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#help #tutor

Sorry in advance for the massive comment and question. This is the first LSAT question I've encountered where I don't fully understand why a wrong answer is incorrect, and I've really been trying to live by the "every answer that's not the correct answer is 100% wrong for a decisive reason" mindset, so I wanted to articulate my thought process as completely and precisely as possible.

To my understanding, a correct answer does 2 things - first, it interprets the author's attitude towards the existence of numerous unstable systems. Second, it interprets the authors attitude towards the conclusion that if numerous unstable systems exist, then a foundation of science is called into question

The 4 remotely plausible answers (B-E) give us two ways to describe each of these attitudes. Attitude 1 is either "convinced of the existence of numerous unstable systems" or "persuades of the possibility that numerous unstable systems exist." Attitude 2 is either "unsure if numerous unstable systems calls into question foundations" or "confident that numerous unstable systems would call into question foundations.

E chooses "persuaded of the possibility" and "confident." The reasoning seems to go as follows:

For attitude 1, "presumably" and "likelihood" are indicators that the author believes there is some (high) probability of numerous systems existing, and not that the author believes numerous systems exist with absolute certainty.

For attitude 2, we need to parse the last sentence in the paragraph.

"If other such systems do exist, metaphorical examples of riddled basins of attraction may abound in the failed attempts of scientists to replicate previous experimental results—in which case, scientists would be forced to question one of the basic principles that guide their work."

According to the way E interprets this sentence and the way I interpreted it during the test, it could be translated as "If other such systems do exist, then [CLAUSE] - if [CLAUSE], scientists would be forced to question one of the basic principles that guide their work." What this translation gets at is that the truth of clause "examples of riddled basins may be abound in the failed attempts...." necessarily entails that "scientists would be forced to question...." Importantly, whether or not examples of riddled basins actually are abound in failed attempts is irrelevant to the truth of the clause - what matters is whether the probabilistic "may" is satisfied and there is some chance that these examples are abound in failed attempts.

This reading seems pretty plausible - it's a reasonable way to parse the sentence, and it seems pretty reasonable that if there's a risk that these kinds of systems are abound in failed replication, scientists should be pretty worried.

My problem is that it seems like B offers an equally strong reading of the sentence that informs attitude 2, but a much stronger characterization of attitude one. B chooses "convinced" and "unsure." The reasoning goes as follows"

For attitude 1, let's look at those key phrases again, "presumably" and "the likelihood (that there is only 1 unstable system) is small." Neither "convinced" nor "persuaded of the possibility" fit perfectly, but "convinced" strikes me as a much better fit. I think the reasons why come down to a very strong intuition that 1. "persuaded of the possibility" is far too weak, and 2. "convinced" is not synonymous with "certain," and is therefore not too strong.

The author seems to believe there is a very high likelihood that numerous/multiple unstable systems exist. They're certainly not certain, but "very likely" seems like a reasonable translation of "presumably" in this context (it also matches most dictionary definitions) and the likelihood of a single unstable system is explicitly flagged as small.

The word "possibility" strikes me as extraordinarily weak. There is a possibility the world ends tomorrow. There is a possibility of anything with a probability >0. Moreover, to be persuaded of the possibility of something is merely to be persuaded that it has a probability >0. I am persuaded of the possibility that external reality doesn't exist because of Descartes' dream argument/brain in a vat argument/evil demon argument. After all, I have no way to test or falsify those arguments. I'm also persuaded of the possibility that [insert catastrophe of your choice] will end the world tomorrow - I just think that possibility has an extraordinarily low probability.

