A cars antitheft alarm tat sounds in the middle of the night in a cro

Let's analyze the argument.


The author of this argument recommends that people who have antitheft alarms on their cars should deactivate them when they park in crowded city neighborhoods at night. To appropriately get the right assumption, we need to understand why the feels that the antitheft alarms should be deactivated. Clearly, the author is more concerned about the disturbance that these alarms cause in the neighborhood than the theft of the car. Why do I think so? Look at the first premise, the author actually implies that the sound of an alarm on a car does not necessarily mean that the thief would be deterred. An alarm may [or may not] stop an attempted car theft. So, kind of sarcastically, the author is asking, why then do you even leave the alarms on in the first place? Apart from this possibility that when the alarm genuinely goes off as a result of a genuine attempt of car theft, where the alarm might not even ward off the thief, these alarms are subject to many false alarms. The alarm can go off falsely through a harmless contact, a tree branch touching the car, or an internal fault within the alarm system. The author simply has had enough of the disturbance. So clearly, he/she ranks the nuisance of alarms in the night as worse than the theft of the car. He/she values the peace in the neighborhood. Based on the aforementioned, what could possibly be an assumption of this argument?


This option actually weakens the argument. Hence incorrect. If this is true, then the author may have to reconsider his/her argument again.


This is close, but as per the reasoning above, this argument cares little about whether an alarm is false or not. So this cannot be an assumption of the argument above. If the argument had probably shown some concern about the theft of the car and suggested that alarms that genuinely sound at night due to an attempt to steal the car are tolerable, then this would suffice as the assumption. At best, B is a strengthener. Most means more than 50% of the time. The opposite of most is not more than 50% of the time, meaning we can have 49.9% of the time that car alarms sound is false. What difference does this make to the argument? Very little. C is a much better assumption for this argument.


This is exactly what the author is concerned about. This is the last piece of the puzzle needed to make the argument above airtight. Because if allowing residents of a crowded city neighborhood to sleep undisturbed is not more important than preventing car theft, the argument above will fall apart. So this must be the necessary assumption of this argument.


D is tricky but focus on the meaning. Generally means most of the time, more than 50% of the time. So negating this means not more than 50% of the time. So the question is what difference does it make for people are not inconsiderate of others 49.9% of the time compared to say when they are inconsiderate to others 50.1% of the time. The truth is we are not trying to strengthen the argument, but we are interested in an assumption. A statement that makes the argument above airtight. D, like B, is a potential strengthener of the argument, but not necessarily an assumption. One has to be mindful of these modifying words when dealing with assumptions. Compared to C, D does not stand a chance since C does a much better job by clearly stating that allowing residents in a crowded neighborhood is more important than preventing a car theft.


Completely irrelevant to the argument above.

adkikani this is what I think about the argument above. I hope it is somehow helpful.