No one with a serious medical problem would rely on the average person to prescribe treatment. Similarly, since a goo...

Brad on February 26, 2019

Yes, I am interested as well.

Ravi on February 27, 2019

@JayDee8732 and @Brad,

Happy to help.

We're told that no one with a serious medical problem would rely on
the average person to prescribe treatment.

serious medical problem - >not rely on average person for treatment

We're then told that similarly, since a good public servant has the
interest of the public at heart,....

The question asks us to choose a statement that would most reasonably
complete the argument. We're looking to reconcile the conditional
statement in the first sentence with the analogous argument that's
being made in the second sentence.

Let's think about this. As noted above, the first sentence can be diagrammed as

serious medical problem - >not rely on average person for treatment

In order to answer this question, it's best if we figure out how to
draw connections between the first sentence and the second one.

The second sentence tells us that a good public servant has the
interest of the public at heart. We should probably equate this person
to the person in the first sentence with a serious medical problem.
The answer will probably have something to do with the public servant
not relying on the average Joe for advice. It might be something else,
but at least we've made a prediction. Let's look at the answer
choices.

(A) says, "public servants should not be concerned about the outcomes
of public opinion surveys"

The problem with (A) is that having concern about the outcomes of
public opinion surveys is not the same thing as taking action or
relying on these surveys to make decisions. Remember, this question is
basically an argument by analogy, so we're looking for the answer that
helps us to make the second sentence as similar as possible to the
conditional statement of the first sentence. (A) doesn't mention
relying on average people for advice/guidance, so we can get rid of
it.

(B) says, "the average public servant knows more about what is best
for society than the average person does"

We have zero support from the stimulus to use this statement to
complete the argument. The stimulus never states that the average
public servant knows more than the average person does. All we're told
in the stimulus is that good public servants have the public's best
interest at heart, so we can get rid of this answer choice.

(C) says, "public servants should be more knowledgeable about the
public good than they are"

The issue with (C) is that the stimulus doesn't mention that anything
is problematic with public servants' current actions or knowledge, so
we can't make the assumption that public servants should be more
knowledgeable than they currently are. We can get rid of this choice.

(D) says, "public servants should base decisions on something other
than the average person's recommendations"

(D) does a great job in connecting the person with a serious medical
issue to the public servant in the second sentence. If the person with
a serious medical issue shouldn't rely on the average Joe to give them
medical advice, then it makes sense that public servants shouldn't
rely on the average Joe to make decisions about doing stuff for the
public good. (D) completes the argument by helping us to make sense of
the analogy between the first and second sentence. Thus, it's the
correct answer.

(E) says, "one is a good public servant if one is more knowledgeable
about the public good than is the average person"

There are a few problems with (E). For one, the only thing the
stimulus said was that good public servants have the interest of the
public at heart. We were never told that caring about the public is a
sufficient condition to make someone a good public servant. Another
problem with (E) is that in the stimulus, the concept we're dealing
with is having the interest of the public at heart, and in (E), the
concept we're dealing with is being knowledgeable about the public
good. These are two fundamentally different concepts. Thus, we can get
rid of this answer choice.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!

mg123 on April 30, 2020

great explanation thank you!