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Weaken Question Cheat Sheet

E.T.90066-1E.T.90066-1 Alum Member
edited September 2013 in Logical Reasoning 377 karma
After finishing both lessons on Weaken Question I finished feeling overwhelmed by the amount of strategies to attack a Weaken question. We have three (1) Causation (2) Assumption (3) Problem and hypothesis.

I feel like I still don't have a strong grasp of the strategies. Does anyone has a cheat sheet or anything similar that shows a Big Picture ? If not if anyone is interested I will probably be making one tonight.
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  • CJ ShinCJ Shin Free Trial Member
    302 karma
    I agree with your categorization of weakening questions. Here is my big picture approach to each category.

    (1) Causation: almost always flawed due to correlation -> causation (A corr B, therefore A cause B). So in order to weaken..
    1. A exists, B doesn't (and vice versa)
    2. B cause A (flip)
    3. C cause A or B (3rd cause)
    4. A corr B is actually spurious (this type of answer choice is very rare though).

    (2) Assumption: usually involves a shift in scope like SA or NA questions (idea X -> idea Y). These types rely more on your intuition and answer choices will almost always address the jump.

    (3) Phenomenon-Hypothesis (an observation is explained by a single hypothesis). So in order to weaken..
    1. Alternative hypothesis that explains away the observation. An important thing to note is that the alternative hypothesis must explain the phenomenon FULLY, not partially. Treat these like RRE answer choices.
    2. Show that the proposed hypothesis is incomplete. Something in the line of "ok, but what about this observation?"

    And as a rule of thumb, always watch out for trap answer choices that SEEM to attack the premise but are actually not really doing so. These answer choices usually contain quantifiers (some and most), and words that indicate the degree of something that can go EITHER way.
  • E.T.90066-1E.T.90066-1 Alum Member
    377 karma
    Wow. You just saved me a ton of time. This is great! Thank you so much CJ Shin!
  • CJ ShinCJ Shin Free Trial Member
    302 karma
    your welcome :)
  • Luis89011Luis89011 Alum Member
    48 karma
    this was good stuff
  • KK Free Trial Member
    345 karma
    nice man that was helpful :D
  • johnscottwilsonsr499johnscottwilsonsr499 Free Trial Member
    66 karma
    Is there a chart with this and or a chart with all LR strategies?
  • Litian.ChenLitian.Chen Free Trial Member
    136 karma
    those are awesome categories that work perfectly!
  • monica123monica123 Member
    90 karma
    Can someone elaborate on point 2?

    (2) Assumption: usually involves a shift in scope like SA or NA questions (idea X -> idea Y). These types rely more on your intuition and answer choices will almost always address the jump.
  • Vickpetrosian1Vickpetrosian1 Free Trial Member
    139 karma
    @monica123 sure. I believe what he means is that if it says X is enough to know Y, and at the same time it relies on a assumption that is not to explicit like written out... then you should attempt to find an answer that possible says X or the assumption that X relies on doesn't actually lead to Y or falls short on Proving Y.

    example: We now know Trump is president elect and therefore has received more electoral votes than any other competing candidate.So he will be the next president. Since he will be the most recent president, Trump must then be representing the majority of the beliefs held by modern day Americans.

    Ok so here "most recent president" is sufficient, and "represent the majority of the beliefs" is the necessary. Now to weaken this we can show that the last president before him or even 50 years ago was elected but did not Necessarily represent the majorities beliefs...

    Answers:

    A. Harry Truman was elected as president, but a country wide survey showed over 52% of Americans did not believe that to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the correct course of action .

    Even though Truman was the most recent president at the time he still was not aligned with the majority of beliefs held by Americans at the time.

    I hope that makes sense !!!

    Not sure if this is good LSAT experts let me know thank you !!!
  • monica123monica123 Member
    90 karma
    @Vickpetrosian1 thank you for the explanation!
  • steve-10steve-10 Alum Member
    192 karma
    @"CJ Shin" said:
    And as a rule of thumb, always watch out for trap answer choices that SEEM to attack the premise but are actually not really doing so.
    Am I incorrect in believing that the task of weakening is to expose and deny invalid assumptions rather than to attack the explicit premise(s)? Or maybe by "the premise" @"CJ Shin" meant an assumption (an unstated premise)?
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