Auror_07 wrote:
GMATNinja,
KarishmaB,
generis - Please help!
This argument recommends relaxing the restriction on hunting of Snow Geese as a possible solution for the recovery of other species, and the question asks you to weaken it.
My pre-thought answers were along the lines of-
Okay, I need a reason why relaxing the restriction won't work..
Okay maybe the Snow Geese is too much in number that relaxing restrictions alone as a solution won't work..
The restriction, if relaxed, might drastically reduce Snow Geese population..
But the answer is along the lines of - The hunting never closed before the scheduled date from many years.
I am NOT saying that the answer should always be along the lines of the pre-thought ideas, but this one just threw me off completely.
When I read this, I thought okay, maybe the hunters weren't able to bring down the population by 5% before the scheduled date, so it makes sense for the hunting to continue past the deadline as well. But it is not actually weakening the conclusion.
But the reasoning given is, since the deadline weren't being respected, the restriction was never helpful to begin with. I mean, of course after you read the explanation, you tend to think it makes sense, but I could not have come to this conclusion even if I had the luxury of time. How do you work on the answer when you are faced with such a situation? Just bail on the question?
All good questions!
First, I'd be cautious about anticipating the answer choice ahead of time. As you noticed in this question, the correct answer won't always be something you'd come up with on your own.
So what should you do instead? Well, after making sense of the argument, try taking each answer choice on its own merits. Ask yourself: how would this fact impact the argument? Let's try that with answer choice (B):
Quote:
It has been many years since the restriction led to the hunting season for snow geese being closed earlier than the scheduled date.
If this were true, it would mean that during the hunting season, hunters were reducing the population by less than five percent. How would that impact the conclusion? Well, dropping the restriction probably wouldn't lead to a hunters killing more geese. Even if the restriction were raised to 10%, for instance, we know that hunters were routinely killing less than 5%.
Put another way, the restriction wasn't holding back hunters from killing more geese. So dropping the restriction wouldn't lead to them killing more. For that reason, (B) undermines the argument and it's correct.
Overall, anticipating answer choices can be dangerous and is often more trouble than it's worth. For many questions, it will be impossible to pre-think the correct answer, which could make it harder to spot the correct answer when you see it (or easier to fall for a wrong answer if it resembles what you were expecting). For more on that, check out
this video.
I hope that helps!