PT 73, LR2, #19

Comments

• inactive Alum Member

  September 2015 12637 karma

  Bump
• logicfiend Alum Member

  September 2015 118 karma

  All of AC (C) is out of scope. That would be the simple answer here. There's nothing in the stimulus that discusses optimism. The gap in the argument is why enabling people to believe better futures are possible will prevent loss of motivation. The argument assumes this relationship in the last sentence, but it's not explicit in the argument. (B) tackles that gap.
  
  Negating (C) "Optimism about the future is NOT better than pessimism..." is not necessary to this argument. Would this really hurt the argument? And think about it, it seems like optimism here is trying to take the place of "enabling people to believe better futures are possible." Is that an equivalent statement? Unlike strengthen, weaken or reconcile/resolve questions, necessary assumptions will stay close to the stimulus, or closer than these other question types. Hope this helps.
• cacrv567 Alum Member

  September 2015 171 karma

  so I shouldn't assume that "enabling people to believe in better futures" is optimism?
  shouldn't this be one of those safe presumptions you can make on the lsat?
• 1 Like

  logicfiend Alum Member

  September 2015 118 karma

  Those aren't equivalent statements according to this stimulus. If you're only confining your thinking to the stimulus, the author concludes pessimism is bad. Enabling people to believe in better futures will counteract the loss motivation and presumably, address the pessimism. But nowhere in this reasoning is there anything about optimism because counteracting pessimism is not the same thing as being optimistic.
  
  The safe assumptions you can make on the LSAT are much more obvious. For example, equating being economically disadvantaged to having a lower average household income compared to the national average is a safe assumption to make (PT 23, LR2, Q16). The assumption you're making would be adding premises and new ideas into the stimulus.