#18 - The current pattern of human consumption of resources

[Lily123]

AMAZING explanation! Thank you BOTH so much! This is the point that made it all click for me:

You can see that in my opinion your premise 2 is simply an intermediate conclusion, because the main conclusion is just a restatement. Saying that "We are now doing A and we will eventually have to do B or C" is just a more detailed version of "We must eventually change what we are doing."
...
Perhaps we just do without, which would still be a change in the current consumption pattern.

I feel silly for not realizing a change in the current consumption encompasses doing without.

I have a question about something you said (bear with me I’m new to this whole logic thing):

So, I agree with you that there is a gap in the argument but it is not between the Intermediate Conclusion and the Main conclusion, but rather between the first premise and the Intermediate conclusion (since we need a minimum of two premises)

Is it ALWAYS the case that we need a minimum of 2 premises?

[Brook Miscoski]

Lily,

I wouldn't say that you will be able to identify a minimum of 2 premises in every LSAT argument.

What Zach is saying is that the stated premise doesn't get us all the way to the intermediate conclusion. Thus, we need an additional minimum of the assumption he identifies.

Thanks!

[suburbsinmymindseye]

Hi all,

I think I made a pretty commonly made mistake on this problem, and I was hoping someone could give me advice as to how avoid these types of mistakes in the future.

Essentially, I identified the final sentence as the main conclusion, which made identifying an answer choice particularly difficult because none of them seemed to directly address the sub conclusion.

Do you all have any general advice on avoiding mixing up main/sub conclusions? Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

My approach, suburb, is to ask myself "does this claim support any other claim in the stimulus?" If I can use the thing that I think might be the main conclusion to support another claim, then I know that it is NOT the main conclusion, and I turn my attention to the claim that it supports to see if that is the real main conclusion. In this case, the last sentence is a premise (the "since" clause) and a conclusion (everything after the comma), and so it would be natural to consider that it might be the main conclusion. But does "we must do without or switch" support something else? Can I say "we must do without or else switch, therefore..." and then plug in something else the author said, and have it make sense? The answer here is, of course, yes - we can say "and therefore, one way or another, the current pattern must change." That's proves that the last claim is not the main conclusion, but is instead an intermediate one.

One other hint, and that is to be skeptical, especially of the final claim in the stimulus. We tend to automatically gravitate towards the last words from the author's mouth as the conclusion, because it literally is the end of what they said, and because we like nice, tidy arguments that lay out the premises and then finish with the big reveal, the conclusion. The authors of this test know that we are going to lean that way, and so they frequently will build arguments that end with something other than the main conclusion - a premise, an intermediate conclusion, some non-essential information or opinion, maybe an illustration or example. The main conclusion is somewhere else, maybe the first sentence, maybe in the middle somewhere, where we are more likely to miss it. If you come to the argument with a skeptical mind, you will be less likely to fall for those traps!

[suburbsinmymindseye]

Thanks Adam!

Thank makes plenty of sense.

[AnimalCrossingLSATer]

Hi PowerScore -

I actually got this question correct after applying the Assumption Negation Technique to the answer choices (and seeing the glaring impact it would have with regard to choice B, after negation, on the argument.) I realize there's a lot of discussion on this particular question already, but wanted to ask this in particular.

The conclusion mentions the concept of "the current pattern of human consumption", yet that concept seems to be addressed (at least explicitly) in the conclusion only, and as noted in the explanation, this is a "Defender" Assumption question. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that stimuli in "Defender" Assumption questions don't often have "new" elements in the conclusion, unlike "Supporter" Assumption questions where the correct answer often includes that "new" element with the proper, relevant linkage to the premises. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

My question is: how is "the current pattern of human consumption" not a "new" element? My intention of asking this is for me to better differentiate between "Supporter" and "Defender" types of Assumption questions, and maybe even gain some further clarity over what counts as a "new" element in a conclusion. Frankly, if it weren't for the Negation Technique, I would have answered C, which explicitly contains the term "human consumption."

Thank you very much for any guidance that you may be able to provide!

-Dustine B. ("AnimalCrossingLSATer")

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, Dustine! I tend to think of Supporter and Defender not as being two different types of Assumptions, but two different strategies for prephrasing the answer. Any Assumption can be thought of as either a Defender or a Supporter, to some extent, but sometimes one approach is much more obvious than another.