Let's turn to "convinced." While imperfect, this seems like a fairly good descriptor of the attitude the author has. Absolute epistemic certainty is pretty obviously not a necessary condition for being convinced. For instance, while I'm persuaded of the possibility that an asteroid will wipe out humanity this afternoon, that fact obviously does not preclude me from being overwhelmingly convinced that an asteroid will not wipe out humanity this afternoon. Lots of beliefs we're convinced by we probably hold with much lower levels of certainty than the asteroid example. I'd say I'm convinced that democracy is the most effective form of governance, rather than any particular alternative, but I'd probably gauge that belief as having only 75%-85% confidence - I'm convinced because 75%-85% is a whole lot higher than the confidence I'd assign to any alternative.

All in all, if I know there's a very high likelihood of something, I'd be much more inclined to describe its probability with a word that implies "between ~70% and 100%" than with a word that implies "somewhere between 0% and 100%, and often on the lower end of that spectrum."

(As a final note on "convinced" vs "persuaded of the possibility", the reasoning for the latter in 7Sage's short description of B seems wildly incorrect. It appeals to the if-clause in the final sentence, which supposedly "doesn't indicate confidence." The if-clause in question has absolutely nothing to do with the probability the author assigns to the antecedent of that if-clause (i.e. do numerous unstable systems exist.) I'll stand by my belief in the conditional "If the sky is blue, it is not red." In what world does that belief undermine my confidence that the sky is blue? Moreover, JY's explanation of why the "convinced" answers are incorrect seems to rely on the assumption that "convinced" is synonymous with "guarantees" or "certain", which was addressed above. The point of bringing all of this up is merely to further explain why I'm not confident that B is incorrect).

For attitude 2, it seems like there's a reasonable way to parse the last sentence of the passage in a way that yields a very different meaning than what was originally identified.

"If other such systems do exist, metaphorical examples of riddled basins of attraction may abound in the failed attempts of scientists to replicate previous experimental results—in which case, scientists would be forced to question one of the basic principles that guide their work."

When arguing for E, we interpreted "metaphorical examples....experimental results" as the consequent of a conditional with the antecedent "if other such systems exist", and as the antecedent of a separate conditional with the consequent "scientists would be forced...." Put differently, "If multiple systems, then basins may abound in failed replication. If basins may abound in failed replication, then scientists question basic principle."

However, "may" seems like an indicator word for further parsing of the clause it's contained in. Consider the following sentence:

"If he has a family history of heart disease, he may in fact have heart disease - in which case, he should take medication for heart disease."

Does "in which case" indicate "he may have heart disease" is the antecedent in a conditional with the consequent "he should take medication for heart disease?" No, clearly he should take medicine for heart disease if he has heart disease. "May" interrupts an otherwise clean chain of conditionals with a probabilistic claim that must be confirmed decisively for the final conclusion to be logically entailed.

A similar reading seems plausible for the sentence in the passage. "If other systems exist, examples of basins may be abound in the failed attempts of scientists to replicate experimental results." Are they abound? I don't know. They might be, but its also very possible that the other existing unstable systems have an obscene degree of complexity comparable to the computer model created by the authors, and such complexity would be essentially impossible to accidentally stumble upon in past instances of experimental design that resulted in failed replication. If that's the case, scientists have no reason to worry, and probably shouldn't call into question foundation principles.

The solution here is to treat may as probabilistic, and take note of the fact that the passage doesn't give us any reason to assign labels like "likely" or "unlikely" to it's use of "may." Given that, "unsure" seems like the perfect word to reflect a possibility of undetermined probability, rather than "confident." The sentence could be represented as follows:

"If other unstable systems exist, they may abound in the experiment design of failed replication. We're unsure whether or not they would abound in those experimental designs, which is why we're using "may" instead of "probably would" or "likely would." If they do in fact abound in failed replication attempts, then we need to call a foundational principle into question."

This reading, at least to me, seems just as strong as the reading articulated when justifying E, if not stronger.

Ultimately, all of this analysis leaves us with E, which is moderate to poor when describing attitude 1, and acceptable to good when describing attitude 2. It also leaves us with B, which is acceptable to good when describing attitude 1, and comparable to (and perhaps even better than) E when describing attitude 2. Given all of this, B clearly seems correct.