What is bro yapping about?????? Obviously we just need to complete it by saying the city members shouldn't have control over it. These abstract examples and mapping out in lawgic are so unhelpful...
This section has been kicking my ass a bit, but I feel like nailing down the conclusion gets you 2/3 the way there.
Then, if you have a rough idea of what the hypothesis is saying, you can typically get to the right answer. I was getting very hung up on parsing the language of the hypothesis which was not feeling like a particularly wise use of time on these medium-difficulty questions.
I feel that comparing these question types to PSA to such an extent has made the curriculum confusing, thinking about them in an MSS/MBT sense or even standalone would be more beneficial because I really don't see how we're finding the rule, we're looking for an answer choice that would make the argument solid, less vulnerable - not really trying to justify it or search for the rule it conveys
It could just be me, but some of these SA questions I am getting right very easily, and others I cannot make sense of them for the life of me. This is going to be a long unit.
Does anyone else just do the questions, if they get it right they move on, if they get it wrong they watch the video? That's been my method to avoid wasting time, am I missing out on too much?
@Jake. If I cannot explain why the other answers are wrong in my BR then I review the video as well so I can be aware of traps and common mistakes that can trip me later.
@hannahhuynh that makes so much sense. However, to play devils advocate here. The premise is saying any council member should abstain or vote against, thereby implying that they dont want the propsal to be passed. "A" is saying that if all members abstain, then voters will pass in favor, which is exactly what premise doesn't want......I'm confused why abstaining and voting against doesn't imply that you dont want voters to vote because they will vote in favor....
I am finding things are starting to really click by gaining a comprehension of the grammar and structure. I was able to identify the sub conclusion/major premise, premise, and conclusion successfully which allowed me to understand what was being said and what was missing. A month ago I had a really hard time confidently labelling the stimulus. Practice and continued work does pay off. If you are struggling stay patient and persistent. It will come!
I felt like this question was an absolute cakewalk compared to the last two. The last two SA 5/5 questions had me questioning my understanding of everything. Jeez. I guess that's why we just keep going.
Can someone explain to me in similar words what JY means when he says we are dealing with prescriptive and descriptive premises? This is really confusing me I wish he would use fewer words when explaining if you get what I mean lol. Over explaining tends to be confusing
I'm confused because in the prior SA questions, we had to explicitly search for the desired conclusion in the answer choices, and now, we're still technically doing SA questions but looking for the desired conclusion is not a criteria anymore? could someone help explain how this is the case
Thank you for your suggestion! We appreciate your input and will definitely consider incorporating links to relevant previous lessons in future content. If you have any more ideas or feedback, feel free to share. Your insights are valuable to us. Thanks again!
I think for this question, writing out the premises and conclusion is especially helpful. When you stack them up, you'll notice this yuuuuge gap between them - like the argument jumps immediately from "if we (the council) don't do this thing, then the citizens will get to do this thing" to "so we should definitely do this thing." Intuitively, the only thing left for you to mentally bridge is that the council dudes definitely don't want the citizens to do the thing.
I chose A. because I thought we could properly infer from the premise the "additional assumption that the proposal shouldn’t pass," which would allow us to "contrapose on the conditional to arrive at the desired conclusion." (as JY says in the written explanation for A.).
When the stimulus says "any member...ought either to vote against the proposal or abstain," is it not reasonable to infer the activists believes the proposal shouldn't pass?
(I thought this was one of those situations where there's an implied major premise/sub-conclusion that you have to make explicit to make the entire logical chain make sense.)
IF that's true, then the fact that voters would decide in favor would fail the necessary condition and therefore also the sufficient condition ==> /all members abstain = at least one member vote against.
Why is it improper to infer from the stimulus that the proposal shouldn't pass?
My internal reasoning for accepting JY's rationale for excluding option A is that option A is merely an extension of premise 2. This distinction matters because if you assume that "activists believe the proposal shouldn't pass," it is a plausible statement, but it shifts the conclusion of the stimulus from "at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal" to "the proposal shouldn't pass." While we may intuitively process these as equivalent, there could be underlying reasons why activists do not want the bill to be voted on by the public while still believing it shouldn't pass. For example, publicly deciding on the proposal could backfire on them for strategic or political reasons.
Returning to an LSAT-style explanation, strictly analyzing the relationship between the premise and conclusion, the premise is only activated when we assume that the bill should not be voted on by the citizens.
