Q1 - People who accuse the postal service

[RichardN82]

I know this is supposed to be a gimme question, but I didn't pick (C) because the wording seemed confusing to me. I picked (B) because I thought this answer described what was missing in the argument. Can someone please better explain this to me?

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

CONC: 5-cent increase unworthy of complaining about
EVID: The current price of a letter is a ridiculous bargain, when you compare the minimal price to the substantial value of reading a personal letter from a friend.

Our job is to play Opposing Counsel, so we immediately assign ourselves the ANTI-CONC mindset, and think "This 5-cent increase IS worthy of complaining about. The postal service IS incompetent and inefficient, so they shouldn't cope with that by raising our fares."

Once you've owned your point of view, revisit the author's evidence.

She stands up and says, "Your Honor, is a 41-cent stamp really expensive when you think about the incredibly enjoyable experience of reading a personal letter from a friend?"

She sits down.

We stand up and say .... ? [a correct answer choice]

My reaction is to say, "Sure, letters from personal friends are great. But how often does THAT happen? That's your sense of what the postal service is delivering? Because my sense is that they are primarily delivering junk mail and bills."

"Furthermore, we're not denying that personal letters are way more valuable then the postage paid on them. You have avoided acknowledging our ACTUAL complaints about inefficiency and incompetence. We aren't annoyed with the 5-cent increase because we think that the mail is a bad value. We're annoyed because we think the 5-cent increase is attributable to preventable, lamentable factors."

(A) The author does NOT suggest competence/efficiency. In fact, she fails to respond to those complaints at all. Also, LSAT would never say that a "reasoning flaw" was "someone's failure to establish how we would measure something".

(B) This is not a flaw. If someone concluded, "thus, it's time to go to war with Bagonia", then we win the conversation by successfully arguing, "Nope, it is NOT time to go to war with Bagonia." In order to win that argument, we need only prove that NOW is not the time. It's not a logical burden for us to go beyond the scope of the argument and say AT WHAT TIME we SHOULD go to war.

Said another way, "I can successfully argue that one team will NOT win the Superbowl without having to correctly predict who WILL win the Superbowl."

This author is allowed to argue "5 cents is NOT worthy of debate" without needing to predict how many cents WOULD BE worthy of debate.

(C) YES! "Confuses ___ with ____ " answers should impel us to see if one of those blanks matches the evidence and the other matches the conclusion.

"The value of the object delivered" = EVIDENCE, because the author was talking about how enjoyable (valuable) reading a personal letter is.

"The value of delivering that object" = CONCLUSION, because the author is saying there's no reason to fret over the incompetence and inefficiency that is driving up the cost (decreasing the value) of delivering a letter.

(D) This is no outside authority appealed to.

(E) It's irrelevant to the logic whether critics are from within or outside the postal service.

Hope this helps.