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Another reason B is wrong is that it addresses the viability aspect of the policy, rather than the justification for the value judgement. B superficially strengthens by implying that it might be a viable policy to implement (we have some instances where political factions are willing to back the proposed policies!), this is irrelevant to the question "Should we adopt such a policy?"
E attempts to superficially strengthen the conclusion by insisting there really is a need to ensure such a policy is adopted. Yet again, should we even adopt this policy?
Great tip!! I did a bit of self-reflection and realized I'm scared to use my scrap paper because writing things down feels like I'm spending a ton of time. But efficiently using my scrap is just a skill I need to improve on. Thank you!
I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the tougher principle-application questions, especially when the triggers are worded in a convoluted way. I’ve noticed that my problems usually show up in two ways:
1. When the wording is really complicated, my brain seems to give up on comprehending it.
I’ve mostly overcome this by forcing myself to stay calm and break down the sentence structure, isolating the subject, action, and object piece by piece. I think the key here is building tolerance for difficult language and being patient with yourself instead of panicking when a sentence doesn’t immediately make sense.
2. My bigger issue right now is retaining the triggers once I move into the answer choices.
I can usually comprehend what each component of the principle is saying, but my short-term memory is pretty limited, so I struggle to keep the entire principle active in my head while evaluating the choices.
Here are the strategies I’m currently using, which seem to help somewhat:
Identify the prescriptions (necessary conditions), memorize those, and largely disregard the triggers (sufficient conditions).
Go into the answer choices and immediately eliminate any conclusions that are unreachable—i.e., conclusions that negate the necessary conditions stated in the stimulus.
Once I identify the reachable conclusions, write down their corresponding necessary conditions, then go back to the stimulus and see whether the triggers fit. lol
These strategies have helped a bit, but I’m wondering if there are better ways to improve my ability to comprehend and retain principles, particularly the really convoluted ones.
Do you guys have any techniques for building tolerance for difficult principle wording or for keeping the principle in working memory while going through the answer choices? I’d especially appreciate any tips, strategies, or personal experiences! :)
There is a fundamental difference between an example that is being used to cast doubt on a competing argument and an example that is used to challenge a claim
The goal of an example used to cast doubt on an argument is to point out that the premise doesn't support the conclusion. Its target is the bridge of support. The author's stance on the conclusion of the argument is irrelevant.
An example used to challenge a claim implies that the author agrees with the negation of the claim. Regardless of the author's stance on any of the support provided for the claim, the author necessarily disagrees with the conclusion. So, the goal of a counterexample to a claim is to directly undermine the claim by demonstrating that the opposite is true.
A: the author never attacked any opposing premise or support. He made a statement, gave an example that supports his own statement, and ended there. Therefore, there was no argument that was undermined, only a claim was implicitly undermined.
C: feels a bit tricky because the general claim being challenged was never directly stated, but we can infer that the claim is the negation of some evolution does not optimize survival of an organism, which is evolution always leads to the optimization of the survival of an organism. Clearly, the example provided by the author served the purpose of challenging this claim, because it was a case of evolution not optimizing the survival of moose.
47% of cat households had at least one uni degree: Cat households with a degree / total cat households = 0.47
38% of dog households had at least one uni degree: dog households with a degree / total dog households = 0.38
people who hold uni degrees are more likely to live in a household with a cat than a dog: (cat households with a degree / total households with a degree) > (dog households with a degree / total households with a degree)
The stats that the author provided in the premise only addressed the proportion of degree holders within the populations of dog/cat households, but there was no comparison between the actual quantities. But determining whether a degree holder is more likely to own a cat or a dog requires us to know which one makes up a greater proportion of the total degree holder households. So, quantities do matter.
If the total dog household is sufficiently large, then it's entirely possible that there are quantitatively more dog households with a degree than cat households with a degree.
Let's say there are 100 cat households and 200 dog households, and there are 500 households with uni degrees.
Using the stats in the stimulus, we know that 47 cat households have a uni degree, 76 dog households have a uni degree. Therefore, the likelihood of a person with a uni degree owning a cat is 47/500 = 9.4%, while a person with a uni degree owning a dog is 15.2%. This result is consistent with the author's premise yet contradicts the author's conclusion.