The first part of answer choice A is cancelled out by the second premise, so really what we'd be left with if we chose A is:
Any member of the city council ought either to vote against the proposal or to abstain. But if all the members abstain, the matter will be decided by the city's voters in favor of the proposal. GAP IN ARGUMENT. So at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal.
Ok, but there is a still a disconnect between the desired voting behavior of the council and that of the voting public. What assumption would make the conclusion absolutely assured, in all its potential behavorial variations and etc? Answer Choice B.
Just for fun, if we combined the condition of A with the sufficient condition of B, we'd get:
Any member of the city council ought either to vote against the proposal or to abstain. But if all the members abstain, the matter will be decided by the city's voters in favor of the proposal. Nevertheless, the proposal should not be decided by the city's voters. So at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal.
Oh, yeah. Definitely right. I read only up until B quickly and chose A because they were both certainly on the right track but A was more specific. I didn't realize B actually shored up the disconnect in the argument even though I predicted the intentions of the author were in line with B.
When I revealed the right answer, I had to really think about why my choice was wrong and came up with the same points as you. Even thought about how A feeds in additional information into B but only B is needed to make the argument work.
82 comments
What is bro yapping about?????? Obviously we just need to complete it by saying the city members shouldn't have control over it. These abstract examples and mapping out in lawgic are so unhelpful...
yea I feel like they overcomplicate so much of these for no reason
@dylanemein NO FR. like when he started off about iced cream but added nothing helpful with that analogy....
ive been doing so well in this curriculum then suddenly this last section has me getting everything wrong.
@paulinadsouza03 same...
I liked when lessons had the "Let's Review" takeaways section at the end. #feedback
AGREE! Let’s Review was helpful. #feedback
We got this!.. Keep going!
This section has been kicking my ass a bit, but I feel like nailing down the conclusion gets you 2/3 the way there.
Then, if you have a rough idea of what the hypothesis is saying, you can typically get to the right answer. I was getting very hung up on parsing the language of the hypothesis which was not feeling like a particularly wise use of time on these medium-difficulty questions.
I feel that comparing these question types to PSA to such an extent has made the curriculum confusing, thinking about them in an MSS/MBT sense or even standalone would be more beneficial because I really don't see how we're finding the rule, we're looking for an answer choice that would make the argument solid, less vulnerable - not really trying to justify it or search for the rule it conveys
Every question I have got wrong in this section has been 50/50. This is so discouraging :(
thank you for the encouragement Jazzman180
It could just be me, but some of these SA questions I am getting right very easily, and others I cannot make sense of them for the life of me. This is going to be a long unit.
Does anyone else just do the questions, if they get it right they move on, if they get it wrong they watch the video? That's been my method to avoid wasting time, am I missing out on too much?
@Jake. If I cannot explain why the other answers are wrong in my BR then I review the video as well so I can be aware of traps and common mistakes that can trip me later.
@hannahhuynh Thank you for posting this. That is how I was able to find the correct answer.
@hannahhuynh that makes so much sense. However, to play devils advocate here. The premise is saying any council member should abstain or vote against, thereby implying that they dont want the propsal to be passed. "A" is saying that if all members abstain, then voters will pass in favor, which is exactly what premise doesn't want......I'm confused why abstaining and voting against doesn't imply that you dont want voters to vote because they will vote in favor....
I am finding things are starting to really click by gaining a comprehension of the grammar and structure. I was able to identify the sub conclusion/major premise, premise, and conclusion successfully which allowed me to understand what was being said and what was missing. A month ago I had a really hard time confidently labelling the stimulus. Practice and continued work does pay off. If you are struggling stay patient and persistent. It will come!
B just seemed too simple
PSA overcomplicates SA unnecessarily. I prefer diagramming.
Are there any indicators to know whether an SA question is rule-application or find/complete the application?
I second this#feedback
I felt like this question was an absolute cakewalk compared to the last two. The last two SA 5/5 questions had me questioning my understanding of everything. Jeez. I guess that's why we just keep going.
Can someone explain to me in similar words what JY means when he says we are dealing with prescriptive and descriptive premises? This is really confusing me I wish he would use fewer words when explaining if you get what I mean lol. Over explaining tends to be confusing
Prescriptive describes a rule - "One must do A or B"
Descriptive describes a relationship - "if A then B"
In this example the Prescriptive phrase is -
"any member of the city council ought either to vote against the bill or to abstain"
The Descriptive phrase is -
"if all the members abstain, [then] the matter will be decided by the city's voters."
