Q15 - Economist: A country's rapid emergence

[noah]

Premises:
If country rapidly emerges from an economic recession --> substantial new investment in that country's economy --> people's confidence in the economic policies of their country

Conclusion:
Countries that put collective goals before individual's goals cannot emerge quickly from economic recession

(C) says: If the people in a country that puts individual's goals first are willing to make new investments in their country's economy --> their country will emerge quickly from an economic recession

The short answer as to why (C) is wrong is that countries that put individual's goals first is totally outside the scope of this argument.

Just because (C) says what it says, does not mean that inverting it is true - that negating the sufficient clause will bring about a negated necessary clause. In other words, (C) does not mean that: If the people in a country put collective goals before individual's goals first --> their country will NOT emerge quickly from an economic recession

notice how I totally eliminated the part of (C) that states "...are willing to make new investments in their country's economy..." - the whole answer choice is a mess - besides, the only tie to the stimulus in terms of investment is SUBSTANTIAL new investment...not just people willing to make new investments...and (C) seems to be trying to make that necessary condition into a sufficient condition.

just my amateur 2cents...

Not amateur at all! You nailed it. Here's a more general explanation:

The conclusion of this argument is that communist countries --> NOT quickly recover $ (There's an extreme example of "owning" the argument by putting it in my own words -- this helps me process faster, but I have to be careful to remember I've lost some details when I'm down to multiple tempting answer choices.)

What are the premises?

quickly recover $ --> new invest
new invest --> confidence

So, quickly recover $ --> new invest --> confidence

But, we need communist countries --> NOT quickly recover $

So, we can take the contrapositive of our premise chain:

NOT confidence --> NOT new invest --> NOT quickly recover $

Thus we need communist countries --> NOT confidence.

And that's what (D) gives us.

As for the wrong answers:

(A) NOT quickly recover $ --> NOT new invest.

That doesn't link in communist countries.

(B) is based on a tendency. We can eliminate since there are no tendencies in the stimulus.

(C) NOT communist + invest --> quickly recover $

Confusing! But, we don't have the link we want, and this doesn't make the argument valid. The contrapositive of this is NOT quickly recover $ --> NOT (NOT communist + invest) -- i.e. if a country hasn't quickly recovered economically, they must not be a non-communist country that has people willing to invest in that country. Hard to get to that, but it still doesn't help us conclude that communist countries --> NOT quickly recover $

At best, this is some sort of negation of what we want -- but since it combines the NOT communist and the investment, it's not even that.

(E) significant? Who cares? Out of scope.


#officialexplanation

[haeaznboiyoung]

I did end up choosing D but I just want some clarification as to why C is wrong. My thought process was that even if people put individual goals first and make new investments, it does not guarantee that their economy will emerge quickly from a recession. There may be other factors, such as helping people find jobs or bailing out failing banks. Is my reasoning for this correct?

[mrudula_2005]

Premises:
If country rapidly emerges from an economic recession --> substantial new investment in that country's economy --> people's confidence in the economic policies of their country

Conclusion:
Countries that put collective goals before individual's goals cannot emerge quickly from economic recession

(C) says: If the people in a country that puts individual's goals first are willing to make new investments in their country's economy --> their country will emerge quickly from an economic recession

The short answer as to why (C) is wrong is that countries that put individual's goals first is totally outside the scope of this argument.

Just because (C) says what it says, does not mean that inverting it is true - that negating the sufficient clause will bring about a negated necessary clause. In other words, (C) does not mean that: If the people in a country put collective goals before individual's goals first --> their country will NOT emerge quickly from an economic recession

notice how I totally eliminated the part of (C) that states "...are willing to make new investments in their country's economy..." - the whole answer choice is a mess - besides, the only tie to the stimulus in terms of investment is SUBSTANTIAL new investment...not just people willing to make new investments...and (C) seems to be trying to make that necessary condition into a sufficient condition.

just my amateur 2cents...

[haeaznboiyoung]

Ahh yes I had a feeling it was a scope issue which is why I said there's no way to conclude anything based off the passage of what people putting individual goals first does, only that we know an economy cannot emerge quickly if individual goals are not put first ahead of collective goals. Thanks for the input!

[peg_city]

I just want to make sure I did the this right.

1) REER -> SNICE

2)SNICE -> PCEP

3 Conclusion) CGbIG -> ~REER


Add two single inferences and you get...

D) CGbiG -> PCEP

Is this right?

[mmotieju]

I see what you did there Peg City, but I just wanted to clarify your process. Is this it?

1) SNICE -> ~REER
2) ~PCEP -> ~SNICE
conc CGbIG -> ~REER

and then you can make

CGbIG -> ~PCEP since you lined up the conclusion and evidence? Sorry if its an obvious answer, I just cant see how theyre being connected.

[noah]

I just want to make sure I did the this right.

1) REER -> SNICE

2) SNICE -> PCEP

3 Conclusion) CGbIG -> ~REER


Add two single inferences and you get...

D) CGbiG -> PCEP

Is this right?

You almost got it. (D) is actually CGbiG -> ~ PCEP. The premise says "lack."

