Q4 - Warner: Until recently, most competitive swimmers

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Describe (Response)

Stimulus Breakdown:
W: I wonder why nowadays more and more competitive swimmers keep swimming beyond their high school / university years. It must be that their training regimens have improved, allowing them to stay fit for longer.
Y: That doesn't have to be why. It's also possible there's just more incentive for them to keep swimming, since nowadays swimmers could actually make a living by continuing to swim.

Answer Anticipation:
I would describe this in the language of Causal arguments. Young's response does what LSAT normally wants us to do when we read a causal argument: reject the certainty of the author's hypothesis and consider a possible alternative explanation for the same curious background fact.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This accuses Young of arguing that "since more and more people are competitively swimming beyond university, training regimens have NOT allowed today's swimmers to be fitter." Young isn't commenting on whether better training regimens are / aren't helping. "Not necssarrily" = you could be right, you could be wrong. She's only saying that there's another potential way to explain why swimmers are competing later into life.

(B) A counterexample to W's evidence would be a swimmer nowadays who DOESN'T compete beyond university years (or a swimmer from the past who DID compete beyond schooling). Y doesn't provide any examples of swimmers at all.

(C) "Suff vs. nec" refers to conditional logic (absolutes / universals). There was no conditional logic in either person's comments.

(D) "Presupposing the truth of a conclusion" refers to circular reasoning. Someone complaining that a person committed circular reasoning would sound like they were saying "You haven't presented any evidence in favor of your conclusion! You just restated your conclusion in different terms as your evidence."

(E) YES! Both parties are attempting to explain why swimmers are competing later into life. Warner explained this by saying that better training explains the longer careers. Young explains this by saying that maybe better monetary compensation explains the longer swimming career.

Takeaway/Pattern: This problem ends up using the Causal Argument template: an author presents a Curious Fact (why are competitive swimmers now swimming later into life?) and then concludes with the Author's Explanation (better training regimens). Had we been doing an Assumption Family question, WE would have been in Young's position, thinking to ourselves "Could there be some OTHER EXPLANATION for why competitive swimmers are swimming later into life?"

#officialexplanation