73 LR One Question 13
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I don't understand why it is not E. If over the past 20 years the length of the sentences had significantly increased such that fewer people were getting out of prison then the prison population would have grown. So as soon as i saw E I elected it.
Is it because "E" is kind of a "straw" reason in that it doesn't really matter if this is a flaw.
If I argue they are both flaws and Bis the greater flaw then I can accept "B" but I would select "E" immediately because that was the answer I had before I looked aat the questions.
Hm. It's interesting that you chose (E), because that makes me think there must be something about it that's attractive. But I don't see it.
The argument says as part of the evidence that the percentage of people in prison has gone up a lot, but the percentage of crimes has not changed. That means that those two numbers are not moving in proportion. So we can't have assumed that they are in proportion.
Ooh—is that it, maybe? Is it that it is the mirror of what we assumed?
That was exactly why I selected it. I read the passage and then said you have assumed that there is a relationship without offering me any evidence. And I actually tested the solution and came up with reasons why it wouldn’t be true.
So, I really didn’t even read the others because I as looking for my answer and there it was.
Wait.
The passage has not assumed that there is a proportional relationship. It has instead shown us that such a relationship does not exist.
(E) is the opposite of (the inverse, or mirror image of) what the passage says is true.
So I guess my problem is that I am guilty of adding information. E says, “Takes for granted that the number of prisoners must be proportional to the number of crimes committed.”
My answer was, before looking at the answers, was the reformer, “Takes for granted that the number of prisoners [should] be proportional to the number of crimes committed if in fact there is a reason at all for me to bring it up at all as an argument.”
Since I can’t assume there is a relationship then the fact that I bring it up as an argument was my flaw.
Politician 1: “My opponent is a liar”
Politician 2: “I eat hot dogs and apple pie for lunch everyday”
I read this as a bait and switch kind of thing. I guess I should have paid attention to the load bearing language “must” because my real answer, before looking, was really “should” be a relationship.
I see my error now in that my argument didn’t make any sense unless I changed the “must” to “should”.
I started down the same path as you that this is a proportionality question. You abandoned that approach when you couldn’t latch onto something. I rationalized a way to make it work by saying it was a bait and switch.
But regardless, I see now that I should have seen the “must”, which makes answer choice E wrong.
so in saying that this cause of increasing the prison population is not a factor in reducing crime, it has assumed an lat cause for reducing crime rates?
and to weaken that claim, can we simply point out that increasing prison population did reduce/ not increase crime rates?
I'm not certain I follow your question here. But I can say this: the argument says that we're putting more people in prison, but the crime rate has stayed the same. Thus, imprisoning people doesn't reduce the crime rate.
But that assumes that the crime rate would have stayed the same even if we didn't imprison more people. In other words, it fails to consider that the crime rate might have gone way up if we hadn't imprisoned more people.
Clear?