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705-805 Level|   Logical Flaw|         
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maelstrom93
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 02 Feb 2022, 00:14
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Conclusion : But it is clear that the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose.
Law: Every bank to invest in its local community
Purpose: This is intended to revitalize impoverished local communities.
In other words: Every bank to invest in its local community will cease to revitalize impoverished local communities.

Negate: Every bank to invest in its local community will continue to revitalize impoverished local communities.

How you strengthen this?
Up the no. of banks,
Improve the law of: Increase the amount loan to communities.
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 18 Jul 2022, 10:51
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AndrewN

I interpreted (D) as this:

D. It overlooks the possibility that even if there is a strong correlation between two phenomena (phenomenon 1: physical banking, phenomenon 2: online banking), neither of those phenomena are necessarily causally responsible for the other.

Author concludes:
physical banking -> revitalize impoverished local communities.
online banking -> not revitalize impoverished local communities

Can't we say that phenomenon 1 (physical banking) and phenomenon 2 (online banking) are not casually responsible for the other?
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 18 Jul 2022, 11:13
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custodio
AndrewN

I interpreted (D) as this:

D. It overlooks the possibility that even if there is a strong correlation between two phenomena (phenomenon 1: physical banking, phenomenon 2: online banking), neither of those phenomena are necessarily causally responsible for the other.

Author concludes:
physical banking -> revitalize impoverished local communities.
online banking -> not revitalize impoverished local communities

Can't we say that phenomenon 1 (physical banking) and phenomenon 2 (online banking) are not casually responsible for the other?
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Hello, custodio. Sure, we could say that, as you have defined them, phenomena 1 and 2 are not causally responsible for each other. However, such a relationship has nothing to do with the stated argument that it is clear that the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose [to revitalize impoverished local communities]. You have to be careful not to follow a circuitous path of logic to rationalize an answer choice (what I sometimes refer to as one-step-removed logic). Just about anything can look reasonable if you do. Rather, you want to find something that touches directly on the argument or comes as close to following a straight path as possible. That way, you will be much less likely to get sidetracked and wind up selecting an incorrect answer.

Thank you for following up.

- Andrew
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 18 Jul 2022, 20:29
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AndrewN

Thanks for your reply.

I wonder, when you read choice (D) for the first time, how did you interpret those two phenomena? Something like the way interpreted? (phenomenon 1: physical banking, phenomenon 2: online banking)

Similarly, when you read choice (C), how did you interpret "condition, cause, effect"?

I am asking about these two choices because these words (phenomena in D & condition, cause, effect in C) are hard to map into passage.
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 19 Jul 2022, 14:57
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custodio
AndrewN

Thanks for your reply.

I wonder, when you read choice (D) for the first time, how did you interpret those two phenomena? Something like the way interpreted? (phenomenon 1: physical banking, phenomenon 2: online banking)

Similarly, when you read choice (C), how did you interpret "condition, cause, effect"?

I am asking about these two choices because these words (phenomena in D & condition, cause, effect in C) are hard to map into passage.
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I cannot say how I interpreted answer choices (C) or (D) the first time I laid eyes on them, because that was a few years ago. I will say that sometimes, if I cannot seem to figure out what an answer choice is driving at, I will simply move on and pretend that option is covered by a big black box. Then, I make sense of the other options as well as I can. If one of those four seems to fit, I choose it and get to the next question; if not, I take whatever is under the box, so to speak. I discussed this strategy in a recent post to another Hard CR question, here, and I included an illustration with a boxed-out answer choice. The point is, do not sweat the small stuff. It is good to go back in review to make more sense of each answer choice, but on the spot, your goal is simply to walk away with the correct answer.

When I look at answer choice (D) now, it looks like nonsense to me, the sort of jargon we might expect to see in a boldface question. Although answer choice (C) is a little trickier for me, the confuses part in the beginning is wayward. Nothing seems criss-crossed in the passage. The argument is direct.

Thank you for following up.

- Andrew
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 18 Jun 2023, 22:36
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The banker's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the following ground:

E. It fails to adequately address the possibility that an increase in the number of banks of one kind in the banker's country will not lead to the complete elimination of banks of another kind.

