Happy to help! The stimulus says it's common to respond to a person who is exhorting us to change our behavior by drawing attention to that person's own behavior.
We're then told that this response is irrational (this is the conclusion of the stimulus). The support given is that whether or not someone heeds his or her own advice is irrelevant to whether that person's advice should be heeded.
Basically, this argument is saying that it's irrational to call attention to someone being a hypocrite because even if they are a hypocrite, the fact that their behavior contradicts their advice has no bearing on the merit of their advice.
Imagine a doctor who smokes two packs of cigarettes per day telling his patients they shouldn't smoke. This argument is saying that we should not draw attention to the doctor's choice to smoke, as it has no bearing on whether or not his advice not to smoke is sound.
The question stem asks us to select the argument that's most similar in reasoning to the argument in the stimulus.
(A) is incorrect because it doesn't match the structure of the argument in the stimulus. If we wanted (A) to match the reasoning of the argument in the stimulus, it would need to say something like "it's common to respond to a country that's telling us to disarm by drawing attention to the fact that they're not disarming themselves. This argument is irrational because whether or not they choose to disarm is irrelevant to whether or not we should disarm." As it's written, (A) does not have this structure.
(B) is incorrect because the neighbor who is urging the author to exercise is heeding his own advice, and this doesn't match what's going on in the stimulus where the prescriber of the advice is not listening to their own advice.
(C) is incorrect because it doesn't match the structure. If we wanted to make (C) fit the reasoning of the stimulus, we'd need it to say something like "It's common that when country A accuses country B of violating human rights, country B draws attention to the fact that country A has a history of human rights violations. However, this is irrational because whether or not country B has a history of human rights violations is irrelevant to whether country A's advice is pertinent to country B." As it's written, (C) doesn't match this structure, so it's out.
(D) is correct because its reasoning matches the reasoning of the argument in the stimulus. Just as in the stimulus, (C) is saying that it's irrational to call attention to someone being a hypocrite because even if they are a hypocrite, the fact that their behavior contradicts their argument has no bearing on the strength of their argument. This is our choice.
(E) is incorrect because the salesperson in (E) is not failing to act in accordance with the advice he or she is giving (and the salesperson is not even giving any advice, so that's also different from the situation in the stimulus). This does not match the reasoning of the stimulus, so we can get rid of this choice.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!
