Q23 - A car's antitheft alarm

[jackielacchin]

Hello,

I correctly answered this question, but I feel that it was more of a guess than a correct understanding. While answering the question, I was able to narrow my choices down to B) and C). Upon review, I can see why C) is in fact the correct answer and would love confirmation and input on my thought process and reasoning.

I will first go over the core of the argument and the task, then go through each answer choice.

Argument:

P: There are many reasons why a car alarm can sound.
P: Regardless of the reason, the car alarm is bothersome to other people's sleep.
C: Therefore, these alarms should be deactivated at night.

Thought Process: "Okay, this conclusion is hella weird. If we deactivate these alarms, then they won't sound when someone is ACTUALLY trying to break in! What is the author getting at? Is there no crime in this neighbourhood? Are most cases of the alarm sounding due to the other causes (i.e. branches, faulty device, etc.), rather than attempted theft?

Task: The question is asking us to find the sufficient assumption. Thus, I am looking for a gap to close in the structure.

Answers:

A) Eliminate. If anything this answer would weaken the argument, as it seems to be implying that we should not reactive the alarms because the inconvenience they cause is actually outweighed by the benefit they produce (i.e. safe neighbourhood).

B) This is very attractive, leave it. If most cases are not theft, then there is no benefit of having the alarm and it is just a nuisance.

C) Attractive, leave it. Deals with the issue of disturbing sleep v.s. the issue of car left.

D) Not supported. We cannot infer that people who equip their cars with antitheft alarms are doing so because they are generally inconsiderate of others. I have a car alarm, yet I like to think of my self as considerate. My reason for the alarm is that it prevents theft. It is reasonable to assume that this is the same motive for other people. Regardless, the motive of people with antitheft alarms is irrelevant. Eliminate.

E) The sounding of the alarm during the day is irrelevant and out of scope to the argument about the sounding of the alarm during the night which hinders sleep. Eliminate.

Thought Process: "Okay i have two attractive answers left and am not sure which is right. Let's compare them. Looking at C) I am thrown off by the strong language and the comparison, as in the past (though concluding something on the basis of the past is not a guarantee), comparing two things and saying something is better or more important than the other has been a frequent pattern of wrong answer choices. However, can this comparison be supported by the argument?
Looking back at the conclusion, I notice that the LSAT writers have specifically put in "out of consideration for others" and "but whatever the cause" in the premise. So, it seems like the author clearly is not concerned about the cause, but more so the effect (i.e. the alarms are noisy and therefore, disturb sleep). This implies that the author thinks that the disturbance the alarm causes has more clout than preventing theft. This is what answer choice C) is saying.

What about B)? At first glance it was very attractive. But taking 'most' to mean 'some', this answer is actually very weak and not strong enough for a sufficient assumption. This is in effect saying that some of the alarms are false alarms. If some of them are false alarms, this means at least one is a false alarm, and it could also mean that ALL are false alarms. But we don't know the exact amount, so we cannot really assume that some is not all. Regardless, even if they all are false alarms, this doesn't really preclude the possibility of a future sounding NOT being a false alarm. What if theft happens tomorrow? Then it really wouldn't be justifiable to ask people to deactivate their alarms and just suck it up if they get robbed. So, this answer has some problems with it and it must be that the author is assuming that undisturbed sleep is more important because if she didn't assume this than her argument is flawed."

Is this the proper interpretation of the argument and the reasons why the answers are correct and incorrect?

Thanks in advance.

[BillyM23]

It is tempting to think about the purpose of car alarms as preventing car theft. However when the author explicitly states that "whatever the cause, the sleep of many people in the neighborhood is disturbed" and therefore people should deactivate them when they park in crowded city neighborhoods- she is saying that even if the alarms are sounded because a car is being stolen, it is still inconsiderate and should be deactivated.

Kind of heartless but hey.

Also worth noting, the conclusion of the argument is a normative statement: people should deactivate car alarms. The correct answer C substantiates the claim that this is what people should do.

[ohthatpatrick]

(B) does feel like a strengthener, because you can imagine that if MOST of the time a car alarm goes off, it's not actually a crime, then that helps the position of someone saying, "Just turn the alarm off, already!"

But the alarm-lover could say, "I don't care if 70% of the time it's a false alarm and only 30% of the time it's a real theft in progress. My car getting stolen is so much worse than your sleep getting disturbed, that we'll have to tolerate a 7:3 ratio of disturbance to threat-prevention."

You can't just point out that doing something has an advantage (possible theft prevention) but also has a disadvantage (possible neighborhood disturbance) and make it seem like a close decision.

Wearing seatbelts has an advantage (less injury in the event of an injury) and a disadvantage (more restricted, less comfortable ride), but we still wear them. It doesn't matter that in most cases that we wear a seatbelt, we don't get into an accident.

In addition to all that, as both of the previous posters noted, saying "But whatever the cause" indicates that the author isn't actually trying to draw any distinction based on whether the alarm would be sounding for legitimate or illegitimate reasons.

So the underlying stats of the ratio of legit to fake causes of an alarm going off are irrelevant to the argument.