PT24.S3.Q11 - Special kinds of cotton that grow fibers

akistotle

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-24-section-3-question-11/

When I was timing myself, this question took me almost 2 minutes because I couldn't choose the right answer choice. I think I was not understanding the first sentence correctly.

Special kinds of cotton (green or brown) only recently became commercially feasible when a long-fiber that could be spun by machine was bred

Following the translation mechanisms, I identified "when" as Group 1 (Sufficient) and wrote:

Machine --> Commercially feasible [/Commercially feasible --> /Machine]

(It seems like some commentators on this video explanation page did the same translation.)

But I think (B) (correct answer choice) says:
Hands --> /Commercially viable [Commercially viable --> /Hands]

So I was like, "uh...I don't think this MUST be true."

However, when I read carefully, I think this sentence is saying:

(My understanding) Until recently when a long-fiber that could be spun by machine was bred, special kinds of cotton (green or brown) were not commercially feasible

/Machine --> /Commercially feasible

So it's actually:

(My understanding) Special kinds of cotton (green or brown) became commercially feasible only when a long-fiber that could be spun by machine was bred

Commercially feasible --> Machine

And I think (B) (Hands (/Machine) --> /Commercially feasible) matches this.

Is my understanding correct?

Also, I'm figuring out how to shave off time, and I noticed that @"J.Y. Ping" didn't really draw a diagram in the video.

Is it better if I don't use conditional logic for a question like this in order not to get confused since it's "giving us information about something that happened in the past and its absolute" ( quoting @Sami 's words from this thread https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/11018/the-only-translation-and-or )? I would appreciate if someone could tell me the best way to solve this question.

Sami

I really think you don't want to think in terms of diagramming every time you see a conditional indicator. You want to just understand the stimulus conceptually especially if its not a chain and is just one sentence.

In the stimulus we have a time line of when suddenly something became commercially viable. The assumption is that back in the day before 1930's hand spinning was tried on this type of cotton and since it wasn't commercially feasible till the machines came into the picture, it wasn't commercially viable for that reason. So if it was hand-spun before 1930's, we know that it wasn't commercially viable, which is what answer choice A is saying.

I hope that helped.

BinghamtonDave

I would saying looking at this this afternoon that I would avoid conditional symbolization in solving this problem. We are told that a specific type of cotton has been around for decades but “only recently” became commercially worth it. Becoming commercially worth it was made possible by the breeding of a long fibered type of that cotton that can be put through a machine. Given the temporal nature of the term “only recently,” we can infer that before recently, the specific type of cotton we are being told about in this stimulus was not commercially worth it.

As an example of this, consider the following sentence: only recently have I been able to bench press 300 pounds, when I started taking weight lifting more seriously. This sentence tells us that 5 years ago, 10 years ago and certainly 20 years ago I was not able to bench press 300 pounds. It also tells us that if we were to pinpoint a time in my life where I took more of a relaxed, nonchalant attitude towards weight training, we can say that I did not lift as much.

So a property of the commercially worth it cotton was that it could be ran through a machine. Although I am not entirely comfortable with (B) as an answer choice (this is an older exam) (B) tells us about the same type of cotton our stimulus does (an apples to apples comparison) that lacks one of the properties that the commercially worth it cotton has.

akistotle

Thank you for your comments! I understand better now.