Capstone: Construct and Defend

This capstone builds a position from nothing: a claim staked, a main argument constructed form-first, the strongest objection steelmanned and answered, and one supporting statistic vetted before it is used.

Stake the claim: this library should extend its evening hours. Construct the main argument form-first. Denying the consequent will carry it. If the library serves its working-age users, it opens when they can attend. It does not open when they can attend. Therefore it does not serve its working-age users — and from there, the recommendation follows. Stress-test both premises before going further. The first is a definitional commitment about what serving users means, and it should be stated as such. The second is a factual claim about opening times, checkable against the schedule. Now steelman the objection. The strongest version is not that extending hours costs money; it is that evening demand is unproven, so the cost might buy nothing. State it in its best form, then classify it. It does not attack a premise, so it is not a rebuttal — it undercuts the inference by questioning whether the need is real, which makes it an undercutter. Answer it on those terms: run a limited trial and measure. Now the supporting statistic. A survey reports sixty percent of users want later hours. Vet it with the four questions before it goes anywhere near the argument. Who was surveyed — existing daytime users, which is the wrong population, since the people excluded by current hours are the ones absent from the sample. That flaw is enough to set it aside. The finished structure holds without it.