There is a different question from a different PT that makes the same exact mistake. That question went something like
a survey showed 40% of the voters preferred conservative, 20% preferred moderate, and 40% preferred Liberal. Therefore, we would expect a voter to prefer a legislature that is 40% conservative, 20% moderate, and 40% Liberal.
The flaw was that the survey data is an aggregate of all the voter preferences, so we cannot conclude what an individual voter would prefer from it. The survey results were realistically "40% of the voters who responded said they would prefer to see a (100%) liberal legislature, 20% of them said they would prefer to see a (100%) conservative legislature, etc." [by the way, if I recall correctly, J.Y.Ping gave a great ice cream example in that question's explanation.]
Same can be said with this question: An analysis of the language in social media likely collected a bunch of text messages and their time posted. The trend observed from this data tells us about the general trends of the text messages, yet nothing about the individual behaviors of those whom texted.
Drawing a parallel: just like the voters' preferences example, it's entirely possible that the trend actually reflects "people who text entirely in the morning are very positive, people who text entirely in midafternoon are relatively more negative, and people who text entirely in the evening are very positive." It's not that an individual's mood had changed through out the day, it's that the messages are texted by three different sets of people.
Because both explanations are equally plausible, the author has erroneously assumed one over the other. The question asked for something that the author has overlooked, and that's E, which is essentially what we just described: The trends are not reflective of an individual's shifts in mood, but of different groups of people with different mood predispositions.
Random analysis, not related to the question:
The employee attempted to use reductio ad absurdum by utilizing an analogy to point out a counterintuitive implication of the claim he advocates against.
The opposing argument: non-work-related websites distracts us, and prevents us from doing our best work
Analogy: Non-work-related website v. windows or nicely decorated offices.
(presumed) relevant aspect: They are both distracting.
The absurd implication: People do their best work in an undecorated, windowless room (=no distraction)
Since it's counterintuitive to claim people do their best work in undecorated, windowless room, this tells us at least some people do their best work in a room with distractions.
This would weaken the opposing argument's claim that distractions prevent people from doing their best work.
This is a horrible study despite its superficial reliability: 1. There is no control group, so we don't actually know how the students who didn't join the program performed academically during the same period. The appropriate juxtaposition is therefore impossible.
2. Ambiguous baseline: "a significant increase in achievement" simply means the author compared the previous grades of the chess students to their grades after the program eneded. Maybe their previous grades were hindered by exerting their efforts on practicing chess.
3.No test for the reliability of the claim: do we actually know whether the students actually obtain better spatial intuition and reasoning power from playing chess? Did we evaluate their spatial intuition and reasoning power before and after the program?
Therefore, here are a few potential alternative explanations:
The school hired better teachers and improved their academic courses, all students experienced a sginificnt increase in achievement during the same period that the increases was observed in the students who successfullly completed the chess program.
The students who completed the program had lower grades than average because they spend too much time playing chess, and once the program ended, they finally had enough time to focus on their school work.
All the students who completed the program were nepo babies, and once the program ended, their parents sent them to Ivy league educated tutors immediately.
And C 😊
The argument operates by Reductio ad absurdum.
Claim arguing against: author who writes to give pleasure [intention] --> cannot impart truth
Author's claim: This claim cannot be true = Authors who write to give pleasure can impart truth.
Author's premise - here is the confusing part:
If the claim argued agaisnt was true, that authors who write to give pleasure cannot impart truth, then one could determine the truthfulness of a book by its sales figures.
To make this easier to understand, "one could determine the truthfulness of a book by its sales figures" is (assumed by the argument) a consequence of the claim that is being argued against.
What the author is saying is that: ok whoever made this claim, let's say if your claim is actually true, then this thing must also be true!
This is a very typical reductio ad absurdum structure, just in convoluted language filled with weird conceptual gaps.
The author then elaborates on this point, essentially affirming that the claim would indeed result in such an implication.
popularity --> sales figure --> pleasure provided --> /truth. [if the book were very popular (high sales figure), we can reasonably conclude it gave people pleasure, (and according to your claim) it must mean at least some parts of the book is not true.
