Q17 - People want to be instantly

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Sufficient Assumption

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: It is imprudent to appear prudent.
Evidence: If you are perceived as forming opinions of others only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence, then you are resented.

Any prephrase?
We can reformulate this in the following manner… If you appear prudent, then you are resented. Thus, it is imprudent to appear prudent. We can manipulate the evidence as above because "perceived as cautiously forming opinions" = "appearing prudent." The gap becomes easier to spot now. It is imprudent to have people resent you.

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
A) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.

B) relates being imprudent with being instantly and intuitively liked. But this is not the term that needs to be related. We need to relate resented with imprudent because the term resented is mentioned in relation to those who are "perceived as cautiously gathering weighting evidence."

C) is a tempting answer choice relating being resented with what is prudent. The fundamental issue with answer choice (C) is that the point about being prudent is a relative claim - "less prudent than themselves." There is no match in the stimulus that makes being prudent a relative statement.

D) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.

E) bridges the gap. If it is imprudent to cause people to resent you, and being perceived by others as cautiously gathering and weighing evidence creates resentment, then it is imprudent to "appear" prudent.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is definitely a unique Sufficient Assumption question, because there were TWO new words in the conclusion: imprudent and prudent. One of them (prudent) had a definitional synonym match in the evidence (cautiously gathering and weighing evidence before forming an opinion). That's unusual for Sufficient Assumption. Normally, there are verbatim word matches for the Overlapping Ideas, and we just need to patch together the Leftover ideas. Since Sufficient Assumption is asking for ONE idea that will by itself create the closed circuit of logic, we really can't have multiple loose ends. That concept may have helped us realize we need to equate "prudent" with "cautiously gathering/weighing evidence"

#officialexplanation

[yusangmin]

Hello

I really suck at these types of justify questions where it's kind of like math where you plug in something to the equation, or connect something.

Ok so i chose E, but this is my only rationale. The dude said blah blah blah are generally resented. thus it is imprudent to appear prudent.

ok so if you cause people to resent you, then you are imprudent.
Ok seems good enough.

But other than that i dont really get it.
1)The bed of other confusing answer choices woulda thrown me off SO badly had i not scanned and luckily landed on D. What is the main point here? what leap in logic is he making?

2)would it be right if there was an answer that said: those who are perceived as forming opinions of others only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence appear prudent. The main thing i wanna ask is, when has he ever proven that the whole forming opinions of others cautiously is prudent? is that somethign so obvious that we need to take it for granted?

OR would that still not justify it because it wouldnt prove that these actions are IMPRUDENT..
dangit...i hate these...

ALSO

[gotomedschool]

So we have:

P: AP ---> GR

______________

C: AP---->IM



The missing link: GR---->IM; aka (E) It is imprudent to cause people to resent you; Cause people to resent you(GR)---->then Imprudent(IM)


P: AP--->GR
(A): GR---->IM
_____________
C: AP--->GR--->IM

[jayparkcom]

Hi, I really want to solve this by using the conditional logic.
Could someone help me out?

I mean the previous post attempted to do so but I don't understand how he came up with such notations.

As far as I am concerned, the argument is broken down into the following:

People -> Want to be liked
Appear prudent -> Resented
---
Therefore, Imprudent -> Appear prudent.

With the above structure, you can't get an assumption...

Help me out please?

[Dkrajewski30]

This is a tough one...

It requires a little interpretation, which generally is not a skill that benefits you very much on the LSAT.

The argument core is the following:

If you are perceived as forming opinions of others only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence, then you are resented.

Thus, it is imprudent to appear prudent.

We can reformulate this in the following manner...

If you appear prudent, then you are resented.

Thus, it is imprudent to appear prudent.

We can manipulate the evidence as above because "perceived as cautiously forming opinions" = "appearing prudent."

The gap becomes easier to spot now.

It is imprudent to have people resent you.

(A) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.
(B) relates being imprudent with being instantly and intuitively liked. But this is not the term that needs to be related. We need to relate resented with imprudent because the term resented is mentioned in relation to those who are "perceived as cautiously gathering weighting evidence."
(C) is a tempting answer choice relating being resented with what is prudent. The fundamental issue with answer choice (C) is that the point about being prudent is a relative claim - "less prudent than themselves." There is no match in the stimulus that makes being prudent a relative statement.
(D) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.
(E) bridges the gap. If it is imprudent to cause people to resent you, and being perceived by others as cautiously gathering and weighing evidence creates resentment, then it is imprudent to "appear" prudent.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need me to elaborate anywhere...

