PT65 S1 Q18 Forum

[fairhope71]

This got me confused so much that I spent hours figuring it out, but still unsuccessful.
I need your help.

It's a necessary assumption question. The argument goes...

Domestication of large wildlife mammals was complete thousands of years ago.
So far, humans have tried unsuccessfully to domesticate every large wildlife mammals that are seemingly worth domesticating.

Therefore, most large wildlife animals out there today are either difficult to domesticate or not worth domesticating.

I don't understand how come 'it is not much easier today to domesticate wild large mammals that it was in the past' can be a
necessary assumption. I tried negation test but failed to see how this can destroy the argument.

Thanks in advance.

[Nova]

http://www.manhattanlsat.com/forums/q18 ... t5913.html

[fairhope71]

http://www.manhattanlsat.com/forums/q18 ... t5913.html

Thanks, but I read that before I posted this thread.

What makes me confused is that even if it is much easier today to domesticate than before, it would be still possible, or even highly likely, that the remaining large wildlife mammals are either difficult to domesticate or not worth domesticating.

[iskim88]

Okay... let me see if I can explain this.

So the arugment goes like this:

Premises:
- Every Domesticated Large Mammals -> domesticated thousands of years ago
- Since then, people tried to domesticate the "wild" large mammal species that seemed worth domesticating

Conclusion:
=> Thus, "most" "wild" large mammal species today = either difficult to domesticate or not worth domesticating

I think the term "wild" is important here. Thousand years ago, ppl domesticated large mammal species that they could no matter what the circumstance. Then came today in which ppl are trying to domesticate the wild ones, which is funny, because according to our first premise, "every" domesticated large mammals had already been domesticated. And the conclusion is that these mammals are either difficult or not worth it - which brings our assumption out that the state of affairs of the past has continued up until this point in which there are animals that are either difficult to domesticate or not worth domesticating.

If we negate (B) and say "it IS much easier today to domesticate wild large mammal species than it was in the past" then these people would not consider these most wild large mammals to be either difficult or not worth domesticating - which destroys the conclusion.

I eliminated (C) & (E) 'cause it wasn't concerning the "wild" species, and negated (A),(B),(D) to arrive at my answer.


Writing this down, I got a little confused myself, but hopefully this helped.

[BPlaura]

The argument's support is that, for animals that haven't been domesticated yet (and seem to be worth domesticating), we already tried to domesticate them and failed. Therefore, domesticating them now would be difficult.

If we negate B, it would say that it IS easier to domesticate wild animals than it was in the past. That would mean that it's not necessarily difficult to domesticate the currently-wild animals (as the conclusion says), because we know it's easier to do so now. Thus, the conclusion is ruined by the negation.

What makes me confused is that even if it is much easier today to domesticate than before, it would be still possible, or even highly likely, that the remaining large wildlife mammals are either difficult to domesticate or not worth domesticating.

It looks like you're approaching this from the wrong direction. The conclusion says it would be difficult to domesticate these animals. If we make it possible that it is *not* difficult to domesticate these animals, we've ruined the conclusion because it's no longer necessarily true that domesticating them would be difficult. We don't actually have to prove that it is easy to domesticate the animals in order to ruin the conclusion.

[KDLMaj]

Exactly. This conclusion shows up from time to time, and it's almost always an overlooked possibility argument. If the conclusion says: it's either A or B. The correct answer (if it's a NAQ) will almost always be "C isn't an option". Look for an answer in an obvious negative, negate it, and see if that gives you your option C.

All of the domestication and wild animal crap was just window dressing to make this look different from the 20 other versions of it that are floating around.