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Sami
Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor
Hey everyone,
I recently came across an LSAT stimulus that gave me loads of trouble when I was taking a PT under time. To ingrain the lesson from that stimulus I drew a parallel argument for it. But I want to make sure that I did it correctly. So I am posting the stimulus I made for you. Let me know which one of the answers you think is correct.
Cats walk very light-footed when compared to other species. While dogs do not chase humans because humans do not get scared of dogs, cats get scared of dogs and need to go unnoticed by dogs to not get chased and thereby end up stuck in trees. Scientists therefore hypothesize that the cats light-footedness, which clearly makes them slower, evolved as a means of going unnoticed by dogs.
Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the hypothesis?
A. No human is as light-footed as cats.
B. Being chased by dogs is not the most common cause of death for cats.
C. Many other types of animals have light-footedness similar to that of cats.
D. Cats are much faster than other heavier animals.
E. Dogs that chase cats also chase other species of animals.
Comments
The wording of (A) is not great, if I'm being honest.
(A) makes sense. Maybe they are not as light-footed because they do not get chased by dogs like the cats.
(B) Yes, but so what? Maybe cats most commonly die because of osteoporosis haha.
(C) So? did they develop this as a response to being chased? And we're discussing cats, so idc.
(D) I'm sure they are faster than elephants, but so what?
(E) Good for the dogs! haha
A parallel to your parallel:
The Crayon Pony Fish lights up in an abrupt series of flashes and colors. While leopard sharks don't eat electric jellyfish, non electric fish like the crayon pony fish need to confuse the leopard shark to escape. Scientists therefore speculate that the crayon pony fish's lights, which burn an extraordinary amount of calories, evolved as a means of confusing the leopard shark.
(A) No electric jellyfish lights up like the crayon pony fish
(B) Getting eaten by leopard sharks is not how most fish die
(C) Many other fish have lights similar to the crayon pony fish
(D) It burns far fewer calories for fish to light up than for aquatic mammals
(E) The leopard shark preys on many non-electric fish.
i think B
B. Being chased by dogs is not the most common cause of death for cats
" cats get scared of dogs and need to go unnoticed by dogs to not get chased and thereby end up stuck in trees"
because its not common for cats not dying from being chased demonstrates they evolved. I think this has the most bearing on the hypothesis.
A) is not the right answer choice, in fact, it would weaken it...
I think B has the highest support although to me it's quite hidden. I do have to agree with @MichaelTheArchAngel's argument for B... and that goes for @Sami's stimulus as well.... it seems very plausible...
C,
D, and
E are all hard to defend...
I know I would definitely skip and miss this question if it appears on the LSAT
[Phenomenon]
• Cats walk very light-footed when compared to other species
• Dogs dogs do not chase humans because humans do not get scared of dogs
• Cats get scared of dogs and need to go unnoticed by dogs to not get chased and thereby end up stuck in trees.
[Hypothesis]
The cats' light-footedness evolved as a means of going unnoticed by dogs.
I would pick (A). I feel like this is an NA answer choice. Maybe not. I don't know. I have no confidence.
"No human is as light-footed as cats. "
Human --> /(as light-footed as cats)
Negation: Human <--some--> (as light-footed as cats)
If the negation of (A) is true, which means that there are some humans who walk as light-footed as cats, then the cats' light-footedness could have evolved as a means of something else.
Anyways, I would not even attempt to solve this under the timed conditions....
I don't know how it would strengthen the argument. What if it is the second most common cause? Maybe 50% are killed by sharks; 49% are killed by dogs; 1% die happily.
If it is the most common cause of death, then I feel like, "oh then cats really do need to avoid dogs."
The hypothesis is about how it was evolved, so we don't really care whether many other types have or not.
They are definitely faster than I am.
Ok....
@akistotle I am with you. (B) does not help us based on the information in the stimulus. Maybe there is some other factor that affects the likelihood of cats dying. Answer choice (B) also requires the assumption that there's a link between cats being chased and dying. The stimulus indicates that they get stuck in trees, that doesn't mean they die as a result. I stick with my initial choice haha.
