Q15 - For the condor to survive...

[weiyichen1986]

Hi, anther most strongly supported question, i got this one right,
as the chain follows this,

survive--->increase number---->more eggs hatch

but why is C wrong? isnt the stimulus talks about " it is extremely unlikely " in the wild to hatch due to environment dangers....


Just curious about it, thank you for the explanation.

[timmydoeslsat]

Choice C is too strong. We are told of one way to eliminate those threats, which is to do the captivity thing. However, there could be hundreds of other ways to solve this issue as well, we just are not told. So to say almost impossible is not supported here.

[ErinL367]

Why is E wrong? Is it because "feasible" is wrong?

[ohthatpatrick]

"most feasible" is definitely extreme and unsupported, but a bigger problem is that we were never talking about "increasing egg production".

We were only talking about "trying to increase the rate of eggs that hatch".

We are told that a breeding pair can only produce a few eggs over the course of their lifetime, so the author isn't thinking that we can save the condor by increasing the number of eggs produced.

She's thinking we can help save the condor by protecting the eggs that are produced, in captivity, so that more of them hatch.

[a8l367]

to survive in the wild... population must be increased...through increase in the # of eggs hatching (which is almost imossible in the wild)
- which strongly supports
A) thay become extinct in the wild
=> why this is wrong? because of "almost impossible"
D) if more eggs do not hatch = will not survive
=> more than what? more than currently? what if currently rate of hatching is 100% because most condors NOT in the wild?

please explain

[ohthatpatrick]

(A) is wrong the author does not express certainty that the condor will become extinct in the wild.
To the contrary, she proposes a solution to AVOID that scenario (breed the condor in captivity and then let it return to the wild).

(D) "more than" what? More than NOW, whatever reference point that is.
Your idea that maybe 100% of eggs currently hatch is not a great LSAT thought. That's an incredibly extreme/unlikely supposition to consider (and we're doing a "most supported" task, not a must be true task).

According to the information,
"If the condor survives in wild, breeding population is greatly increased".
so by contrapositive
"If breeding population isn't greatly increased, then the condo will not survive in the wild".

The information definitely supports the idea that if we don't get more eggs to hatch, we won't have greatly increased the breeding population, and thus the condor won't survive in the wild.

[BarryM800]

This is a Most Strongly Supported question. I would normally think of using formal logic in Must Be True questions. So which part in the logic chain makes the Test Maker think it's not 100% provable and thus not use a MBT question stem, but a MSS question stem instead? Or is this a pattern, another trick the Test Maker uses to further confuse us?

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you're asking,
"If (D) is 100% provable, why didn't they use a Must Be True stem (is it a mean misdirection)?"

"If (D) is not 100% provable, what part of it is not entirely provable?"

Whether it's MBT or MSS, if we see conditional logic, we should still use it the same way.

Whether it's MBT or MSS, a 100% supported answer would still be correct.

So I wouldn't put too much daylight between those question stems. MSS is definitely skewing more towards Causal inferences, while MBT features more conditional and quantitative stuff. But for all of these, if you approach the answer choices with the idea of "which is most provable", you'll always be picking the same answer whether it was worded MBT or MSS.

The part of (D) that's not guaranteed is that it's only "extremely unlikely" that most eggs won't hatch in the wild. It's not a certainty. Thus, it's not a certainty that the condor would go extinct in the wild.