A month ago, the jail warden declared that in order that the physical

Question

A month ago, the jail warden declared that in order that the physical stress levels of the inmates be reduced, all inmates will be moved to some sedentary job for two hours. However, no such change ever took place. When questioned, the warden replied that a new, high priority project requiring massive physical work was commissioned, forcing him to postpone his earlier plans. But all the inmates are still working in the same routine as last month. Therefore, the warden is lying.

The conclusion in the passage depends on the assumption that.

A- every inmate is physically capable to work on the new project

B- sedentary work planned earlier is not as important as the new project

C- the warden should give more importance to his plans than the new project

D- the warden could arrange for both the new project and the sedentary work, without making change to the inmates’ old routine

E- the inmates cannot continue the old routine if the new project is underway

souvonik2k · Answer

Premise - all inmates will be moved to some sedentary job for two hours. 
a new, high priority project requiring massive physical work was commissioned, forcing him to postpone his earlier plans. 
All inmates are still working in the same routine as last month

Conclusion - warden lying.

Pre-thinking - for new job, routine cannot be same

A- every inmate is physically capable to work on the new project -  Irrelevant.

B- sedentary work planned earlier is not as important as the new project -  Irrelevant.

C- the warden should give more importance to his plans than the new project -  Irrelevant.

D- the warden could arrange for both the new project and the sedentary work, without making change to the inmates’ old routine -  Weakens

E- the inmates cannot continue the old routine if the new project is underway -  Correct.

vasuca10 · Answer

VeritasKarishma  mam please explain this question....I am unable to link premise and conclusion in this question hence facing difficulty in Option elimination

Conclusion : Therefore the warden is lying

Premise 1 : in order that the physical stress levels of the inmates be reduced, all inmates will be moved to some sedentary job for two hours.

Premise 2: Since new high priority project requiring massive physical work was commissioned, forcing him to postpone his earlier plans. All inmates are still working in the same routine as last month

adstudy · Answer

Stem Says - 
Warden had plans to reduce the stress of inmates by giving them sedentary job, but
High priority project requiring massive physical work was commissioned.

Pre thinking - But if massive project work is coming, then inmates should be working more than usual and not the same as their earlier routine.

But inmates are working the same as before. Hence warden is lying that any massive work is coming.

If every inmate is not capable of working then the work routine should definitely change. This sentence acts as a strengthener to the conclusion, not as an assumption.  Hence Incorrect

Important or not, it does not matter as we are talking about the work routine of inmates not the importance of the project.  Hence Incorrect.

This not something we are assuming as per the stem but something we are suggesting.  Hence Incorrect.

What the warden could make happen is not of our concern. We are interested in what is happening now.  Hence Incorrect.

This is in line with our pre-thinking. If bigger than usual project is coming how can we not have a bigger than usual work routine and still be able to complete the project.
 Hence Correct.

KarishmaB · Answer

Premises:
A month ago, the jail warden declared that all inmates will be moved to some sedentary job for two hours. 
However, no such change ever took place. 
The warden said that a new, high priority project requiring massive physical work was commissioned (so he postponed his earlier plans). 
But all the inmates are still working in the same routine as last month.

Conclusion: The warden is lying.

Why did the author conclude that the warden is lying? Because all inmates are still working in the same routine. He assumes that the new project requiring massive physical work would have changed the routine of the inmates. Option (E) gives this link and hence is the answer.

A- every inmate is physically capable to work on the new project
Irrelevant. Whether every inmate is capable to work on new project or not, we don't care. We only care about whether the inmates are being made to work on a new project.

B- sedentary work planned earlier is not as important as the new project
Not an assumption required by the conclusion "warden is lying".
We might be able to infer that the new project is more important since the sedentary work planned earlier was pushed back, but it is certainly not an assumption of our argument.

C- the warden should give more importance to his plans than the new project
Not an assumption.

D- the warden could arrange for both the new project and the sedentary work, without making change to the inmates’ old routine
We know that the warden pushed back the sedentary work plan.

Answer (E)

vasuca10 · Answer

Thanks a lot VeritasKarishma mam for the detailed explanation.........Useful indeed as always

Pranjal3107 · Answer

Does D in a way weaken the argument ? I am trying to get my reasoning aligned with the explanations given.

krndatta · Answer

KarishmaB  Ma'am,

Please evaluate my reasoning for option D. 
If warden could arrange both the new project and sedentary job, then the warden is lying. Strengthens the claim.
When we negate the conclusion, we get the warden could not arrange the both. hence the warden is not lying.

Please evaluate where am I going wrong.

Thanks

KarishmaB · Answer

krndatta

We are claiming that the warden is lying. So we are claiming that his statement "Because of a high priority labour intensive job, he has postponed his plans" is not true. So we are saying that there was no commission of high priority labour intensive project (because the prisoners are continuing with their old routine)
What are we assuming here? That the prisoners are not working on the high priority labour intensive project within their old routine. We are assuming that they must have started working longer hours if the new project had started. This is our option (E).

In other words, (E) says: the warden  could not  arrange to get the new project done without making change to the inmates’ old routine.

Now note what (D) says is a bit non-sensical.

D- the warden could arrange for both the new project and the sedentary work, without making change to the inmates’ old routine

It is saying "the warden  could  arrange for both without making changes to their old routine". It doesn't make a lot of sense, right? Because no changes have been made, we are concluding that he is lying. Are we assuming that he can make both things work without making changes to their routine? No. We know that he cannot make sedentary work without changes in routine and in reality, we are assuming that he cannot make the new project work without changes in routine either.

Hence (D) is not correct.

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  krndatta ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the correct reason for eliminating Option D is that it does not qualify as an assumption, since it does not  have  to be true for the warden to be lying.

The reasoning behind the argument is that if a new project had been introduced, the inmates' routine would have changed to accommodate it; thus, since the routine has not changed, the warden is lying about a new project forcing him to postpone his other plans. Option D says that the warden could accommodate  both  the new project and the sedentary work without changing the routine; thus, negating Option D does not undercut the argument, since even if the warden could not accommodate  both  the new project and the sedentary work without changing the routine, he still might have been able to accommodate  just  the new project without changing the inmates' routine.

By contrast, if we negate Option E the argument falls apart; if the inmates' can continue with their old routine while working on the new project, there is no reason to think that the continuation of their old routine means that there was no new project.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Manav706 · Answer

Argument Summary:
The warden promised that inmates would be allowed to do sitting work for 2 hours a day. However, due to a high-priority project, that didn’t happen. Now, the author claims the warden is lying because the inmates are still working the same number of hours as before.

Flaw in the Argument:
The flaw is in the assumption that if the inmates are working the same total hours, they must be working on the same tasks as before—meaning the sitting work wasn't added, and therefore the warden lied.

But this leaves a gap in logic.

What's Missing:
Just because the total work hours didn’t increase doesn’t necessarily mean the warden broke his promise. Maybe the inmates stopped doing some other task to make time for the sitting work.

The argument assumes that the high-priority project couldn't be completed unless inmates worked extra hours, which isn’t stated.

AnujSingh0147 · Answer

The main focal of this question (when a lot of background information/Counter premise and Premises) are present. Is to identify the correct PREMISE and CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION :  Therefore, the warden is lying 
 PREMISE:  But (tone changing word), all the inmates are still working in the same routine as last month,

Inmates following the old routine --> Therefore the warden is lying

Underlying Assumption: If new project has started than the inmates cannot be able to follow the old routine.

A month ago, the jail warden declared that in order that the physical

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