The banker assumes that the increasing number of internet-based banks, which are not physically located in any specific community, will completely replace the traditional banks that operate within local communities. However, this assumption may not hold true. It is possible for both types of banks to coexist, with traditional community banks continuing to serve their intended purpose alongside the internet-based banks. The argument overlooks the possibility that the presence of internet-based banks does not necessarily lead to the complete elimination of physically located banks serving local communities.
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 14 Jul 2023, 19:21
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@GMATNinja, @VeritasKarishma, @MartyTargetTestPrep

Please let me know your thought process to eliminate option D in this question. Also, kindly provide some references for similar official questions in case you have them handy (related to correlation and causation)
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 10 Aug 2023, 15:37
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Kratosgmat

Please let me know your thought process to eliminate option D in this question. Also, kindly provide some references for similar official questions in case you have them handy (related to correlation and causation)
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The argument concludes that "the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose." Why? Because an increasing number of banks are not physically located in any specific community. As a result, the law which requires banks to invest in their local community may not apply to them. According to the argument, this will "entirely" prevent the law from serving its purpose of revitalizing "impoverished local communities."

Let's now consider (D):

Quote:
The banker's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

D. It overlooks the possibility that even if there is a strong correlation between two phenomena, neither of those phenomena are necessarily causally responsible for the other.
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Does the argument make this particular error? To determine this, let's see how the answer choice might map to the argument.

In theory, what correlation might (D) be referring to? It's hard to say. The argument suggests that a trend (the increasing number of online-only banks) will have a certain effect (the law will "entirely" cease to serve its purpose). But that isn't a correlation so much as a proposed cause-and-effect.

Going through the rest of the argument, it's hard to find any correlation discussed. In theory, a correlation would be an observation that a certain phenomenon tends to occur along with another phenomenon. For instance, you might cite data that people who eat ice cream are on average better at surfing than people who don't. Could we conclude from this that ice cream causes people to be better at surfing? Definitely not. It might be that people who live near the ocean tend to eat a lot of ice cream and be good at surfing. The two phenomena are correlated, but one doesn't cause the other.

Going back to the argument, no observations of correlated phenomena are cited. So it's hard to see how the argument overlooks the possibility that a that correlation is not actually a causation.

For that reason, we can eliminate (D).

I hope that helps!
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 14 Apr 2024, 22:19
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The banker's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the ground stated in option E:

E. It fails to adequately address the possibility that an increase in the number of banks of one kind in the banker's country will not lead to the complete elimination of banks of another kind.

The banker argues that the community lending laws will soon "entirely cease to serve its intended purpose" because an increasing number of banks exist solely online and are not physically located in any specific community.

However, this argument fails to consider the possibility that even as online-only banks increase, traditional brick-and-mortar banks located in physical communities may still exist. The increase in one type of bank does not necessarily mean the complete elimination of the other type.

The other options do not directly address the vulnerability in the banker's reasoning:

A is about the location of brick-and-mortar banks, which is not the focus of the criticism.
B assumes that laws only serve one purpose, which is not relevant to the criticism.
C is about causation, which is not the issue with the banker's argument.
D is about correlation and causation, which is also not the issue with the banker's argument.

Therefore, option E correctly identifies the key vulnerability in the banker's argument by pointing out that the increase in one type of bank does not necessarily lead to the complete elimination of the other type.
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 29 Dec 2024, 05:31
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Hi GMATNinja KarishmaB MartyTargetTestPrep

Could you please explain how can we eliminate option C?

My understanding is there is a proposed cause and effect condition given but the argument doesn't confuse it with another condition. The given condition is:

X = Banks invest in local communities by lending money to local businesses, providing mortgages for local home purchases
Y = revitalize impoverished local communities
X leads to Y (argument says)

Please let me know if I am wrong somewhere.
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Banker: My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local co 26 Jan 2025, 00:41
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can u tell me whats the on thing we have to notice while attempting flaw questions?

GMATIntensive
The Story
My country's laws require every bank to invest in its local community by lending money to local businesses, providing mortgages for local home purchases, and so forth. - The banker says that his country’s laws require every bank to invest in the bank’s local community by doing (1) lending money to local businesses, (2) providing mortgages for local home purchases, or (3) other things. This is a straightforward fact about a current legal requirement in the country.

This is intended to revitalize impoverished local communities. - This requirement to invest in local communities is intended to revitalize impoverished local communities. Even though the requirement seems to apply to all the local communities, it is intended to help impoverished communities. Also evident here is that this statement mentions a goal, and the previous statement talked about a currently active plan to achieve the goal.

But it is clear that the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose. - There is a change in direction here. The banker makes a claim that the law will soon ‘entirely stop’ to serve its intended purpose. (Okay, that’s a huge claim. How can he say so? He’ll probably go on to tell us.)

