#24 - The genuine creative genius is someone who is

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion—SN. The correct answer choice is (B)

In this stimulus the author presents a series of conditional statements, concluding that innovators
anger the majority. The conditional statements are diagrammed below:

A real creative genius is one who is not content to simply accept widely held beliefs:

real creative genius content to accept wide beliefs

Thus, the author concludes, such real creative geniuses tend to anger the majority. This conclusion is
followed by further conditional statements:

Those not content to accept others’ beliefs seek out controversy:

content to accept wide beliefs seek controversy

...and those who seek controversy enjoy showing how popular views are wrong:

seek controversy like to demonstrate popular falsehoods

Putting this conditional chain together, we arrive at the following:

real genius content w/ wide beliefs seek controversy demonstrate popular falsehoods

As we can see from the diagram, there is no reference to angering the majority, yet the author’s
conclusion is that real creative geniuses tend to anger the majority. Since the question stem requires
us to justify the conclusion, the tendency to anger the majority must be somehow linked to the
conditional chain above.

Answer choice (A): The conclusion that we must justify in this stimulus is that real creative geniuses,
who are dissatisfied with merely habitual assent to widely held beliefs tend to anger the majority.
This choice provides that the geniuses get angry themselves. This does not justify the conclusion as
needed.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. This answer provides that people who like
to demonstrate the falsehoods of popular viewpoints anger the majority:

demonstrate popular falsehoods anger majority

So we can link this to the end of the conditional chain provided in the stimulus:

real genius not content w/ wide beliefs seek controversy demonstrate pop. falsehoods anger majority

Based on the conditional diagram above, we can see that this answer choice allows us to logically
draw the conclusion that real creative geniuses tend to anger the majority.

Answer choice (C): This choice is close, but this answer provides that people get angered when
people hold different beliefs themselves. This is subtly different from the link we need, which is that
people get angry when others demonstrate the falsehood of commonly held beliefs.

Answer choice (D): This answer provides the mistaken reversal of the link we actually need. This
choice says that if you anger the majority, then you enjoy demonstrating the falsehood of commonly
held beliefs:

anger the majority enjoy demonstrating popular false beliefs

The link that we need is the exact reverse—that those who enjoy demonstrating popular false beliefs
tend to anger the majority:

enjoy demonstrating popular false beliefs anger the majority

This is the link provided by the correct answer choice, (B).

Answer choice (E): Much like incorrect answer choice (D), this choice provides the mistaken
reversal of a conditional statement that would logically justify the author’s conclusion. Here we are
provided with the following: if you anger the majority, then you are not content just accepting widely
held beliefs:

anger the majority content to accept widely held beliefs

This choice does not provide the needed link, because it cannot be added to the author’s conditional
chain to justify the author’s conclusion.

If this choice had provided the opposite statement, it would be the correct answer choice—if we
knew that all those not content to accept widely held beliefs tended to anger the majority, then we
could logically draw the author’s conclusion as follows:

real creative genius content to accept wide beliefs anger the majority

[nrpandolfo]

I don't understand the difference between choice B and choice D. I chose choice D as that sequence of conditional relationships seem to come first.

Genius --> dissatisfied --> anger majority

dissatisfied --> seek out controversy --> enjoy demonstrating

[Daniel Stern]

I would actually diagram the first sentence as this:
premise: Creative Genius dissatisfied
conclusion (second clause, marked off by "thus"): Creative Genius Angers majority

Then I would diagram the second sentence just as you have:
Dissatisfied seek controversy enjoy demonstrating falsehood of popular beliefs

We know we are down to answer choices B and D: The question is, which should be necessary and which should be sufficient in our justify answer: the angering the majority or the enjoyment of demonstrating the falsehood of popular beliefs?

Ultimately, it is the conclusion that the creative genius angers the majority that must be supported. So making those who "enjoy demonstrating" sufficient to tell us that these people anger the majority gets us to our conclusion.
Creative genius dissatisfied seek controversy enjoy demonstrating falsehood (Answer choice B adds this last arrow) anger the majority.

If we choose D, angering the majority becomes sufficient to tell us something, but we'd have to employ the flawed logic of a mistaken reversal to support our conclusion.

I hope this is helpful.
Dan