Q16 - If a novelist is popular he or she can vividly

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be False)

Stimulus Breakdown:
CONDITIONAL: Popular novelist -> can vividly imagine characters different from him/her/each other.
CONDITIONAL: Popular novelist -> capable of empathizing with people who have different goals from him/her.
CAUSAL: empathizing with people who have different goals --leads to--> doubting somewhat the genuine value of your own goals.

Answer Anticipation:
The correct answer to Must Be False will usually contradict a conditional or contradict an available inference.

Can we synthesize anything here?
We were essentially given two conditionals: X --> Y, and X --> Z (and W).
We could synthesize that into X --> Y, Z, and W.

They will likely test the contrapositives: If you don't doubt the genuine value of your own desires or you can't empathize w/ people who have different goals, or you can't vividly imagine lots of people different from each other and from you, then you're not a popular novelist.

The correct answer will probably say "this is a popular novelist ... yet it fails to be Y, Z, or W".

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This doesn't contradict anything.

(B) This doesn't contradict anything.

(C) YUP, this contradicts the 2nd conditional. If you're a popular novelist, then you MUST be capable of empathizing with people who have completely different goals.

(D) This doesn't contradict anything.

(E) This doesn't contradict anything.

Takeaway/Pattern: Students often get confused on Must Be False, in part because these are rare. They are often attracted to answers that are Bad Inferences (not derivable from the provided info). But being a bad inference (for example, D is a reversal of what we know to be true) is not the same as actively contradicting something we were told. So I spend very little time thinking about wrong answers on Must Be False. I just look for an answer that takes a conditional we were given, such as "X --> Y", and says something like "this thing is X, even though it's not Y"

#officialexplanation

[JenaM342]

Hello! How would one diagram (D)?

don't have doubts about value of desires --> incapable of empathy with other goals

Or is it the other way around? That wording "No people...." is super confusing!