QUESTION TEXT: The only effective check on grass and…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: Rain puts out fires. But fires cause less financial damage during droughts.
ANALYSIS: The paradox is that rain seems to both help and worsen grass and brush fires. We need to explain how increased rain can cause greater financial damage from fires.
This is an extremely hard question and requires a bit of thinking. What causes fires to burn? Grass and bushes. What causes grass and bushes to grow? Sunlight and RAINFALL. So it’s possible that if increased rainfall increases the amount of grass and bushes, that in turn also increases the number of fires. This then results in greater financial damages.
Note that on the LSAT you are absolutely allowed to use common sense statements that everyone would agree are facts, such as “rain makes plants grow” and “plants burn”.
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- This makes the situation more confusing. Firefighters prevent damage from fires, so if firefighter funds are low during droughts, you’d expect more damage, not less.
- This is an extremely tempting answer. The problem is that the stimulus is talking about levels of financial damage within the same area. The stimulus says “fires cause less financial damage overall during….drought”. It makes no distinction between areas of dense and sparse population. Full stop, drought is associated with less damage, in any area.
- CORRECT. Lots of rain equals more grass/plant growth. And lack of fires means the grass/plants haven’t burned away during a season. The more grass there is, the larger the brush fires. This resolves the paradox.
- Okay…so now we know a cause of fire. But this doesn’t explain why these brush fires’ financial impact. We care about damage, not cause.
- This makes the situation more confusing. We expect vegetation to burn in a fire, so the more there is, the worse. This tells us that during droughts, there is plenty of vegetation. And yet, droughts do not cause more damage.
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