An increasing number of banks incorporated in our country exist solely on the Internet and are not physically located in any specific community. - This line supports the previous line. Impoverished local communities will stop getting helped by the law because an increasing number of banks do not physically exist in any community. (So, the law will not require these banks to help any specific community).

Gist:The country’s laws require banks to invest in local communities in order to revitalize the poor ones. However since more and more banks exist only online (support), the laws will entirely stop helping revitalize the poor local communities (conclusion).

The Gap
How will the existence of more and more banks solely online lead to completely stopping the laws from helping revitalize the poor communities?

Gap: Clearly, the banker makes the following assumptions:


1. Physical-banks will cease to exist
2. Purely-online banks are not covered under the laws

Let’s examine these assumptions:
If the banker did not believe that the physical-banks will cease to exist, could he conclude that the law will entirely stop revitalizing poor communities? No.
Similarly, if the banker believed that purely-online banks are also required by law to help revitalize the communities, would he give more such banks existing as the reason for his conclusion? He wouldn’t.
The argument fails to consider these scenarios.

The Goal
We have to find an option that indicates a flaw in the argument. We already discussed two scenarios the argument fails to consider. Of course, there could be other scenarios that the argument has failed to consider. We have come up with only two. Doesn’t mean that there are only two such scenarios.

The Evaluation

A. It overlooks the possibility that most banks that are physically located in specific communities in the banker's country are not located in impoverished communities.
Incorrect. Let’s first understand the possibility that this option talks about, and then we can see whether it’s a flaw in the argument that it overlooks such a possibility. The possibility is that most banks catering to specific communities are not catering to impoverished communities. Given that we know that the intended purpose of the law was to help impoverished communities, this possibility indicates that most banks catering to specific communities are already not serving the intended purpose of the law. However, some banks may be serving the intended purpose.

Moreover, even if we assume ‘most banks’ implies all such banks are not located in impoverished communities, that would tell us that the law is presently ineffective.

This possibility clearly doesn’t go against the banker’s argument. Thus, overlooking this possibility cannot be a flaw in the banker’s argument.

B. It takes for granted that a law that ceases to serve its originally intended purpose no longer serves any other beneficial purpose, either.
Incorrect. The argument’s conclusion is: “the law will soon entirely cease to serve its intended purpose”. Thus, whether the law served any beneficial purpose other than the intended purpose is not relevant to the argument. Thus, this option cannot be a flaw in the argument.

C. It confuses a condition that would, if present, be likely to produce a given effect, with a condition that would probably be the cause if that effect were present.
Incorrect. While we can reject this option directly since there is no confusion around different causes or cause and effect in the argument, let’s try to understand the meaning of the statement for the sake of learning.

The option says that the argument confuses an ‘X’ condition with a ‘Y’ condition.

X: a condition that would, if present, be likely to produce a given effect (i.e. if X is present, it’ll likely produce Z)
Y: a condition that would probably be the cause if that effect were present (i.e. if Z is present, Y is likely to be the cause of it)

The option says that the argument is confusing X with Y. However, the argument is talking about neither X leading to Z nor Y being the cause of Z.

D. It overlooks the possibility that even if there is a strong correlation between two phenomena, neither of those phenomena are necessarily causally responsible for the other.
Incorrect. Since the argument doesn’t talk about any correlation and causation, this option is completely off. Even if we take the two phenomena to be (1) banks being physically present in local communities and (2) laws helping revitalize impoverished communities, the argument never discusses correlation or causation in their regard.

E. It fails to adequately address the possibility that an increase in the number of banks of one kind in the banker's country will not lead to the complete elimination of banks of another kind.
Correct. This option is in line with the first gap we identified in the argument. The argument fails to address or consider the possibility that some non-internet banks may continue to exist or that an increase in internet banks will not lead to the complete elimination of non-internet banks that exist in specific communities. In this possibility, the argument ceases to hold since the law will not cease to serve its intended purpose.

Additional Notes

This argument follows a very common CR argument structure. The argument starts with mentioning an existing situation/ a trend/ a widely-held belief. The argument then concludes that what’s given in the previous statement is either not valid or will not remain valid. And then the author presents reason(s) for why that is so.

Similar official question: It is widely assumed that people need to engage in intellectual activities

SC Notes: The use of ‘this’ in the second sentence without a noun following it. ‘this’ refers to the entire first sentence.

Option D says “neither of those phenomena are...”. The use of a plural verb with ‘neither’ is informal, if not downright wrong.



If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask.
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