I know this is a brief explanation but I try to avoid being too wordy. Let me know if this helps or you have any more questions.
It helped me for sure!! Thank you :)
Being completely honest here, I suck at these SA questions. But this question I got so easily lol. Surprised it's a 4 star
I'm confused because in the prior SA questions, we had to explicitly search for the desired conclusion in the answer choices, and now, we're still technically doing SA questions but looking for the desired conclusion is not a criteria anymore? could someone help explain how this is the case
@shay_lsat i THINK for this one, we r like adding an assumption to the premise to bridge the gap in the premises
#feedback - please include a link (or links) that will open a new tab to a previous lesson that is referred to. it will help save time. thanks.
Yes, I strongly agree on this.
Thank you for your suggestion! We appreciate your input and will definitely consider incorporating links to relevant previous lessons in future content. If you have any more ideas or feedback, feel free to share. Your insights are valuable to us. Thanks again!
I think the goal is to worry about understanding rather than timing first and then worry about timing later. I think that's my issue.
I think for this question, writing out the premises and conclusion is especially helpful. When you stack them up, you'll notice this yuuuuge gap between them - like the argument jumps immediately from "if we (the council) don't do this thing, then the citizens will get to do this thing" to "so we should definitely do this thing." Intuitively, the only thing left for you to mentally bridge is that the council dudes definitely don't want the citizens to do the thing.
#feedback Im confused how to differentiate if Im looking at a SArule questions or an SAappliation question
How do I know based on the QS and stimulus which I should be looking out for?
I chose A. because I thought we could properly infer from the premise the "additional assumption that the proposal shouldn’t pass," which would allow us to "contrapose on the conditional to arrive at the desired conclusion." (as JY says in the written explanation for A.).
When the stimulus says "any member...ought either to vote against the proposal or abstain," is it not reasonable to infer the activists believes the proposal shouldn't pass?
(I thought this was one of those situations where there's an implied major premise/sub-conclusion that you have to make explicit to make the entire logical chain make sense.)
IF that's true, then the fact that voters would decide in favor would fail the necessary condition and therefore also the sufficient condition ==> /all members abstain = at least one member vote against.
Why is it improper to infer from the stimulus that the proposal shouldn't pass?
My internal reasoning for accepting JY's rationale for excluding option A is that option A is merely an extension of premise 2. This distinction matters because if you assume that "activists believe the proposal shouldn't pass," it is a plausible statement, but it shifts the conclusion of the stimulus from "at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal" to "the proposal shouldn't pass." While we may intuitively process these as equivalent, there could be underlying reasons why activists do not want the bill to be voted on by the public while still believing it shouldn't pass. For example, publicly deciding on the proposal could backfire on them for strategic or political reasons.
Returning to an LSAT-style explanation, strictly analyzing the relationship between the premise and conclusion, the premise is only activated when we assume that the bill should not be voted on by the citizens.
I get it now.
The first part of answer choice A is cancelled out by the second premise, so really what we'd be left with if we chose A is:
Any member of the city council ought either to vote against the proposal or to abstain. But if all the members abstain, the matter will be decided by the city's voters in favor of the proposal. GAP IN ARGUMENT. So at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal.
Ok, but there is a still a disconnect between the desired voting behavior of the council and that of the voting public. What assumption would make the conclusion absolutely assured, in all its potential behavorial variations and etc? Answer Choice B.
Just for fun, if we combined the condition of A with the sufficient condition of B, we'd get:
Any member of the city council ought either to vote against the proposal or to abstain. But if all the members abstain, the matter will be decided by the city's voters in favor of the proposal. Nevertheless, the proposal should not be decided by the city's voters. So at least one member of the city council should vote against the proposal.
Right? #feedback
Oh, yeah. Definitely right. I read only up until B quickly and chose A because they were both certainly on the right track but A was more specific. I didn't realize B actually shored up the disconnect in the argument even though I predicted the intentions of the author were in line with B.
When I revealed the right answer, I had to really think about why my choice was wrong and came up with the same points as you. Even thought about how A feeds in additional information into B but only B is needed to make the argument work.
wow this is confusing