I think that the wording of answer choice (A) is not good enough. "Not as light-footed," which leaves the the possibility of humans having lighter feet haha.
No cause no effect.
(A) seems to be the only one that strengthens in my view. It makes sense that if no other humans are as light-footed as cats, then we can say that humans aren't as light-footed as cats because 1) humans aren't scared of dogs which leads to 2) humans have not evolved the ability to be light-footed.
Whereas cats have been scared of dogs --> cats developed the ability to be nimble and light-footed by running scared and climbing trees to escape.
Oh that's right! (B) needs that assumption
Yes, that is true
Haha
A?
Cats walk very light-footed when compared to other species.
A) no human is as light-footed as cats.
It is not a necessary assumption because it is already stated. From Manhattan this would be a premise booster.
A
I agree that it isn't a necessary assumption. I don't think it would wreck the argument if there was one human out there who could walk as light-footed as one cat. But I don't think B strengthens the argument. The argument is about how a trait evolved. It doesn't really matter which cause of death is the most common. Could the most common cause of death have changed over time and in a much shorter amount of time than the time it takes for evolution to take place? Before it was dogs or bigger cats whereas now it's cars? Doesn't really effect the argument because the argument is about why an evolutionary trait came about. That's why I eliminated B. A seems better to me because if humans did walk as light-footed as cats then how could you use a cat's light-footedness to explain the difference between humans and cats in relation to their behavior to dogs? I don't think the strict conditionality is necessary which is why I don't think it's a necessary assumption but the essence is something the argument either assumes or relies on.
I could be entirely wrong. Like so so so wrong. Been wrong before. But that was my line of reasoning. If I am wrong I'd love to be corrected!
Let me give my reasoning as to why I think A is the wrong AC... I did the same PT as the one where @Sami took the question from just the other day and I think I might be able to solve our problems here.... In the original question, the species compared are each from the same family...
In other words, like @"Cant Get Right"'s example, we have one type of fish and another type of fish, electric and non-electric... Obviously the shark won't eat the electric ones cause it would get electrocuted, so it focuses on non-electric... (well mind you that's my assumption but the effect is the same... they don't eat electric fish)
Context: sharks do not eat electric fish
Observation: this one type of non-electric fish lights in flashes to confuse the shark even though it uses much energy
Hypothesis: the non-electric fish evolved this feature as a means of avoiding sharks/predators
A) no electric fish lights up like our type of non-electric fish
.... don't you see how this would weaken it? If none of the electric fish light up like it then the potential presumption that the non-electric fish lights up like them in hopes of appearing as electric is destroyed...
I still can't figure out how the others strengthen it, but I have managed to see why A doesn't... -_-
With regards to @Sami's alternative question, I think the confusion comes from the fact that we are comparing humans to cats... And the assumption that the predator eats the other species is missing too, which is sort of changing the overall argument from the original Question.
I do see this argument and I didn't think A strengthened this argument. For me the essence of this argument was that the non-electric fish that lights up wants the predator to think that the lighting up is indicative of its electric-ness. So A makes no sense in regard to strengthening the argument. B is so weak though as a strengthener but that is how a lot of strengthening AC are. It strengthens it because we it kind of nods its head to the fact that the evolutionary characteristic is successful. Is that where you're seeing with B as well? I couldn't see that in Sami's argument - could you explain more the difference between comparing humans to cats in this argument? Her argument parallels the eating to the chasing... Also I guess I contradicted myself earlier when I said if one human walked as light-footed as a cat then it wouldn't strengthen it.. hmm interesting... what PT is this question from?
I haven't taken a whole bunch of PTs, but is this question originally the red admiral butterfly question? I have it on my fridge because I read someone saying this question contained a weird structure.
I would go with (A).
This might be a successful challenge to Sami's made up question, but the real LSAT question on which this is modeled does not have this issue. Neither does @"Cant Get Right" 's crayon fish question.
