1. For each PSAT Writing & Language passage, you will find 5 accompanying questions. Your task is to read the passage and choose the answer option for each question that best enhances the writing’s quality or ensures the passage adheres to the standard rules of English.
Passage:
Modern communication technologies have profoundly impacted how societies share information and form opinions. While expanding access to diverse viewpoints, some argue overflowing data risks oversimplifying complex issues. Citizens face pressures to take definitive stances on topics encompassing nuanced trade-offs without prerequisite expertise or full context.
Polarizing discourses often involve economics, equality and social values. Regarding wealth disparities for example, progressives highlight concentrated resources alongside stagnant wages as threats to equal opportunity, citing responsibility to disadvantaged groups. Conservatives counter free markets efficiently allocate resources when unimpeded, and forced redistribution undermines individual liberty and work incentives fundamental to prosperity. Different philosophies view the role of intervention through contrasting lenses.
These debates implicate valid concerns yet overlook their multidimensional nature. Economic inequality arises not only from systemic conditions but individual circumstances of opportunity, circumstance and choice. While fair starts matter, outcome equality alone neglects liberty and personal responsibility central to open societies. Both security and entrepreneurial risk-taking cultivate advancement; disproportionately emphasizing one overlooks balancing objectives. Furthermore, disparate community impact from policies depends on diverse, complex dynamics unfit for oversimplified portrayals.
Similar complexities arise in social discussions. On issues of non-discrimination for example, some argue certain viewpoints challenge self-expression or faith traditions. Others counter equal treatment undergirds a just, cohesive pluralism. Both sides involve conscientious aims yet nuanced trade-offs shaping diverse yet harmonious communities remain actively debated, free of coercive conformity. Absolute positions often disregard multifaceted realities encompassing overlapping concerns on liberty, dignity and social cohesion.
Constructive debate begins by acknowledging each side potentially raises valid alarms, if also incomplete perspectives, regarding intricacies inherent to open societies. Oversimplified rhetoric manufactures divisions while pragmatic understanding recognizes multiple legitimate interests comprise any issue. With open yet measured discussions considering nuance over absolutes, societies balance competing principles through practical, if imperfect, solutions better representing diverse communities seeking compassion and justice together.
- According to the passage, what is one argument some make regarding modern information sharing?
