Q25

[hyewonkim89]

I luckily chose (E) for this question but have a question about (D).

I was struggling between (D) and (E) and ended up eliminating (D) because it says "consequences" instead of "purposes."

Did I eliminate (D) for the right reason? If not, please help!

[marykatemoller]

I have the same question. Could someone explain?

Although answer choice (E) makes a lot of sense in relation to the passage as a whole, I thought that answer choice (D) made more sense in regards to the specific paragraph/question.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Some excellent questions on a truly difficult question.

I might make an argument here that the concept expressed in (D) is not entirely consistent with the passage here. The notions of 'voluntary' vs 'involuntary' do inform people's understanding (or judgment) about the consequences of risk - it's just that what people choose to label as 'voluntary' is inconsistent, and the definition seems to be malleable and subject to other purposes.

But that's a rather nuanced distinction - let's look to the structure of the paragraph for more assistance. The paragraph begins by noting that this malleable definition of 'voluntary' in practice often parallels approval of the activity in question. The author then gives two examples of what are certainly 'voluntary' risks - sky diving and firefighting - in order to contrast public support for spending resources for risk reduction for the two. The final sentence concludes that in making public policy decisions, we should be looking to these same underlying judgments instead of looking to 'voluntary' vs 'involuntary'.

The point here is not that the notion of voluntariness is useless, or that it does not in any way inform people's understanding of the concept of risk, but rather that it is a not-quite-perfect representation of real approval, and that public policy decisions should be determined by that real approval - and (E) reflects this 'flawed mechanism' concept. The concept of voluntariness might get close to matching what the public really wants, but it is an imperfect proxy for approval - specifically, we know that it is not quite perfect because it would fail to capture (voluntary) firefighting risks.

For completeness' sake, a brief overview of the other incorrect answers:
(A) all risks fall into either 'voluntary' or 'involuntary' categories, so they are an exhaustive list, but that's not really the point of the phrase regardless.
(B) "intentionally conceal"? Conspiracy much?
(C) it's not that they have NO meaning, but rather that they have inconsistent meaning.

Please let me know if that helps clear this up a bit!

[jewels0602]

I was super tempted by A and on review, I thought I had this question wrong for sure in not picking A and reason is as follows:

voluntary and involuntary do not exhaustively characterize the risks that people commonly face because there is the issue of degrees involved, and according to line 44-46, there are underlying judgements about voluntariness itself that isn't necessarily covered by these two categories--- it seems like I might not be using the term exhaustive correctly but I still don't understand how I'm supposed to be using it.

I see it similar to someone saying black and white don't exhaustively characterize all the colors, and it's true they don't but theoretically all colors are WITHIN that spectrum (analogous to degree issue) but that doesn't mean that they're exhaustive... does that make sense?

Anyway, any insight would be realllyyyy helpful... Thanks!!

[maryadkins]

Exhaustive means covering all elements or aspects. A complete list.

The point of "no special magic" in line 43 isn't to say that there are risks that fall outside of the categories of "voluntary" and "involuntary." It's not calling them out for being INCOMPLETE. It's calling them out for being an inappropriate mechanism, i.e. there's a better one (what (E) says). Saying they're not the best categories is different from just saying that they are incomplete categories. The passage is doing the former, not the latter.

Hope this helps!

[hanhansummer]

Hi, Christine, I still have a problem about E.

I eliminate E because of "risk reduction". From line 47-49, the purpose of the public policy should be risk reduction. But E says it's wrong to relate public decisions to risk reduction. Do I misunderstand something?

Thanks in advance!