This argument actually has three premises, but one is easy to overlook. Those premises are:

1) There is only so much nonrenewable stuff available (which is illustrated by the example of metal ore)

2) The current pattern relies on nonrenewable sources (this is the hard to see premise, between the commas in the first sentence)

3) We will have to switch or do without (this one is a premise that supports the main conclusion, and a conclusion based on the first two)

That all supports the conclusion that the current pattern must change.

Seen this way, with the easily overlooked premise included, "the current pattern" is no longer a new element! The Defender approach feels more natural here - what if we can just keep on doing what we're doing, but keep on changing to new sources as old ones run out? The author has to assume that isn't an option, defending the argument against that attack.

But we can also, with some imagination, treat it as a Supporter, with "change" being the new idea. The assumption, looked at through that lens, is "if we rely on nonrenewable sources, we must change. We cannot do that forever." It ends up being the same prephrase, but arrived at another way.

You're correct that when you see a new element in the conclusion, the Supporter approach is generally going to be preferable, simply because it's easier. When you see no new info in the conclusion, the Defender approach is more likely to yield fast, easy results (relatively speaking - none of this is all that easy). But sometimes a new element shows up and the Defender approach still feels right and works fine, and sometimes you won't clearly see a new element and yet you'll find yourself linking ideas like a Supporter anyway. Neither approach is right or wrong - they are just two different paths to the same result, and you should take the path of least resistance.

[AnimalCrossingLSATer]

Good question, Dustine! I tend to think of Supporter and Defender not as being two different types of Assumptions, but two different strategies for prephrasing the answer. Any Assumption can be thought of as either a Defender or a Supporter, to some extent, but sometimes one approach is much more obvious than another.

This argument actually has three premises, but one is easy to overlook. Those premises are:

1) There is only so much nonrenewable stuff available (which is illustrated by the example of metal ore)

2) The current pattern relies on nonrenewable sources (this is the hard to see premise, between the commas in the first sentence)

3) We will have to switch or do without (this one is a premise that supports the main conclusion, and a conclusion based on the first two)

That all supports the conclusion that the current pattern must change.

Seen this way, with the easily overlooked premise included, "the current pattern" is no longer a new element! The Defender approach feels more natural here - what if we can just keep on doing what we're doing, but keep on changing to new sources as old ones run out? The author has to assume that isn't an option, defending the argument against that attack.

But we can also, with some imagination, treat it as a Supporter, with "change" being the new idea. The assumption, looked at through that lens, is "if we rely on nonrenewable sources, we must change. We cannot do that forever." It ends up being the same prephrase, but arrived at another way.

You're correct that when you see a new element in the conclusion, the Supporter approach is generally going to be preferable, simply because it's easier. When you see no new info in the conclusion, the Defender approach is more likely to yield fast, easy results (relatively speaking - none of this is all that easy). But sometimes a new element shows up and the Defender approach still feels right and works fine, and sometimes you won't clearly see a new element and yet you'll find yourself linking ideas like a Supporter anyway. Neither approach is right or wrong - they are just two different paths to the same result, and you should take the path of least resistance.

I really appreciate your comprehensive breakdown of the stimulus and explanation! That was very helpful. Yep, I did overlook that premise (the one that's sandwiched between those two commas); when I did this question initially, I felt at the time that that entire first sentence was the conclusion...only to overlook that premise that's in that same sentence.

Thanks very much, Adam!

-Dustine

[veeo@20]

Hi. I am a bit confused about the stimulus. Is the argument saying that we must without non-renewable or renewable resources? Because if it is the latter, then I don't understand why E is incorrect. Could you please help me explain this?

I also wanted to ask if this was a type of false dilemma? Since it initially proposes just 2 options strongly.

Thank you.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi veeo,

First, great job noticing the false dilemma here. You are absolutely right that the author sets up two options while there are others available, notably the one in answer choice suggested in answer choice (B).

When the stimulus says "do without," it means we must do without whatever we use the metal ore for. So let's say the metal ore is used for transportation. We either must do without that transportation or find a renewable resource to substitute for the metal ore.

Answer choice (E) is incorrect because there's nothing to say that we cannot do without the ore. There is nothing in the argument that says that we need whatever we use the metal ore for. Answer choice (E) is assuming that the ore is used for a required activity. We cannot make that assumption.

Hope that helps!