LR Question 12 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: The only effective check on grass and brush fires is…
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”.
___________
- 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.
Recap: The question begins with “The only effective check on grass and brush fires is”. It is a Paradox question. Learn more about LSAT Paradox questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.
More Resources for Paradox Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Paradox questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers paradox questions.
For B, if areas subject to grass/brush fires are less densely populated, that implies these drought areas are less densely populated. The rainfall areas are more densely populated than the drought areas. The stimulus says drought fires (which affect less densely populated) cause less financial damage. This makes sense, as common sense tells us more densely populated areas (on the large scale/long term) have more financial damage opportunity. Or is this too big a leap? That would make sense why B is incorrect.
Regardless, I’m not sure your explanation for B makes sense to me. Yes, drought is associated with less damage in any area. But any area can have rainfall too. It feels irrelevant to discuss that the stimulus is talking about “one areas rainfall/drought” so “B is wrong b/c different places have sparse and dense populations”.
Your point about population density and financial damage opportunity is reasonable, yes, but B is wrong before we even come to that consideration. Let me clarify a bit:
The problem with B is that it introduces a comparison between different areas (densely populated vs less densely populated) when the stimulus does NOT make this comparison. The stimulus discussed financial damage caused by fires during periods of drought versus periods of normal rainfall within the same general area. There’s no evidence in the stimulus to suggest that drought and normal rainfall periods occur in fundamentally different places with varying population densities.
So, B doesn’t resolve the paradox. The question asks us to explain why financial damage from fires is less during droughts despite the fact that droughts tend to result in more fires. C does this by showing that the amount of vegetation able to burn is key.
Your reasoning about population density would make more sense if the stimulus explicitly compared different regions, but in this case, the comparison is about time periods with varying rainfall levels in the same area. That’s why B doesn’t work here. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions – this is a hard one!