I was stuck on this one. E was the only one that guaranteed the conclusion IF, of course, you conflate prudence with 'cautiously gathering and....'. But am I wrong to say that this is not something the LSAT generally permits you to interpret? Particularly on a sufficient assumption question, the assumption should be absolutely foolproof and guarantee the conclusion. But E doesn't necessarily guarantee the conclusion if what we mean by 'prudence' is NOT being cautious about gathering and weighing evidence. It seems you have to assume THAT in order for E to guarantee the argument's conclusion, and that seems unwarranted on this question type. Warranted on a paradox question? Probably. But not on a question where your assumption needs to be foolproof.

So conceivably you could grant E and yet the argument's conclusion wouldn't follow.

But am I being much too strict to not conflate prudence with what E does? Is it just a commonsense assumption that I should be making? I mean, yeah, it makes sense to conflate prudence with just being cautious in general. But I don't believe I've often had to make such commonsense assumptions IN ORDER FOR sufficient assumptions to work - at least explicitly. I suppose we're making them implicitly all the time.

[rickytucker]

I was stuck on this one. E was the only one that guaranteed the conclusion IF, of course, you conflate prudence with 'cautiously gathering and....'. But am I wrong to say that this is not something the LSAT generally permits you to interpret? Particularly on a sufficient assumption question, the assumption should be absolutely foolproof and guarantee the conclusion. But E doesn't necessarily guarantee the conclusion if what we mean by 'prudence' is NOT being cautious about gathering and weighing evidence. It seems you have to assume THAT in order for E to guarantee the argument's conclusion, and that seems unwarranted on this question type. Warranted on a paradox question? Probably. But not on a question where your assumption needs to be foolproof.

So conceivably you could grant E and yet the argument's conclusion wouldn't follow.

But am I being much too strict to not conflate prudence with what E does? Is it just a commonsense assumption that I should be making? I mean, yeah, it makes sense to conflate prudence with just being cautious in general. But I don't believe I've often had to make such commonsense assumptions IN ORDER FOR sufficient assumptions to work - at least explicitly. I suppose we're making them implicitly all the time.

Since the directions in the LSAT state, "you should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible, superfluous, or incompatible with the passage." And describing as prudent: one who acts "only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence" is by no commonsense standard considered implausible, superfluous, etc... So I think this is something the LSAT would permit us to interpret.

[ganbayou]

This is a tough one...

It requires a little interpretation, which generally is not a skill that benefits you very much on the LSAT.

The argument core is the following:

If you are perceived as forming opinions of others only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence, then you are resented.

Thus, it is imprudent to appear prudent.

We can reformulate this in the following manner...

If you appear prudent, then you are resented.

Thus, it is imprudent to appear prudent.

We can manipulate the evidence as above because "perceived as cautiously forming opinions" = "appearing prudent."

The gap becomes easier to spot now.

It is imprudent to have people resent you.

(A) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.
(B) relates being imprudent with being instantly and intuitively liked. But this is not the term that needs to be related. We need to relate resented with imprudent because the term resented is mentioned in relation to those who are "perceived as cautiously gathering weighting evidence."
(C) is a tempting answer choice relating being resented with what is prudent. The fundamental issue with answer choice (C) is that the point about being prudent is a relative claim - "less prudent than themselves." There is no match in the stimulus that makes being prudent a relative statement.
(D) does not discuss what is prudent or imprudent, so cannot bridge the gap to the conclusion.
(E) bridges the gap. If it is imprudent to cause people to resent you, and being perceived by others as cautiously gathering and weighing evidence creates resentment, then it is imprudent to "appear" prudent.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need me to elaborate anywhere...

When is it allowed to put in different terms between premise and conclusion?
How often does this happen in LSAT?
I think if you do not know the meaning of "prudent", you cannot really solve this question...

[tommywallach]

I don't understand the question. What do you mean "put things between"? Could you try wording this more clearly? In general, please do your best to write with perfect grammar on the forums. It makes it clearer for people reading, and it's also good practice for essay writing!

And yes, there are many LSAT questions that depend on having a pretty impressive vocabulary in order to solve them!

-t

[ganbayou]

In the premise it says "cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence " and in the conclusion it says "prudent."
So I guess what I wanted to ask is...
When is it allowed to use different words to mean the same things?
Hope this time I asked correctly...

[tommywallach]

Perfect!

And yes, the phenomenon you're describing is INCREDIBLY common (i.e. the majority of questions). It would be too easy if they used the same words, so they use different words that end up meaning the same thing. Expect it on all hard questions, and most medium questions too.

-t

[cverdugo]

Really tough question to wrap my head around. I got it right on my initial drilling but it took me some time but once I spotted the gap it led me right to E.

