Hi, I’m preparing for the SAT, and while taking some practice tests, I found a question that I could not understand its explanation.
(the passage for the following question can be found on pg. 24 of this link (or, as the page number goes, on pg. 343):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-SjC2QWxqXRWE9PcmZuOVpSOTQ/view )
- The cryonicist's remarks (lines 33-35) depend on the notion that the cryonicist has (A) everything to gain and nothing to lose (B) a reasonable chance of remaining healthy for years (C) only one chance of life (D) total confidence of technological progress (E) greater intellectual powers than others
I thought that the answer was (D). My though process was like the following:
Since the passage as a whole revolves around the concept that many people have tried to achieve many technological/scientific problems that were considered impossible, the cryonicist must have been mentioned as an example of a person who has belief in achieving one of the impossible, namely bringing back a life by unfreezing a previously dad person. Thus it follows that the cryonicist believe that technological advances would be present.
The answer, however, was (A). An answer explanation from a website was:
"…This is a simple case of just interpreting his statement. The cryonicist mentions that ‘when you die, you die, but when I die, I might be frozen and I might actually come back. So I have the possible chance of such happening and you don’t.’ "
By the way, this was virtually the only explanation available on the internet.(Yes, I did try to look up explanations for this question for like 20 minutes) Since this test is from 1996, there isn’t any official answer explanation so far as I have found out. Speaking of which, the old tests used before 2005, contrary to what some may believe, isn’t completely useless. While the math section has entirely changed since 2005, the critical reading section is still valuable, except the analogy vocab questions.
I do not understand why the answer is (A), not (D). Can anyone explain this to me? Much help will be greatly appreciated. 