This argument is extremely porous, and I'm gonna table all the assumption gaps for now.
Here is the hidden assumption that was not stated in the stimulus: The author thinks this consequence/implication is absurd. The author doesn't believe the truthfulness of a book can be sufficiently determined by the pleasure provided.
Now look at #1, if the author thinks the consequence is false, by contrapositive, it must be that the sufficient condition is false. And what was the sufficient condition? the argument the author was arguing against. This is how the author arrives at the conclusion.
That was just the skeleton of the argument, as stated in #2, the argument is extremely porous. Here is a list of assumptions the author made:
(the correct answer choice) providing pleasure to readers [de facto] --> intended to provide pleasure to readers [intention].
Now look back at 2.1. The author said pleasure provided --> /truth, this means if pleasure was provided, then at least some of what is written in the book is not true. But this is a consequence of pleasure provided, not pleasure intended by the author of the book.
To bridge this gap, the author must assume pleasure provided --> pleasure intended: If pleasure is provided, then it must have been intended by the author.
And this is exactly what A stated: A book will not give its reader pleasure unless it was intended by its author to have such an effect. Pleasure provided --> pleasure intended.
Sidenote: If this assumption fails, the author's argument falls apart because no matter how absurd the consequence is, it can no longer be used to justify the rejection of the opposition's claim. That's not even a consequence of my claim! Try again, lol.
As stated before, the author assumes one cannot determine the truthfulness of a book simply by looking at its sales figures. This is a fundamental component of a reductio ad absurdum argument.
Popularity --> Sales figure. If a book is popular, it must have a relatively high sales figure. The author said you can determine the truthfulness with sales figures, then went on to use popularity as an indicator for pleasure instead. The author must assume that if a book is popular, it probably has a relatively high sales figure.
Truthfulness of the book --> Imparting truth by the author. I'm still debating whether there is a gap here because imparting truth feels more intentional, while the actual truthfulness of the book is de facto. But I'm gonna leave this here just in case.
50% voted for Candidate A and 50% voted for candidate B. Therefore most voters would like to see Candidate A govern the country 50% of the time and Candidate B govern the country 50% of the time.
This question confused me for the longest time, and after seeing it for the fourth time I think I can finally thoroughly break it down.
What was the author trying to do? The author is trying to explain a phenomenon.
Phenomenon: Most viewers surveyed immediately after the televised political debate last year between Lopez and Tanner thought Lopez made better arguments.
The author offered a fact as a premise: Lopez EVENTUALLY won the election. (I highlighted eventually for a reason, and I think LSAT writers used this term for a reason)
The author's conclusion, which essentially is a hypothesis: Survey respondents who thought Lopez's arguments were better were probably biased.
Assumptions: This is the tough part, we all have an intuitive sense of what the author was trying to do, but it's hard to put a finger on what the author has assumed exactly.
The author assumes that, since Lopez has eventually won the election, amongst people who watched the debate, more people were in favor of Lopez to start with, and this preference led to biases when they evaluated the two candidates' arguments.
More people in favor of Lopez, in turn, requires the assumption that EVEN before the debate began, those people ALREADY HELD such preferences.
But this assumption is extremely tenuous. This is where the word "eventually" is crucial. Think of it chronicologically, the election must have occured after the debate, therefore Lopez winning the election only indicates the level of support he received after the debate. We technically know nothing about Lopez's fluctuations in popularity before the election.
This opens up the possibility that, Lopez was a nobody before the debate, and people couldn't possibly be biased in favor of him. This is perfectly consistent with the author's premise that he eventually won the election, yet it ruins the author's assumption that Lopez had at least a decent level of support amongst the viewers before the debate began.
D does exactly this: Most of the viewers surveyed before the debate said they probably would vote for tanner. This means, if anything, most of the viewers were biased in favor of Tanner, or at least they wouldn't in favor of Lopez.
Notice how strong the author’s conclusion is, he’s not saying the reasoning given by his opponent is unwarranted, he is saying his opponent’s claim is WRONG.