The conclusion is: Imprudent to appear prudent

My initial reaction was "what the hell does he mean prudent?" I was trying to figure out what exactly they were talking about. It finally hit me that appear prudent was basically being substituted for 2nd sentence. This allowed me to connect resented with imprudent.

I'm start to gain some confidence with these questions, I want to be able to spot the gaps and go into these answer choices with a clear prediction. This one really hurt because the answer choices seem so all over the place.

[donghai819]

Thought the previous conditional logic was a bit simplified, and I'd like to wrap up a little bit here.

First sentence isn't very useful in answering the question-it is more like an "introduction"(background information) to the question stimulus.

The second sentence is important and very wordy, which makes this one difficult. It's basically saying that people who speculate a lot before taking actions are often resented (these guys are too sophisticated to make friends in daily life too). The phrase, "are perceived as forming opinions of others only after cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence," can be interpreted as "being prudent", partly because "prudent" corresponds to "cautious".

So we'd get: being cautious will result in getting hatreds of others, aka, prudent --> resent;

In the last sentence, which is the conclusion, we'd get: to appear prudent is imprudent, aka, prudent --> imprudent;

Here we'd get another classic lsat takeaway: when we have A--> B as the premise and A--> C as the conclusion, we are expected to find the answer to be something like: B-->C or ~C-->~B, in order to make the argument solid.

Go back to this question. we'd link second half of the premise, which is "resent", to the second half of the conclusion, which is "imprudent", and then we'd get "resent-->imprudent". If we translate it into English, we'd have "it is imprudent to cause people to resent you," which is exactly what E says.

[SamuelE112]

For Sufficient Assumption Questions what must we always look for similar language to that of the conclusion?

Conc: It is imprudent to appear prudent

Answer Choice E: It is Imprudent to cause people to resent you.

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm not sure I understand your question ... are you asking WHY do we look for matching language?

Or were you asking WHAT matching language are we looking for?



Our task on Sufficient Assumption is to prove a claim. Do you remember writing geometry proofs back in junior high / high school? It's the same idea. You need a bunch of axioms / definitions that can be combined in order to derive the final outcome.

Picture a mathematical example:

I want you to prove that A = Z.

Givens:
A = B
and
B = C

What other given would you need in order to prove that A = Z?


Need:
C = Z

(B = Z would also work, but it's not a typical LSAT answer, because they want to reward us for knowing that
A -> B -> C)

If I'm asking you to prove that A = Z,
and I provide you with A = B and B = C,
why do you know that the missing given needs to reference Z?


Because you can't prove A = Z until you have a given about A and a given about Z.

That's why with Sufficient Assumption we stress the idea of a NEW GUY IN THE CONCLUSION.
If there's an undefined term in the conclusion (meaning, it was never mentioned in the evidence),
then we know that undefined term will be in the correct answer. We can't prove anything about Z until we "know" something about Z.


The other two common forms of Sufficient Assumption arguments work like this:

Prove: A = Z

Givens:
X = Y
Y = Z

Need?
A = X



and
Prove: A = Z

Givens:
A = B
and
Y = Z

Need?
B = Y


On this question, the conclusion was "Prudent --> Imprudent".

Given:
Prudent --> cause people to resent you

Need:
cause people to resent you --> Imprudent

[BarryM800]

This might be splitting hairs, but the premise is a "most" statement with "generally," but the conclusion is conditional. Thus, the argument's conclusion might not be properly drawn regardless, due to a weaker premise. Any thoughts of ways to get around that?

Also, I categorized the first sentence "people want to be instantly and intuitively liked" as a premise, but just an unused premise - if that makes sense. There's no indicator words for me to think the first sentence is background information or opposing. Is that right? Thanks!

[Misti Duvall]

This might be splitting hairs, but the premise is a "most" statement with "generally," but the conclusion is conditional. Thus, the argument's conclusion might not be properly drawn regardless, due to a weaker premise. Any thoughts of ways to get around that?

Also, I categorized the first sentence "people want to be instantly and intuitively liked" as a premise, but just an unused premise - if that makes sense. There's no indicator words for me to think the first sentence is background information or opposing. Is that right? Thanks!

Not splitting hairs, but a good opportunity note a few things about arguments and sufficient assumption question that will hopefully be helpful:

1) Generally doesn't mean most. It's more like probably or usually, a qualifying statement.
2) Regardless, it's ok for the answer to be stronger than the argument for sufficient assumption questions. For sufficient assumption, the answer must be at least as strong as the conclusion.
3) There aren't always premise indicator words, which can make finding the argument core tricky. If you're not sure, compare the information to the conclusion. If it's offered as support for the conclusion, it's a premise. If not, it's something else.