@therealnas (A) does not weaken the argument in the parallel, nor in the original. The argument states that the jellyfish uses confusion as a method of escape. It doesn't state that it confuses the sharks to think they are electric fish. I don't know that you can make that assumption validly from the statements alone. Further, (A) shows that the electric fish do not use that feature of abrupt flashes and colors. Why is that helpful? Because it shows that it is not a feature common to all jellyfish and that they do not need it. They have electricity as a defense mechanism. And since the non-electric fish do not have that mechanism, they evolved another mechanism to evade their predator. I hope this helps, and I hope I am not missing anything that renders my explanation inaccurate.
@BinghamtonDave you're correct. That is from PT 75.
This is a great example of what I think is the toughest type of strengthen question, i.e., one that strengthens the argument by ruling out an alternative explanation. In other words, it strengthens the argument by eliminating a potential weakness.
A - humans are not scared, therefore they are not lightfooted.
No cause, no effect.
Hey everyone,
Thanks for all your responses they were incredibly helpful
. Looking back its a pretty easy question but under time I just didn't see it for some reason and I have been trying to identify why. I had three rounds on this question and even at the end I knew I was missing something and I didn't have the right answer. It's a 3 star question so I am guessing the difficulty of this question has more to do with an issue I have rather than the question being hard.
The correct answer is answer choice A and as some of you have already figured out its from PT 75 question #9 (The red admiral butterfly question @BinghamtonDave
)
I think for some reason under time I just didn't see how poisonous butterflies not having a similar flight style as red admiral related to me bringing the idea of this particular flight style evolving as a means to avoid predators closer.So I think the right thing for me to ask here is what stopped me from seeing that. Instead of stopping at well I don't see the connection between the poisonous butterflies not flying like red admirals and how that makes it more likely that flight pattern evolved as a means of avoiding patterns I should have asked myself, if it was true that poisonous butterflies had a similar flight pattern then would it affect the relationship between the flight pattern evolving as a means of avoiding predators. And it would, if poisonous butterflies had a similar flight pattern then its more likely there is another reason why they fly this way because they do not have to elude the predators.
I think I should have asked myself to be a bit creative in how I was reading the answer choices if after two rounds I was still having trouble finding the right answer because reading things the same way was obviously not working for me.
I'm late to the party, but here's my thoughts on this tough question:
A. No human is as light-footed as cats.
As others have said, this negates the possibility that humans and cats are equally light-footed. If that were true, then why are cats afraid of dogs but humans aren't? Does it have to do with differences in body size or maybe something else? This answer prevents us from worrying about those questions, thereby putting greater emphasis on light-footedness as the evolutionary development to avoid being noticed by dogs. While I wasn't super comfortable with this answer at first, it's the only one that doesn't bring in information that is irrelevant to what is included in the stimulus, so that's why it felt right. I think we don't expect a strengthening answer to be one that precludes other explanations from being true, because it's not how we usually think about strengthening an argument. Usually, we think of strengthening as "adding to", but equally appropriate is "preventing removal from", i.e., "blocking".
B. Being chased by dogs is not the most common cause of death for cats.
The stimulus says nothing about death, so it's not going to help us connect the premises to the conclusion. Even if this wasn't the most common cause of death. Maybe it's the second-most common cause. There's still ample reason for evolutionary development to avoid being chased by dogs.
C. Many other types of animals have light-footedness similar to that of cats.
Cool. Maybe they also are scared of dogs and evolved light-footedness as a means of going unnoticed by dogs? We have no idea. This doesn't do anything to connect the lightfootedness of cats to their evolutionary development.
D. Cats are much faster than other heavier animals.
Are dogs "heavier animals" than cats? Not necessarily: http://www.khq.com/story/35487755/spokane-cat-is-probably-bigger-than-your-dog consequently, this statement may not apply to the relationship between cats and dogs and thus wouldn't affect the support between the premise and the conclusion. We'd have to make some assumptions to make the statement apply to that relationship, but we shouldn't do that.
