PrepTest 135, Section 2, Question 24
Books that present a utopian future in which(45 more words not shown)
The questionable pattern of reasoning(16 more words not shown)
- AArt that portrays(35 more words not shown)
- BPeople who enjoy(44 more words not shown)
- CAction movies that(32 more words not shown)
- DAdults usually feel(40 more words not shown)
- EAll self-employed businesspeople(36 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Happy futures aren't the only thing readers might want.
The argument gives us one reliable way to attract enthusiastic buyers: present a utopian future, where life is more harmonious and people suffer less. Then it rules out gloomy books because they don't offer that kind of future. But readers could buy those books for other reasons. A dark story might be exciting or make people think. Lacking one feature that attracts buyers doesn't establish a lack of buyers.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel flaw, track the move: a certain feature brings a result; another group lacks that feature; therefore that group probably won't have the result. We need the same mistaken treatment of one route as if it were the only route. The subject matter can change completely.
Working the answers
- A
Here the argument links tense or anxious people to an appealing tranquilizing effect, then uses dislike of the art to conclude that a person lacks those traits. That's a different direction from the original. To match our books argument, it could say that happy art is calming, gloomy art isn't happy art, and therefore gloomy art can't be calming. A instead reasons from a person's response to the art back to the person's supposed characteristics.
- B
This argues that recreational interests can overlap. Enjoying one activity doesn't exclude enjoying another. It doesn't identify one feature that guarantees an outcome and then deny that outcome to something lacking the feature. The willingness to allow overlapping interests is unlike the original's unjustified exclusion of another route to popularity.
- CCorrect
Complicated, dangerous effects are one way to make a movie enormously expensive, just as a utopian future is one way to attract buyers. Traditional dramas and comedies lack those scenes, just as gloomy books lack the utopian outlook. The argument then assumes the missing feature means the missing result: those movies are probably cheap.
What if the drama stars Leonardo DiCaprio or another expensive actor? A film can cost a great deal without a single explosion. That is exactly the problem with the books: another feature could produce the same result. Both arguments treat the stated source of the result as if there were no others.
- D
This compares adults' affection for their old music with their reaction to children's music, using adolescents' desire to annoy parents as its explanation. It doesn't say that children's music lacks a specified feature and therefore cannot produce a result guaranteed by that feature. The generational account may raise questions of its own, but it isn't our one-route-becomes-only-route mistake.
- E
The self-employed businesspeople have fluctuating incomes and are outside the government-bureaucrat group. The conclusion points to them as people with fluctuating incomes who aren't bureaucrats. It doesn't conclude that bureaucrats can't have fluctuating incomes because they aren't self-employed. That latter claim would resemble the original mistake; E doesn't make it.
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