LSAT Logical Reasoning: Paradox and Explain Questions 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A national park imposed a strict no-fishing rule to protect fish populations. After five years, the fish population was lower than before the ban. Which of the following most helps explain this paradox?
- Tourists stopped visiting the park once fishing was prohibited, reducing revenue for conservation programs.
- With fishing prohibited, no one removed invasive predatory species that had previously been caught as bycatch, allowing them to flourish and decimate native fish. (Correct answer)
- Fish naturally migrate out of protected areas into adjacent unprotected waters over time.
- Park rangers lacked authority to enforce the fishing ban, so illegal fishing continued unchecked.
Correct answer: With fishing prohibited, no one removed invasive predatory species that had previously been caught as bycatch, allowing them to flourish and decimate native fish.
Fishing had inadvertently controlled invasive predators; removing that check allowed predators to multiply and reduce native fish populations below pre-ban levels.
Question 2: A car manufacturer installed fuel-efficiency software in its vehicles and advertised lower fuel costs to consumers. However, total fuel consumption by owners of those vehicles increased. Which of the following best explains this outcome?
- The software contained programming errors that reduced engine performance and required more fuel per mile.
- Fuel became cheaper during the same period, encouraging more driving by all consumers.
- Drivers, perceiving their fuel costs as lower per mile, drove significantly more miles than before, consuming more total fuel. (Correct answer)
- The vehicles' fuel tanks were designed to be larger, allowing owners to fill them more frequently.
Correct answer: Drivers, perceiving their fuel costs as lower per mile, drove significantly more miles than before, consuming more total fuel.
The rebound effect explains the paradox: lower cost-per-mile incentivizes more miles driven, negating and reversing the efficiency gains in total consumption.
Question 3: A school district adopted a new math curriculum designed by experts to be more rigorous, expecting test scores to improve. Scores declined significantly in the first two years. Which of the following most helps explain this?
- The new curriculum was written at a reading level too advanced for the students.
- Teachers were unfamiliar with the new material and had not yet received adequate professional development to teach it effectively. (Correct answer)
- Students objected to the increased difficulty and petitioned to return to the old curriculum.
- Standardized tests did not yet reflect the new curriculum's content, creating a mismatch.
Correct answer: Teachers were unfamiliar with the new material and had not yet received adequate professional development to teach it effectively.
Teachers' unfamiliarity with new curriculum typically causes a short-term performance dip before improvements emerge as they gain mastery of the material.
Question 4: A city required restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus to help residents make healthier choices. Surveys taken after the policy showed that average calorie consumption per restaurant meal increased. Which of the following most helps explain this finding?
- Restaurants removed low-calorie options from menus to simplify labeling compliance.
- Customers who previously underestimated calorie counts in high-calorie meals were not deterred, and customers who overestimated low-calorie meal counts began ordering those items more freely.
- The policy applied only to chain restaurants, allowing smaller restaurants to serve unrestricted high-calorie meals.
- Health-conscious residents began eating at home more often, leaving only less health-conscious diners in restaurants. (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Health-conscious residents began eating at home more often, leaving only less health-conscious diners in restaurants.
If health-conscious diners shift to cooking at home after seeing menu calorie data, remaining restaurant diners skew toward those less motivated by calorie counts, raising the average.
Question 5: A pharmaceutical company fast-tracked approval of a new painkiller by demonstrating it was more effective than a placebo. Yet after widespread use, population-level chronic pain rates increased. Which of the following most helps explain this paradox?
- The painkiller was effective only for acute pain, not for the chronic conditions most patients suffered.
- The painkiller produced dependency, leading patients to develop drug-induced hyperalgesia—a condition where stopping the drug causes greater pain than the original condition. (Correct answer)
- Doctors overprescribed the painkiller to patients who would have recovered without treatment.
- The placebo in clinical trials was unusually effective, making the drug's relative benefit appear larger than its absolute benefit.
Correct answer: The painkiller produced dependency, leading patients to develop drug-induced hyperalgesia—a condition where stopping the drug causes greater pain than the original condition.
Drug-induced hyperalgesia caused by opioid dependency creates more chronic pain than it resolves, explaining the population-level worsening despite individual short-term efficacy.
Question 6: An airline reduced the number of seats per flight to give passengers more legroom, expecting customer satisfaction to increase. Instead, overall satisfaction scores fell. Which of the following best explains this result?
- Passengers associated fewer seats with lower quality aircraft.
- The airline raised ticket prices to compensate for reduced revenue per flight, and passengers were more sensitive to price increases than they were pleased by extra legroom. (Correct answer)
- Frequent flyers preferred the denser seating because it allowed them to board and exit more quickly.
- Competitors also improved legroom during the same period, eliminating the airline's comparative advantage.
Correct answer: The airline raised ticket prices to compensate for reduced revenue per flight, and passengers were more sensitive to price increases than they were pleased by extra legroom.
Higher ticket prices resulting from revenue recovery outweighed the legroom benefit in passengers' overall satisfaction calculus.
Question 7: A forest service set fire to burn areas of dense underbrush every few years to prevent large wildfires. One year, they skipped the scheduled burn due to budget cuts. That same year, no large wildfire occurred, yet the following year's wildfire was the largest in 50 years. Which best explains this sequence?
- Budget cuts also reduced the number of firefighters available to combat wildfires.
- The skipped burn allowed an unprecedented buildup of flammable underbrush, so when a fire eventually ignited, it found an abnormally large fuel load. (Correct answer)
- Climate conditions in the year of the skipped burn happened to be unusually wet, independently suppressing wildfire ignition.
- The forest service's burn program had never actually been effective; the year without a burn and the following year's fire were unrelated.
Correct answer: The skipped burn allowed an unprecedented buildup of flammable underbrush, so when a fire eventually ignited, it found an abnormally large fuel load.
The skipped controlled burn allowed fuel to accumulate, and while conditions happened to prevent ignition that year, the excess fuel fed a massive fire the following year.
LSAT Logical Reasoning: Paradox and Explain Questions 3
A national park imposed a strict no-fishing rule to protect fish populations.
After five years, the fish population was lower than before the ban.
Which of the following most helps explain this paradox?