33 LR Two Question 18
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I see that the fastest way to reach the right answer was to look for conditional language in the answer options and choose the one that is bigger (purely beneficial->no harm and a lot of good.
But I got the wrong answer following another path that usually works: reading the passage structurally, finding a flaw, and looking for that flaw in the answer choices. However I found a bait and switch flaw and not the "ignoring that something good can also have bad effects flaw".
The passage conflates more photosynthesis with a benefit for agriculture. But I find that all that can be concluded is that industrial activities will improve photosynthesis, not agriculture. (there could be reasons why more photosynthesis could somehow not have a positive effect on agriculture).
In a similar way, I feel like d) does another bait-and-switch. it conflates penicillin-resistant infections with the generic "disease" (maybe this is more of a part-to-whole flaw but kind of bait and switch too). The answer assumes that less use of penicillin will improve resistance to "disease" but all we can prove is that it will improve resistance to "penicillin resistance infections", which are not the same.
So why wouldn't this be also an ok response. Is this a case of there being two flaws, and an answer to match each, but one of them (b) just matching it more closely than the ohter?
We're told that photosynthesis is beneficial (it creates life-sustaining proteins). So the argument has not assumed that it's good. It told us that much.
In (D), perhaps the biggest problem is the comparison between fresh and processed veg. There's no comparison in the original argument, so (D) is different in that way.
Also, (D) creates a prescription (people ought to abandon...) that isn't present in the original argument. That's another way that (D) is not parallel.
Make sense?
My bad, I said "d)" in my question but I was referring to "e)", so your answer explained why d was wrong, but I still don't know why e)is wrong.
My point wasn't that the argument assumes photosynthesis is good, but that both the passage and e) incur in a bait-and-switch flaw.
The passage gives us evidence about photosynthesis but makes a conclusion about agriculture (it assumes more photosynthesis will be good for agriculture, but all we can prove from the passage is that more photosynthesis will help plants manufacture life-sustaining proteins. We simply don't know the effect photosynthesis ultimately has on agriculture-maybe excessive photosynthesis harms plants in some way).
Similarly, e) gives us evidence about penicillin-resistant infections but makes a conclusion about disease. But all we can prove is that non-excessive use of penicillin will strengthen the body's innate ability to resist penicillin-resistant infections, not the more generic "disease" the answer choice gives us (maybe excessive penicillin use has a net positive effect on disease resistance in spite of having a net negative effect on penicillin-resistant infections resistance).
So either I'm somehow wrong in seeing these bait and switches, or I'm right but b) is better. In either case, my question would be: why?
Also a final question on e)'s conclusion language. Is it conditional or prescriptive? Because "the best policy is to" sounds like a recommendation (prescriptive), but "avoid using penicillin, therefore strengthening the body's innate ability to resist disease" sounds like a rule (conditional: if we avoid penicillin, we strengthen...)
Good news: I think I see the problem you're having and how to fix it. You're kind of missing the forest here by focusing on the sematic content of these arguments instead of their structure.
What I do that leads to my success is describe the original argument by appeal to what it does, instead of what it says.
1. The original argument makes no prescription as to any action. Like (D), (E) creates a prescription (people ought to avoid penicillin) that isn't present in the original argument. When the conclusion of an answer choice has a completely new and different structure from the original argument, that answer choice cannot be parallel to the original argument. (Thus the raison d'etre for this video lesson).
2. The original argument does the following: presents one benefit, then claims there are no downsides. (E), by contrast, does this: presents one downside, then tells us what we should do. See how different those two structures are?
ETA: Yes, the conclusion in (E) is both prescriptive and appears to be conditional!