Logical reasoning PrepTest 103 · Section 3 · Question 9

Question prompt

Scientific and technological discoveries Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: C

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions

Stimulus Summary

Sci/Tech strongly influence society, so predictions about a society with a lot of sci/tech’s future will be off.

Answer Anticipation

The conclusion of this argument is an interesting variation on a common type of conclusion - the prediction. Normally, we’re analyzing a flaw in an argument that makes a prediction, but here, the conclusion states that particular predictions are particularly likely to be wrong!
What predictions are these “untrustworthy” ones? Ones that predict the future of societies that have a lot of science and technology. And why does the argument believe these are untrustworthy? Because science and technology have “considerable effects” on society’s development.
So science and technology change society, and so we can’t make good predictions about what a society with a lot of sci/tech will look like in the future. Well, that requires assuming that we can’t make good predictions about science and technology. For example, if we know that computers double in speed every 1.5 years or so, and we know what impact that has on society, we might be able to make some reliable predictions about a society that develops computer technologies.
The conclusion is about uncertainty, but the premises never discuss such uncertainty, so we should look for an answer that brings up uncertainty related to the concept that the argument relies on - the scientific/technological developments.

Answer choices

  1. A
    Predictions of scientific and Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    Harm is out of scope of the argument.

  2. B
    The development of a Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The stimulus is about societies with a lot of scientific and technological discoveries, so the argument isn’t assuming that those discoveries are required for advancement.

  3. C
    Forecasts of scientific and Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C matches the stem
    This answer connects the uncertainty in the conclusion to the premises. The argument concludes that predictions of certain societies are unreliable, based on the scientific/technological discoveries of those societies. For that conclusion to hold, we need to know that we can’t make predictions about those technologies/their effects, as this answer states. If such forecasts are entirely reliable, then we very well could predict what these societies look like in the future.

  4. D
    An advanced scientific and Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    The argument is about the effects of these discoveries. While benefits are a type of effect, they’re not the only type, and so this answer isn’t a necessary premise. The argument could still hold if the discoveries have only downsides.

  5. E
    It is not as Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    The stimulus doesn’t discuss technologically less advanced societies, making this comparison out of scope. (For that matter, it’s also not about technologically advanced ones - just ones that are subject to frequent sci/tech discoveries - that could be true of a very undeveloped country!)

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 13%
  2. B 5%
  3. C Credited 78%
  4. D 3%
  5. E 1%

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