E. Dogs that chase cats also chase other species of animals.
so maybe those other animals are light-footed as well, like answer C suggests. This wouldn't help for similar resons as answer C.
The explanations for these answers would similarly apply to @"Cant Get Right"'s parallel argument.
yes! I just did the red butterfly question and got A by elimination bc none of the others make sense.
The presumption is not destroyed because electric fish and non-electric fish are different. Leopard sharks don't eat electric jellyfish.
I'm reviewing PT70 and question 13 in section 1 stuck out to me as having a similar pattern to the argument above, despite this question having a comparative statement as a conclusion. In order to evaluate the argument, and defend it with a necessary assumption, we need to identify whether the advertisement favored by the program producers differs from the other ad. Specifically we need to know whether the program producer's ad shares the characteristic of misrepresenting the show as the network's advertisement does. A NA is that the two ads do not share this characteristic.
Similarly,for the fish argument above we can strengthen the argument by stating that the electric fish do not share the same characteristic as the crayon pony fish. To me the similarity in the questions is essentially highlighting the differences between two types in a given set.
I'm wondering if anyone else sees the similarity or has any comments. Thanks!
Hey @Gladiator.
Thank you for posting about trying to find a similar pattern in another PT. LSAT's all about that and it was a helpful exercise for me
.
I think these two are actually different arguments.
In the Red Admiral example, PT (75 Q. 9), you have a phenomena that needs to be explained and our conclusion is a hypothesis.
It also has a causal structure:
Red Admirals: Fly funny
Poisonous butterfly: do not need to evade predators
Conclusion: These red admiral butterflies fly funny to evade predators)
Causal conclusion: Evading predators cause red admirals to fly funny.
One way to strengthen this argument is by saying no cause no effect. We already know poisonous butterflies do not need to evade predators (no cause) so it would be helpful and will strengthen the argument if they also did not have the same effect- did not fly funny like red admirals.
In comparison to the PT 70 question, you have a fact about a particular advertisement and then a conclusion about that advertisement in comparison to something else . The flaw here is that we actually do not know much about the thing we are comparing to except in the conclusion and we need to add that as a premise to make that inference properly.
You have:
Premise: Network advertisement misrepresents:
Premise 2: When people have false expectation they are unlikely to watch subsequent episodes.
Conclusion: Therefore Network's advertisement likely to not attract unlike producers advertisement.
In this one we do not have a phenomena-hypothesis argument that is causal in nature. The only thing that comes close causally is that advertisement that misrepresent lead people to not watch subsequent episodes but that gap is connected in second premise.
It's true they are both definitely comparing two groups but the structure of the argument and the gap is pretty different.
For 75, I would want to go into the answer choices knowing that I have a phenomena-hypothesis argument that is causal in nature and for 70 I would go into the answer choices knowing that I have a big gap between the premise and conclusion.
Let me know what you think.
Conclusion: Scientists therefore hypothesize that the cats light-footedness (which clearly makes them slower) evolved as a means of going unnoticed by dogs.
Reasoning used: Causal; because dogs chase cats (cause), cats have evolved to be light footed (effect).
Our goal is the strengthen the hypothesis (conclusion).
A. Correct; this would be true because it strengthens the causal reasoning. Since dogs don't chase humans (no cause), humans aren't as light footed as cats (no effect).
B. Out of scope; death is not mentioned in the stimulus at all. wrong.
C. Out of scope; we don't know anything about other animals. wrong.
D. Out of scope; we don't know the speed of heavier animals. wrong.
E. We don't know this; we just know dogs chase cats. wrong.
@LCMama2017
A seems to somewhat support the second sentence which supports the conclusion, I would pick that!
This is pretty much how I broke it down, too. Out of scope for four answers, involving things that were not mentioned (death, other animals, heavier animals, and if dogs do things outside of what we know from the info given). That made A the only real possibility.