Q18 - It may soon be possible

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
ID the Conclusion

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Having an economy without paper money would never willingly be accepted by society.
Evidence: It gives the govt too much power, and people are rightly distrustful of govt's having too much power.

Answer Anticipation:
We just need a match for "getting rid of paper money and having the govt electronically record all transactions will never willingly be accepted by a society".

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Yes! Good match.

(B) (basically restating a) Premise.

(C) Background.

(D) (basically restating a) Premise.

(E) This was never said. A govt might be able to do something even though society does not willingly accept it. They might forcibly or begrudginly accept it.

Takeaway/Pattern: On ID the Conclusion questions, there are three popular templates for where they place the conclusion:

1. First Sentence
2. Right after a "but/yet/however" rebuttal
3. Before a premise indicator, such as "after all, for, to see this"

This paragraph gave us both 2 and 3.

#officialexplanation

[csimes88]

I was between (A) and (E) and ultimately chose (E) . Can anyone explain, working from wrong to right, why each of the answer choices are incorrect and (A) is the best answer?

Thank you!

[timmydoeslsat]

So we know going into the argument that we are asked for its main conclusion.

The argument tells us that while it may soon be possible for the economy to operate without physical money through the use of government recordings, this idea will never be willingly accepted by society.

We then get support for this idea by the columnist telling us that people would be distrustful of this kind of government with so much power.

(A) fits the conclusion perfectly. A society would not willingly accept this kind of system.

(E) on the other hand is not something that the argument would even concede as true. It may well be true that the government can operate under this idea. We just know that it will be against the will of society.

[tommywallach]

Hey Csimes,

Great question, and great answer from Timmy as well. I'll just add a bit more, just in case I can further clarify.

This is an argument structure "identify the conclusion" question, so we start by locating the conclusion. It sounds like you did that just fine, but to reiterate, I'm going to copy it out here:

"...while [replacing paper money with electronic transactions] may be technologically feasible it would never be willingly accepted by a society..."

A) A society would never willingly accept [replacing paper money with electronic transactions] -- this looks more or less exactly like the sentence we located

E) Even though it may be technologically feasible, no government will be able to operate an economy... -- Notice that our conclusion involved what society wanted. This answer choice removes society entirely, replacing it with something about the government.

The word "operate" is a confusing one. At first glance, it may make it seem like answer choice (E) is saying that the government couldn't pull it off BECAUSE the people would never accept it. But a government could do it OVER the will of the people. The conclusion simply says they would never WILLINGLY accept it, not that the government couldn't do it anyway.

Hope that helps!

-t

[cvoldstad]

Hello,

I chose D for this one and am having a hard time seeing why it is wrong.

It seems to me to be a 2 part conclusion, a society will never accept a switch to paper money because it gives the gov to much power and people are rightly distrustful of governments with too much power

D seems to encapsulate both aspects of this conclusion whereas A seems to be only part of the main conclusion...

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting cvoldstad!

One thing to be extremely careful about when identifying the conclusion in an argument is making sure that conclusion has support (however bad) in the stimulus. Here, the idea that society would never accept a gov't tracked electronic economic has support (it gives the gov't too much power, for one).

However, the idea that people are rightfully distrustful of gov'ts with too much power has no support. Why are people 'right' to distrust a powerful gov't? No idea! The "rightfully" feels conclusion-ish, but there's no premise that serves as the basis for this comment. Thus, it can't be a conclusion - it's just the author getting in his personal opinion about the value of the distrust.

The argument core looks something like this:

PREMISE:
1) Gov't tracked electronic economy would give the gov't too much power
2) People are distrustful of gov't with too much power
CONCLUSION: Society will never willingly accept gov't tracked electronic economy

Notice that I didn't include the "rightfully" comment anywhere in the core - it's not a part of the conclusion, because there's no support for it anywhere, but it's also not really a premise, as it doesn't serve to support the conclusion that we do have.

Please let me know if this helps clear up your question!