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Hey everyone. One of the outrageous questions of PT 72 for me was question 25 of the second section, logical reasoning.
The question is a strengthening one and the correct answer is said to be B although I think D also makes a good case for the argument. D says: "Usually, a company that sends out direct mail advertisements has good reason to think that the person to whom the advertisement is sent would be more interested in the product than would be the average person."
To me, this clearly supports the conclusion that direct mail adverisement is not bad to the environment becuse it answers a possible objection to the argument: "that altough it reduces car usage, direct mail advertisement ( DMA) still generates waste paper that is harmful to the environment". But now, because companies usually select the people that receive DMA then they at least generate less waste paper and so, are not as harful to the environment as they would be if they indiscriminately send the DMAs to everyone. In other words, D supports the argument because it makes it more likely that the environmental cost of DMA, wasting paper, is reduced.
Granted, option B also strengthens the argument by weakening another possible objection to the argument: that recipients would not buy those products in the first place so they are not reducing the car usage but merely buying more products. But given, that option D also does, how on earth is one supposed to determine which one strengthens the argument the most?
I really think this is enough for discarding this question as flawed. Just proving that another option strengthens the argument and that there's no quantitative or qualitative criteria in the stimulus that could be used to evaluate them, implies that both are possible answers.

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Fair point, but the other option does not ensure that the advertisement is not bad for the environment either. The idea is that both make it less likely that it is bad for the environment, and thus, both strenghten the argument.

Hi all,

I think B is a relatively straightforward answer (for being one of the last in an LR section) because it is the only one that addresses a necessary part of any new environment-improving mail service.

If the mail service is just enticing more people to buy products, then it isn't actually helping the environment. If anything, the transport of these products is probably worsening the environment. The only answer that addresses and rectifies this issue is B, because B suggests that products that otherwise would have been purchased by driving to the store will now be purchased by direct mail service. It replaces, rather than adding more.

D weakens the argument because it suggests that the direct mail service is going to target women with shopping addictions by sending them shoe ads, and geeky kids obsessed with game of throne by sending them fan mail. These are things that will add to the industry, not replace pre-established commerce. Thus it is more likely to hurt the environment.

You cannot assume that the direct mail is received by snail mail (ie. uses paper) because it is not stated in the stimulus. It could be email, rendering the paper-waste argument irrelevant. Additionally, there's no way to quantify paper waste and compare it to car emissions, which is another reason the argument doesn't hold.

So D weakens the argument and only B strengthens it.

Interesting but it doesn't convince me.
Regarding the email v. mail thingy I think the assumption that mail refers to snail mail is pretty standard. For example, this is the first google entry of mail v. email:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questi ... g-to-email
That said, i think that paper waste is a natural objection to a conclusion that DMA doesn't harm the environment. The danger of paper waste and useless production of paper is universal and very ordinary. So, although the objection that answer B answers is in fact straightforward, so is the objection answered by D.
We don't know whether they address it to shopaholics or geeks and how that can have an impact in the environment. All we know is that they select the recipient, which naturally leads to assuming that less waste is produced. That strengthens the argument.
The fact that there's no way to quantify wasted paper v. car emissions is precisely the reason why my argument holds and the question is flawed. Omce you see how D strengthens the argument, there's no way to weigh one over the other, no matter which one relates the most to the information in the stimulus.