If you are going to argue against “using calculator will harm our knowledge of math,” your argument is essentially “using calculator will not harm our knowledge of math.” This demands an argument that would help demonstrate calculator usage does not lead to the harm indicated.
Yet the best counter the author offered targeted his opponent’s reasoning, and essentially left the claim he actually made defenseless. This is why the evidence(similar criticisms have occurred in the past) is irrelevant to the actual claim the author made (calculator usage is not damaging)
To use a parallel example: my competitor’s claim that my products are garbage is false. People always left crappy reviews on my sites, but I’m still in business!
My conclusion is that: the statement that my products are garbage is false, in other words, my products are not garbage.
But look at my support: welp, I got negative reviews all the time yet I’m still in business.
Does this evidence support my conclusion in any way? Does it show my products are not garbage? Nope. It’s simply irrelevant. If anything, the fact that I got negative reviews might even support my competitor’s claim! And the fact that I’m still in business does not show my products are not garbage. Maybe I’m taking massive loans from the bank just to stay in operation, while every single one of my customers are filing lawsuits against me.
What made me pick E over C was One subtle detail that rests in “the likelihood that they chose the only equation that would lead to an unstable system is small.”(P5)
The author is saying the possibility of them choosing the only such equation is small, in other words, the possibility of them picking an equation that has numerous occurrences is high. C missed this piece of distinction, so it’s relatively weaker than E in terms of support received from the passage.
But it’s good to learn that convinced is a stronger term than persuaded, definitely taking notes.
To its core, the author has made a sufficiency/necessity confusion mistake. The author essentially proposed a sufficient condition that would justify NOT cutting down trees, then rejected this sufficient condition. Yet denying a sufficient condition DOES NOT, by itself, justify rejecting the necessary condition.
Here is how the argument went: 1. Other people's conclusion：Some people argue we have an obligation not to cut trees
Author proposes: if we owe this obligation to trees, then we are obligated to not cut trees. [owe obligation to trees --> obligated to not cut trees] Pay attention to this subtle yet critical distinction, owing obligations to trees is NOT the same as obligating to not do something. Just because I owe you money, doesn't mean I'm obligated to pay you back NOW. Maybe my financial condition is so terrible that I have no means of paying you back, therefore I'm not technically obligated to pay you back at this moment.
Author rejects [owe obligation to trees]. Owe obligation to something --> the entity having a right. Yet trees have no rights, therefore, trees cannot be owed an obligation.
Author concludes: /owe obligation to trees --> /obligation to not cut trees.
We all know that A --> B doesn't mean /A --> /B. Just because you proposed a sufficient condition that would justify the conclusion that you are trying to reject, doesn't mean that conclusion is rejected when you reject the sufficient condition.
A valid argument would be something like: "it is therefore insufficient to justify obligating to not cut down trees on the basis of owing such an obligation to trees alone." But this clearly not what the author concluded.
D points out the author's assumption. The author is assuming that there are no other conditions that could trigger an obligation to not cut down trees. Therefore, as long as he rejects the sufficient conditon he proposed, his conclusion must be valid. D is a more detailed manifestation of this broader assumption: Maybe we owe such an obligation to some entity other than trees.
just for fun, we can substitute D for other manifestations, and it would still make sense:
Avoiding cutting down trees is not an obligation owed to the legal system.
Avoiding cutting down trees is not a must-be-satisfied obligation proposed by my mom.
This kind of persuasion strategy works extremely well in real life because it wraps you up in the author's logic.
The apple is not sour because if it's purple, then it must be a sour apple. Yet look at this apple! it's red, you must be insane to claim that it's a purple apple! Therefore, this apple must not be sour!
Any politician that supports an increase in public funding must be a good politician. But George has repeatedly reprimanded the proposal for an increase in the funding for the public transportation system for the past two years. George must be a terrible politician.
note to self: remember to lower your bar for except questions. I ended up picking C even though I COULD think of a justification for C, while B is pretty much irrelevant. I got distracted by the fact that C is relatively weaker than the other eliminated answer choices and implicitly assumed there must be some kind of justification for B that I'm just not seeing right now. I tripped myself up psychologically because I was underconfident.
These except questions are usually 4 weaker, yet arguably justifiable answer choices, and one AC that's either counterproductive to the task at hand, or completely irrelevant.
