Of every 100 burglar alarms police answer, 99 are false alarms. This situation causes an enormous and dangerous drain...

davidamaya May 26, 2019

Double Negative

Hello team! I successfully chose the correct answer. I did so with hesitation, however. The answer choice reads, "It provides a basis for excluding as unacceptable one obvious alternative to the proposal of fining owners of burglar alarm systems for false alarms." My confusion arose out of reading "excluding as unacceptable," and my brain wanting to reinterpret that to meaning it is acceptable. In other words, I read the answer choice as, "It provides a basis for accepting one obvious alternative to the proposal of fining owners of burglar alarm systems for false alarms." This is obviously incorrect. Can you please decipher what I am doing wrong? Is it or is it not a double negative? Thank you in advance.

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nizhoni August 28, 2019

Hello David. I answered C for this question and this is how I interpreted the tricky statement, "It provides a basis for excluding as unacceptable one obvious alternative to the proposal of fining owners of burglar alarm systems for false alarms." OK. "...provides a basis for excluding as unacceptable one obvious alternative" means that since 99 out of 100 alarms are false, the "obvious" response for police would be to just not respond to burglar alarms b/c they are almost always a waste of time and resources. HOWEVER, the fact that burglar alarm system ("unlike car alarm systems" - this part of the info is neither here nor there- tbh) IS EFFECTIVE in DETERRING burglaries. This means that since the burglar alarms do help prevent a crime, they are still useful, therefore police should still always respond and for what will probably be a false alarm they will just lowkey take the L, but fine the system owners the cost of 45 minutes of their time.

I hope this explanation helped.

Ravi August 28, 2019

@davidamaya,

@nizhoni's explanation is great. @nizhoni, keep up the excellent work
and active participation on the message board! In short, "excluding as
unacceptable" just means leaving the unacceptable alternative out of
the picture, so it is not a double negative.

(C) says, "It provides a basis for excluding as unacceptable one
obvious alternative to the proposal of fining owners of burglar alarm
systems for false alarms."

A basis means a premise. Even though it is not directly stated in the
stimulus, the obvious alternative is to ban burglar alarms. The
conclusion of the argument is that this should not be done; rather,
the only thing that should be done is charging for false alarms. Thus,
(C) is the correct answer choice.

Valentina July 12, 2020

How are we to know that the obvious alternative is to ban burglar alarms when we're not supposed to assume anything on the LSAT?

Additionally, regarding answer A, how do we know that the term "restrictions" is not referring to the proposed fine alternative. I read it as such, which is why I picked A.

Ivan-Toledo January 7, 2023

David, I did the exact same thing. I appreciate the breakdown on this. Thanks!