Why should the government, rather than industry or universities, provide the money to put a network of supercomputers...

shunhe July 24, 2020

Hi @kmccarthy10,

Thanks for the question! It’s the last sentence that actually has the problem in it! So remember, the argument’s telling us that the government (instead of industry or universities) should provide the money to put a network of supercomputers in place because there’s a range of problems that can be attacked only with a supercomputer network, but no business or university can buy enough machines for itself, and no business or university wants to invest in part of a network if no mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole.

But notice that the last sentence just assumed that no other mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole, so it has to be the government. It didn’t actually prove that no other mechanism could; it completely leaves out the possibility that businesses/universities/both can coordinate among themselves and make their own mechanism for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole. So then they could invest in a part of the network, there’d be a mechanism in place to coordinate that’s not the government, and then you wouldn’t need the government to provide the money. So the argument totally overlooks this possibility, and that’s why (E) is the correct answer here.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.