@Kb092100 To make it more intuitive, C allows for the possibility that there are people who make public assertions with utter certainty and confidence yet are NOT BOLD. So, this cannot possibly be the assumption the author is making because the author is not claiming, "the mayor might be bold,", the author is saying the mayor is UNDENIABLY bold.
Think of a parallel example: I got a 180 on the LSAT, therefore Yale will accept my application.
My assumption here is not "Everyone who gets accepted by Yale has a 180," because this leaves open the possibility that there are people who score 180 yet are rejected by Yale. What I'm assuming, by making a statement with 100% commitment, is that AS LONG AS I get a 180, Yale will 100% ACCEPT me, no maybes, no bargains, no room for doubts.
I also misread the structure of the argument, but somehow eliminated C because C is still incorrect even if the first sentence is the MC.
If the first sentence is the MC, then the argument essentially goes: Mayor's assertions are made with utter certainty and confidence --> /introspective --> bold.
C says if you are bold, you make public assertions with utter certainty and confidence. Or bold --> make public assertions with utter certainty and confidence. This means C has committed a Sufficiency v. Necessity flaw.
I picked B because I mistook "is typically confined to" for "should be typically confined to." Neither passage suggested anything regarding what types of research the judges ACTUALLY conduct. We can make inferences regarding what kinds of research the two authors saw as preferable, yet nothing was stated regarding what actually happens in this situation.
@IsabelTing11 this stimulus makes a lot more sense after reading your analysis! I got the question right through POE but I didn’t really catch what the socialist was trying to say. You are spot on with “socialist denying inevitability”, this is a direct counter to the “inevitable path to socialism” claim. Thank you for the insight!!
@Kb092100 in addition, I think the better you are at taking the test, the more confusing this question is for you. Because the language and logic of answer choice A, though it’s the wrong answer, is harder to comprehend, while B is accurate and more straightforward.
In simpler terms, the better you are at interpreting what A is saying, the more appealing it becomes. Plus, there’s always the psychological tendency to lend credibility to complex looking answer choices.
After reading JY’s explanation, I think what makes A conclusively weaker (competitor’s campaign wording stuff aside), is the tenuous nature of the term “takes for granted” in the context of this question. We’ve seen this phrase so many times that we might have overlooked what it truly means. This criticism only retains its strength against the author’s argument if it’s truly an assumption that the author made.
A is essentially attributing the assumption that “if the company didn’t use the advertising campaign, then the sales wouldn’t have been lower” to the author. In other words, answer choice A is assuming what the author would assume in the scenario where the advertisement was not implemented.
But the actual assumption gap the author made was “bad ad -caused-> bad sales” (a causal claim) but do we know what the author would say about what would happen if the ad was never implemented? No.
AC A is weak because the author could easily counter with “now you are putting words in my mouth.•
To use a specific example to demonstrate why the author would not assume A. Consider the situation where the author thinks that an ill conceived advertisement is AS EFFECTIVE AS no advertisement at all. This would mean:
The author assumes that, in the absence of the advertisement, the sales would actually be lower still. (A is now descriptively inaccurate)
Perfectly consistent with the author’s argument
This is the weakness of attributing assumptions to the author. If You are putting words into the author’s mouth, get ready to steelman.
And this is why B is relatively superior, it’s conclusively and descriptive accurate. By making an implicit causal claim, the author DID OVERLOOK other alternative explanations for the bad sales.
There are two critical assumptions made by the author: 1. The implementation of the proposal results in a net negative outcome. Yet, the only factor for consideration provided was the reliability in determining the effectiveness of clinical trials of surgical procedures.
If individual cases of the procedure result in inconsistent outcomes, then the effectiveness of a procedure AS A WHOLE cannot be reliably determined / this variation in outcomes is enough to rule out the values of the procedures.
This means there are at least two ways to criticize the author: 1. Even if we concede to point 2, there might still be other benefits that would warrant the extension. For instance, maybe we can obtain unprecedented knowledge from the few successful cases of clinical trial procedures. This knowledge would then help us advance modern medicine. Doesn't this sound cool?
