Q10 - Laura: Harold is obviously lonely.

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Analyze Argument Structure (Describe Response)

Stimulus Breakdown:
L's Conc: Harold should sell his cabin and move to town.
Evidence: He's obviously lonely and will be near other people in the city, so he wouldn't be lonely any more.
R's conc: (implied) I disagree with your logic.
Evidence: Lots of people in towns are still very lonely. You need interaction with people, not just proximity, to stave off loneliness.

Answer Anticipation:
Ralph responds by disagreeing with a subsidiary conclusion Laura reaches. He does NOT accept that "if you're near other people all the time, you won't be lonely any more". He provides counterexamples (very lonely people who live in towns) and he indicates that being near other people is NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT to avoid loneliness.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This could work! Ralph indicates that "proximity of other people" is needed to avoid loneliness. But he also points to ANOTHER thing needed (genuine interaction), so that implies that Harold might still be lonely if he simply lives a lonely life in the midst of other people.

(B) It's hard to match this with Ralph's comments. Did Ralph say something IS appropriate in one case? Not really. In fact, nothing he says indicates whether it would be appropriate or not to move to town. It's more about whether doing so would solve the lonely problem. But in order to match (B), we would want to hear something like "Even though many other people have cured their loneliness by moving to towns, it wouldn't be the right strategy for Harold, because ..."

(C) There's nothing that matches up with "what is logically certain", and Ralph certainly isn't saying "just because it's definitely true doesn't mean it's common sense"

(D) The problem would match up with "loneliness". Does Ralph propose various alternative solutions? No. He mentions two things that are REQUIRED to avoid loneliness, so those two things don't count as multiple solutions. Neither one by itself is a solution. He might say that "moving to town is one way to get proximity and interaction, but another way is to join a local church". Those would be various solutions for solving the loneliness problem.

(E) We might read this into Ralph's statements, but we can't match anything up with "WORSENING" the problem.

Takeaway/Pattern: These Describe questions are just "if it matches, it's right", so we just have to be comfortable matching up the abstract terminology in the answer choices with the specific ideas in the argument. "something needed" for a certain result matches up with "proximity is needed to avoid loneliness". But proximity is not necessarily going to guarantee a cure to loneliness, since interaction with people is ALSO required.

#officialexplanation

[mmwoods]

Could someone please explain this questions? Specifically why B and C are incorrect.

Thanks