Trap Answers Episode 3: Wrong Question Stem, Extreme Language

theonetheonlydole

Take a minute to answer this question in the poll before continuing. This question is EVIL!!!! It may not seem so at first, but allow me to unpack the various tricks they use to make a rather simple question very tricky.

I initially picked A, and ill explain my reasoning behind it. I read first that this is an inferrence statement, so immediately my mind is looking to fill in a logical hole. As I scan through the passage, my mind comes to this, "Why is it necessary to not build an incinerator to prevent waste? What if the incinerator is not used? What about other methods of disposal?" Then I see answer A, "All of the city's trash that is not recycled goes into the incinerators." This feels great! This fills in a hole in my mind about the waste, and clearly makes this argument complete. Trash either is recycled or put in the incinerator, so lets not build an incinerator. This is a great answer for a support/strengthen question, and it feeeeeels like it completes the logic of the argument. However, this one is wrong! Not only does it retread the ground of what happens to recycling when an incinerator is rebuilt(making this statement unnecessary), no where does the argument support this!!!! DON'T FORGET THE QUESTION STEM!!! We are looking for something we could logically conclude from the passage above, not looking to fix the passage in any way. Once you remember that, the question is obviously wrong.

The other dangerous thing about this question is that the answer, D, looks awful. It uses very, very strong language of CANNOT and ANY. It uses the exact same language of the passage, which usually indicates a wrong answer. It elaborates on only one premise, instead of the whole passage, and it ignores the conclusion. Terrible!!! However, if you read it carefully, its pretty easy to prove. If the city is to avoid(avoid is a rather low bar) wasting resources, huge amounts of trash cannot be burned in any city incinerator. Looking at the rest of the passage, this is clear from the burn = waste. Some burning = some waste, so to avoid waste we avoid burning. Simple!

This one is correct, but it takes dodging a lot of traps to get to it. Be careful! The LSAT creators are clever and will lay many traps to stop you!

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jilliankirkland

Reading how you thought through the answer choices, it seems you're looking for any and all gaps in the argument, but this question isn't asking you to do that (and trust that test writers will throw in answer choices to trip up those who don't understand the specific task).

In the way we commonly speak, we use the words imply and infer interchangeably but the LSAT does not. On the LSAT, an inference is something that must be true. So if you start to think of where the speaker might be going with their argument, you will probably pick an answer that could be true given what was actually said but isn’t necessarily true. For this question, the correct answer can do one of only two things: either restate some facts given in the passage, or combine facts to state something that must be true if all the other claims in the argument are true. I hope this helps