#7 - Those who particpate in local politics include

[Cmoeckel]

Didn't have any difficulty on this question, but just wanted to clear something up in my head regarding these types of questions:

Is an implicit assumption in every of one of these formal logic questions that we are operating in a system with >0 participants. I.E. the correct answer choice would not follow if we assume 0 participants in local politics. Kinda silly on this question, I know, but I've made this assumption b4 on more complicated questions so just wanted to confirm.

Thanks guys, you rock

[atierney]

We do! And the short answer is yes. While you're always prefacing an answer in your mind where possible prior to looking at the answer choices, you also want to be able to "mold" your understanding of the implicit conditions within the stimulus to match a particular answer choice. And of course, in general, we're assuming that conditions in the stimulus, where set out, are applying to non-zero probability events.

[cs176513]

I got the question right but am interested in how you would diagram the problem. I did

PILP -> GIPS
PILP -> SO
and PILP -> ICV

Is that right?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi cs176513!

The last of the three diagrams you have seems correct.

However, the other two don't necessarily follow from the stimulus. Your statements are saying "if someone participates in local politics, then the person is genuinely interested in public service," and "if someone participates in local politics, that person is a selfish opportunist." We don't know those things to be true from the stimulus. Rather, what we know is that those who participate in local politics include members of both those groups (those genuinely interested in public service and selfish opportunists). Those who participate in local politics may include other groups as well--it doesn't say one way or another. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to take a look at the posts on the previous page by Clay, Jonathan, Adam, and Robert, which provide further discussion of that first sentence of the stimulus.