In terms of process, you could arrive at (D) by taking the conclusion and using it as a "frame," with CBbIG on the left, and ~ REER all the way on the right, and then you connect up what's given:

CGbIG ---?---> ~ PCEP --> ~ SNICE -> ~REER

As I tried to show above, the first connection is missing, and that's what (D) provides us (the contrapositive of what's above).

Make sense?

[nflamel69]

I was actually down to B and D. Why is it B wrong? Is it because that B says tend not to affect.. So it's ambiguous and therefore doesn't do anything to the argument?

[noah]

I was actually down to B and D. Why is it B wrong? Is it because that B says tend not to affect.. So it's ambiguous and therefore doesn't do anything to the argument?

Bingo.

[timsportschuetz]

I would like to add my thoughts on answer choice (C). Notice how this answer choice preys on test-takers by making them assume that the negation of "Collective goals before individuals' goals" is "putting individuals' goals first". This is inherently faulty logic! The negation would be "Do NOT put collective goals before individuals' goals" - Can we assume from this negated statement that individuals' goals being first is the negation? Absolutely not! Couldn't it also be possible that nobody's goals are considered... OR, that the leading politicians' goals are put first?

Another reason for eliminating this bad answer is this: The argument concludes: ---> CANNOT emerge quickly from recession. Answer (C) states ---> Emerge quickly from recession! When looking through the answer choices, you MUST find an answer that connects logically to the conclusion. Thus, you must either have "IF emerges quickly from recession, then blablabla..." OR "blablalbla... THEN cannot emerge quickly from recession". Any other organization of the above logical relationship is WRONG!

[samiraa180]

So I thought I had this question in the bag until I read the discussion and realized I eliminated answer choice "C" for the wrong reason. I still stand by answer choice "D" as credited, but I'm not sure what makes answer choice "C" out of scope.

I'll try to take a stab at it. Is it the fact that "individuals' goals" is mentioned alongside "collective goals" but answer choice "C" only discusses individuals' goals alone? Essentially, is it a new idea because it stands alone?

And if this is the case, then is this how arguments work in the LSAT world? If two ideas are discussed, but then the answer choice only discusses one point, am I to think, "woah, out of scope, eliminate."

[ohthatpatrick]

(C) doesn't literally talk "only about individuals" ... since it says that "individuals are put first", we can still infer that for these countries "collective goals are NOT put ahead of individual goals". So I wouldn't necessarily create that "if two things are mentioned but an answer choice only brings up one ..." rule.

You can talk about why (C) is wrong in multiple ways.

Given that this is Sufficient Assumption and all three claims are conditional in nature, some people were thinking about it in conditional terms.

We’re trying to prove this conclusion:
Put collective above individual --> can’t emerge quickly from econ. recession

(C) says
~(Put collective above individual) --> CAN emerge quickly from econ. recession

I’m taking a couple liberties with the actual wording to point out structurally what’s wrong with (C).

If we want to prove
A --> B
it doesn’t help us in the slightest to know that
~A --> ~B

So THAT’S your takeaway when it comes to conditional logic. If you’re trying to prove A --> B, then learning the negation ~A --> ~B or the reversal B --> A is useless.

The more conversational way of talking about (C) is thinking about who the conclusion is making a claim about.

The author’s conclusion is making a claim about "collective-first"-countries (even though he didn’t tell us A SINGLE THING about "collective-first"-countries in his evidence). Don’t even worry about WHAT the author is saying about them. Just focus on the fact that the truth/falsity of the author’s conclusion is purely about whether those "collective-first"-countries do / don’t have some certain trait.

(C) isn’t talking about "collective-first"-countries, so therefore it’s out of scope. (D) is talking about collective-first countries, so it’s very relevant and useful.

For sufficient assumption, if there is any NEW term/idea in the conclusion, that term/idea is guaranteed to be in the correct answer.

If you’re aware of and understand that rule, then (A), (C), and (E) are not even worth reading.

Hope this helps.

[JohnS553]

Hey guys, this is a great discussion. I got this one wrong during a practice session because I failed to truly grasp the logic of the stimulus and answer choices. In review, however, I arrived at the credited answer it using the following thought process:
Stimulus is essentially A --> B, B ---> C, Inference A-->B--->C. Conclusion: D --> NOT A.
Since the task was to identify the sufficient assumption, I reasoned I needed an answer choice that stated D --> NOT C, since that would require NOT B, which would require NOT A, which would guarantee D --> NOT A.

Did I do this right? (Sorry for the simplicity, I'm still learning.)

For the answer choices, I had:
a) NOT A --> NOT B
b) E + D --> NOT C
c) NOT D + B --> A
d) D --> NOT C
e) who knows.

[ghorizon09]

Premise 1: Rapid Emergence-------> New Investment
Premise 2: New Investment --------> Confidence

Combine the two premises: Rapid Emergence--------->New Investment------------>Confidence

Contrapositive: NOT Confidence --------->NOT New Investment------> NOT Rapid Emergence

Conclusion: (Collective.......Individual)------------> NOT Emerge Quickly


Answer D tells us: Collective......Individual ---------->NOT Confidence

When we add D we prove the conclusion, our final proof is below:

(Collective.......Individual)-------->NOT Confidence------>NOT New Investment---------->NOT Rapid Emergence

Therefore: if Collective before Individual then countries cannot emerge from recession rapidly (Collective.....Individual)--------->NOT Rapid Emergence