PT73.S4.Q23 - problem: if shayna congratulates daniel

nathanieljschwartz

This question absolutly sucked, anyone wanna take a crack at it?
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-73-section-4-question-23/

NotMyName

Just BRed this last night.

Always be sincere (don't congratulate).

If you meet the exception criteria, you may not need to be sincere (congratulate).

Exception criteria: Shayna believes Daniel prefers kindness to honesty.

We should review each AC to see if this exception criteria is met because without that information, we have no idea whether Shayna is allowed to congratulate.

A) Makes no mention of the exception criteria and also uses reasoning to reach a conclusion which is not from the stimulus.

How Daniel actually feels is not the exception criteria. We need to know what Shayna thinks Daniel wants. But even if this AC said "Shayna might believe that Daniel prefers kindness to honesty"... we still couldn't do anything with. Does she or doesn't she?

C) This gives us Shayna opinion in a general sense but we don't care about that. A conservative may believe that small gov't is best, but they certainly don't believe that that's what Bernie prefers.

D) We don't care about Daniel's feelings because it's not the exception criteria.

E) This give's us the contrapositive. Originally we had "Congrats --> Shayna believes Daniel wants kindness to honesty". This AC negates that necessary condition which contraposes back onto the sufficient condition and therefore "don't congratulate"

LSATcantwin

I will try this one was well! You've caught me on my LSA...I mean Lunch break!

Principle Justify question.

What do we know?

Well Shayna is kinda a jerk.

• If she congratulates Daniel she will misrepresent her true feelings. (so she doesn't want to congrats him)

• If she doesnt congratulate him she will hurt his feelings.

Okay cool. So what is our principle?

• One should never be insincere about ones feelings.

Okay based on this she should not congratulate Daniel because she should not be insincere. If she congratulates him she is misrepresenting her feelings and therefore is insincere.

But wait there is more!

• EXCEPT (oh boy) where one believes that the person to whom one is speaking would prefer kindness to honesty.

Okay so the way I read all this is - Shayna should under no circumstances congratulate Daniel unless we explicitly know that Shayna knows Daniel would prefer kindness to honesty.

So our answer choice can only be two possible things.

1.) A situation where Shayna knows Daniel would prefer kindness to honesty and therefore congratulates him.

2.) A situation where Shanya does not congratulate Daniel because she doesn't know about his preference for kindness or honesty.

This outcome only happens in one of the answer choices.

A.) Shayna congratulates him - but we have no idea if Daniel prefers kindness to honesty

B.) Daniel might prefer if Shayna congratulates him. - We don't know if Shayna knows that though. So we can't comment on this answer choice at all based on our principle.

C.) Shayna believes kindness should be prefered to dishonesty when speaking to others. - Okay? so what? We care what DANIEL thinks not what Shayna thinks.

D.) Daniel's feelings would be hurt if he knew what Shayna said was insincere. -
Again who cares? We need to know about Shayna and if she knows Daniel's feelings would be hurt. We don't actually care about Daniel's feelings beyond this.

E.) Shayna has no opinion about whether Daniel would prefer kindness to honesty (Finally we have addressed that) so she should not congratulate him.

Well E is the right answer. It is the perfect match to the second possible outcome.

It tells us Shayna doesn't know about Daniels preference. So the exception to our principle is not fulfilled. Since the exception is not fulfilled Shayna should not misrepresent her true feelings and therefore should not congratulate him.

Does this make sense at all?

LSATcantwin

Lol @jkatz1488 almost broke this question down identically to how I did. That's a good sign!