#16 - People who do not believe that others distrust them

[meghana]

Hi Nikki,

I have the same question as the person above and I did read your explanation, but I am still confused.

I did set the diagram up correctly (below I use words to stand in for each component):

premise: /believe others distrust --> confident --> challenge
conclusion: trust --> challenge

So, I understood that "/believe others distrust" and "trust" needed to be connected. I plugged in "trust" AFTER "/believe others distrust", like this:

/believe others distrust --> trust --> confident --> challenge.

I realized I messed up when I saw that C was the only answer that related these 2 components so I knew it had to be right, but it does so in the reverse of my prephrase.

Why is my prephrase wrong? How do you know where to plug in "trust" (that it goes BEFORE "/believe others distrust" and not after)? Is it because my way disrupts the premise and C does not do so?

I want to understand so I don't repeat this mistake in the future!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Meghana,

You are exactly right---your prephrase would break up the conditional.

We have if
B C
C D

Conclusion A D

If we put A B, we have a nice chain, and it links together smoothly.
If we put B A, we don't have that same sort of chain. We'd have two separate chains that don't link up. It would look something like this

B C D
B A

But we couldn't use that to draw the conclusion A D. A could occur in this set without D, because we don't have anything coming off that A. We can't draw any conclusions about what happens if A.

We want to make sure as we link up that we keep A in the sufficient condition, to show that A forces something to happen, which will force D to occur. That's why the A B matters here.

It is great that you isolated the correct variables though! It sounds like it was enough to get you to the right answer.

Hope that helps!