with “Engineer: Air bags in automobiles occasionally cause”. It is a Flawed Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Flaw questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.