Point 2 is what AC A came after: Just because the results look unreliable on a case-by-case level, we can still observe the general trend and conclude something about the effectiveness of the procedures AS A WHOLE.
"New surgical procedures might be found to be intrinsically more harmful": Yes, when all the surgeons perform the same exact procedure, the good surgeons will likely produce much better outcomes relative to the bad surgeons. But Bad Procedures, even when performed by good surgeons, will still perform poorly in comparison to other, better procedures. And this can be observed by looking at the overall trend of the effectiveness of outcomes of the procedures.
If we can observe the effectiveness of the procedure in comparison to the best treatment available, then that's valuable information! The procedure is intrinsically more harmful? Well, maybe we should abandon this procedure. This is exactly why we need the clinical trials, without it, we would never know how the effectiveness of the procedure compares to other procedures or other methods.
Another example to demonstrate point 2: LSAT PT scores. Of course there are variations, we all know a one-time 180 scorer almost never consistently score 180, but this inconsistency doesn't mean the scores are of no inferential value. Someone who inconsistently scores within the 175-180 range will almost definitely outperform someone who scores within the 150-155 range.
@Kb092100 I think the tricky part of this question, specifically why a strong answer like D would slide under the radar, is that we are more used to recognizing poorly supported established correlations. The results of study 2&3 felt more "promising" because they stated a correlation DID NOT exist, instead of the usual "supporting my unwarranted correlation with the BS data that I collected from a subreddit survey." Yet, false positives and false negatives are both mismatches between predictions/reports and the reality. I got this question wrong for this exact reason, I completely overlooked D.
By stating the effect "disappears", the author assumes 1. the effect appeared (supported by the correlation in study 1), then 2. faded (supported by the absence of correlation in study 2 &3).
The conclusion, by positing a conditional, locks in the first causal relationship, so we don't have to worry about Study 1. But assumption 2 still remains, are study 2&3's results truly reflective of the correlation between nearsightedness and night lights? If these 2 studies are not rigorous enough, then we can't infer anything.
D is almost like a negation of the author's necessary assumption. The author assumes the two studies are at least somewhat reliable, while D shuts it down completely.
E is wrong because 1. the establishment of a correlation requires comparisons. What if several of the children who did not sleep with night-lights were also nearsighted? 2. For E to work, we must assume all of the nearsighted + night-lights children in the 4th study were nearsighted because they slept with night-lights as infants, or that we somehow live in a simulated universe where the only reason that leads to nearsightedness is sleeping with night-lights as infants.
[just analyzing why the domain shift in B is fine, feel free to skip because it's kind of irrelevant]
some claims and most claims are both quantifiers, but conceptually two separate things. some simply states there are at least one intersection between two sets, while most claims involve a claim about the composition of a certain set. Therefore, a most claim actually demands: 1. two sets intersect 2. If A-most-> B, then more than 50% of A must overlap with B. And requirement #2 is what makes most claims significantly more difficult to justify in comparison to some claims.
If the stimulus stated, "the electric outlet is sometimes turned on", it would have been a valid conclusion. Because we already know there are some instances where the electric outlet is plugged in --- when I insert a bill and it makes a squeaking noise. So yes, there is at least one known instance of electric outlet being turned on, and this is justified by the premise.
But saying "the electric outlet is always turned on" is a whole different claim. This is saying, "the electric outlet is turned on more than 50% of time." Therefore, the base set for this composition claim is "time", 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, time. But in the premise, we were only given a subset of "time" -- when we insert a bill into the change machine.
To land at the author's conclusion, we therefore must assume the little subset (when I insert a dollar) is representative of the superset(time), but this is an unwarranted assumption. So even though it is true that the electric outlet is on more 50% of the time when I insert a dollar bill, it's not necessarily true that the electric outlet is on more 50% of the time in general.
In short, for some, we are just saying there is at least one overlap, but for most, we are claiming something about the composition of a set.
This is why B is justified, because we know at least some people found the plot disturbing (those who read the new horror novels), and they have vivid imagination, we know at least one member of "people" overlaps with "vivid imagination". So, the conclusion "some people must have vivid imaginations" is justified.