LSAT Discussion Forum

I am truly at a loss for how to go about this. I can see that it requires a high level of abstraction- and even still I was able to narrow the choices down to A/C, and incorrectly chose A because I thought the "or" in the conclusion of the stimulus did not match with C. Even though C felt closer aside from that. A felt like the conclusion was a closer match. I saw that the stimulus and answer choice C had overlapping groups- while in A the groups seem not line up with one another.

ANY help would be much appreciated!

The stimulus is basically saying that if it is sometimes okay to do A and it is sometimes okay to do B, then it must sometimes be okay to do both A and B at the same time.

This is flawed because combining these two actions may have a different effect from taking just one: perhaps asking for money is a little different when you have a weapon in your hand. As a side note, this is one of the funnier stimuli on the exam. The speaker here is trying to argue that extortion is sometimes okay

Answer choice (C) very closely matches up with the stimulus. Perhaps the only thing different is that this answer choice says "healthful" instead of a more analogous "not unhealthful." That is a minor change though. The speaker of answer choice (C) is still concluding that because it is sometimes okay to take medicine A and it is also sometimes okay to take medicine B, then it must be okay to take them together. This argument overlooks the possibility that taking the two medicines together may have a very different result. Serious drug interactions happen frequently.

Answer choice (A) does not try to prove that it is okay to combine two actions. Rather, this argument concludes something about what happens when an even is neither business nor social.

The inclusion of "or" in answer choice (A) was a tricky move. The stimulus did include the word "or," but it included it in a very different context. In the stimulus, the author is talking about one type of action when using or: asking for money or a favor. This is an example of the Shell Game at work.

I'm confused about the wording in AC A. I had it as a contender, but ultimately selected D instead just because the numbers in the AC matched with the numbers in the stim... Writing my reasoning out, I see now why that was kind of a dumb assumption to make. The original reason why I wasn't fully content with A as my AC was because the wording used.. "At least some". Could you clarify why this answer choice was correct despite the wishy-washy (in my opinion) wording of it?

Thank you!

Okjoannawow,

For a parallel question, sometimes it is helpful to identify the general concept expressed in the stimulus. Here, we have the claim that since it's acceptable to do two things separately, it's acceptable to do them together. That matches answer choice (C) perfectly.

(D) is contrary to the pattern because (D) states that it is unwise to do the two things together.