#17- Politician: All nations that place a high tax on income

[Jerrymakehabit]

Hey there Jerry, let me see if I can clarify (and I think you have got it already). The way to weaken a conditional claim is to show that the necessary condition is not, in fact, necessary. That is, it is possible for the sufficient condition to occur and the necessary condition to not occur. In other words, the sufficient condition is NOT sufficient after all, because the necessary condition isn't actually required.

I would say you are also right about answer B here: there may be a negative incentive for innovation, but if the negative incentive is very small then it might not actually hamper it.

Looks like you've got it!

Got it. Thank you Adam and thank you all!
Jerry

[MC_1234]

So when it came to answering this question I was stuck on (D) or (E) and ultimately picked D. Looking back I can see why E is correct, my only concern was getting there.

When diagramming out the conditional reasoning, the solution in the book makes sense for me up until when getting to FB -> LV. I am confused on recognizing paraphrases such as "fall behind in the international arms race" meaning "wind up in a strategically disadvantageous position". While I can understand looking at them now they are similar, I wouldn't have imagined treating them as a paraphrase in order to diagram FB -> LV.

I ended up diagramming it as HA (historical action) or FPL (Foolishness of political leadership) -> LV.

Similarly in the question when the phrase "the nation wants to maintain its value system and way of life" I do not see how this paraphrases (while admittedly in the book says its a rough paraphrase) lead to ~FB and ~LV.

Which did not lead me to ~FB and ~LV -> ~HT30. While I do understand the necessary condition being negated here, it was more coming up with the sufficient.

Ultimately, I was confused with the conditional logic which made me pick D, but from an instinctual glance E made sense simply because of the fact it did not hurt the argument, not so much on using proper conditional logic.

Any help on this matter would be great, thank you!

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Any help on this matter would be great, thank you!

Hi MC_1234!

Thanks for the post! I have moved your question to the thread discussing this topic. Please review the official explanation on page 1 of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=594&t=14925, as well as the discussion that follows the explanation. Let us know if that helps, or if you still have further questions! Thanks!

[MC_1234]

Thanks for letting me see this, while helpful, I'm still not quite sure on how the paraphrasing was derived.

[Dave Killoran]

When diagramming out the conditional reasoning, the solution in the book makes sense for me up until when getting to FB -> LV. I am confused on recognizing paraphrases such as "fall behind in the international arms race" meaning "wind up in a strategically disadvantageous position". While I can understand looking at them now they are similar, I wouldn't have imagined treating them as a paraphrase in order to diagram FB -> LV.

The key here is in your last sentence, when you say you wouldn't have imagined them to be similar. You can't be passive here, and you have to actively look for connections like these. The idea being that if you can see it afterward, then you can start looking for it during, especially because this wouldn't all connect together well without some sort of equivalence like this. Whenever I see multiple conditions in a problem, I immediately look to see if they haven't pulled this exact type of trick. Hopefully it's something easy to see like "never absent" = "always present," but the test makers aren't limited to something so definitionally straightforward. Regrettably, they can and do torture the relationships in the way we see in this problem. Which is exactly why we use this problem as a discussion example!

Similarly in the question when the phrase "the nation wants to maintain its value system and way of life" I do not see how this paraphrases (while admittedly in the book says its a rough paraphrase) lead to ~FB and ~LV.

Which did not lead me to ~FB and ~LV -> ~HT30. While I do understand the necessary condition being negated here, it was more coming up with the sufficient.

It's really the same thing as in the prior comment: you have to be looking to make a rough equivalence because otherwise the stimulus doesn't make sense; it's just a bunch of disconnected statements, and that's not what they do on the LSAT


Keep in mind as well that we are just explaining what LSAC is doing. Anything we say about a problem is a reflection of how they are thinking, not us imposing some new way of thinking on them. As I often say, you have to see the test through the eyes of the test makers, because their view is the only one that matters.

Thanks!

[needhib]

Hi i just started with the LR bible and this question confuses me, in the diagram, there is the FB------ LV but there don't seem to be any conditional indicators in the sentence:

Those nations that, through, historical accident or foolishness of their political leadership , wind up in a strategically disadvantageous position are destined to lose their voice in world affairs.

I have been doing weaken problems without diagramming because I just got the logical reasoning bible so I apologize if this question is stupid. thank you so much

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi needhib,

Thanks for your question! The conditional indicator in that sentence is "destined to." As in, we can re-word that sentence into if-then phrasing by saying:

If a nation ends up in a strategically disadvantaged position, then it will lose its voice in world affairs.

The reason we use "FB" or "falling behind in the international arms race" instead of "ending up in a strategically disadvantaged position" in the diagram for this sentence is because those two phrases are basically equivalent, and FB allows us to connect this sentence back to the rest of our stimulus. As Dave mentioned in a previous post, it's not always crystal clear to see these equivalent statements, but once you do see them, your stimulus goes from a group of disjointed sentences to one big conditional diagram.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

[rench.co]

Hi there,

In the answer key for this question it mentions that FB and LV are negated in the conclusion so the diagram not FB and LV-> not HT 30 results. When I diagramed the conditional I wrote maintain value + life-> not allowed HT 30. I can see where maintain value + life is roughly equivalent to FB and LV but I don't understand why the are negated in the conditional for the conclusion. Can someone please explain this negation?

When answering the question I kept asking myself if the which answer choices would weaken the argument and then eliminated those. I got down to B and D. Then I realized that B had the word "insignificant" which would weaken the argument. So I guess when answering the question I just used common sense a bit more than the conditional diagram itself. Would this be a correct/efficient train of thought to answer the question?

Thank you!

[Robert Carroll]

rench.co,

Look at how the first post defines "FB" and "LV":

FB = fall behind in the international arms race; also, wind up in a
strategically disadvantageous position
LV = lose voice in world affairs

Those are bad things. You chose abbreviations that are the positive opposites of those. It's simply a difference in what abbreviations are used. The point of the conclusion is that the undesirable results of falling behind and losing a voice in world affairs are to be avoided (negated, symbolically); thus, the thing that would result in those (taxes higher than 30%) are to be avoided (negated in our conditional representation). I don't see any substantive difference here.

I don't think the conditional approach is necessary for this one, so if avoiding it worked for you, that's fine!

Robert Carroll