Q20 - Shy adolescents often devote themselves

[Shiggins]

Just having trouble with this question. I am convincing myelf about B but feel I lack a good understanding of it's relationship to the argument. If anyone can help. Thank you.

[timmydoeslsat]

Core of the argument:

Shy kids sometimes totally devote themselves to a hobby to distract from loneliness that was caused by their shyness.

+

Sometimes they become friends by doing those hobbies, but if the shy kids lose interest in their hobby, then their loneliness may become worse.

---> The hobby idea is not a successful strategy for overcoming loneliness for a child.


The conclusion should make you want to do somersaults or back flips! Successful strategy? Where did that come from?

Just because loneliness may become worse does not take away that this might be a successful strategy. Perhaps that may refers to one child out of 10,000...and the rest of the children did not have this happen.

For the author to say very matter of factly that this hobby strategy is NOT a successful strategy.

We can expect this necessary assumption question to hinge on this, but you never know with these types of questions. We need an open mind and think about what is necessary, and try the negation test.

Answer choices:

A) Is not necessary to the conclusion. Even if they do not want a wider circle of friends provided by their hobby, it does nothing to the conclusion.

B) A conditional statement:

Success strat ---> ~Intensifies loneliness

And as we can see from the contrapositive:

Intensifies loneliness ---> ~Success strat

To show its necessity, show the necessary condition absent even when the sufficient exists. So to negate B to say this:

Even if a strategy intensifies loneliness ---> It is a successful strategy.

That would ruin the author's conclusion. This is because the author could no longer matter of factly state that this hobby strategy is not a successful one.

C) What happens if shy kids do not make friends is of no consequence to our conclusion.

D) Not necessary. There could be other strategies or there could be none. Does not take away from the idea of this one not being a successful one.

E) Nothing necessary about mainly, especially towards a conclusion of a strategy not being a successful one.

[rpcuhk]

The correct answer choice is a great example of how the LSAT use negative language to confuse readers.

The core is "The strategy sometimes does xxx --> it is not a successful strategy".

The assumption is "No successful strategy does xxx". Translation, "a successful strategy does not xxx." If the correct answer is stated in the later form, it would be much easier to single it out.

[cserge18]

Question 20 Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Conclusion: An all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy to get over loneliness as a teenager.

Reasoning: Sometimes shy adolescents can make friends through a hobby. But if they lost interest in the hobby then they might get even lonelier.

Analysis: This argument isn’t quite good. We don’t know what happens once a teenager drops a hobby and gets lonelier. Maybe they go and make new friends in a bit. Having a hobby might
have taught them how to meet people.

A. Even if adolescents don’t want more friends they may still lose the friends they have if they abandon the hobby.

B. Yes. If a successful strategy for getting past loneliness can intensity that loneliness then perhaps a hobby can be a successful strategy even though it could make you lonelier. (Correct)

C. It doesn’t matter what adolescents do if they don’t make any friends from a hobby. The strategy has failed in that case.

D. This doesn’t have to be true. Perhaps no strategy is successful.

E. It doesn’t matter why teenagers start hobbies. The question is: will the hobbies help them make friends?

[deedubbew]

I chose C because I was looking for something that would make the conclusion logically follow. B did cross my mind when I still had my head on straight about looking for the assumption, but none of the answer choices really seemed like necessary assumptions. Though B did seem necessary, it seemed irrelevant. I thought the answer choice had to have something to do with the hobby being all-consuming.

[maryadkins]

I think you want to step back and reconsider the core here. The core is:

if kids lose interest in their hobby they'll be even lonelier

-->

hobbies aren't successful for overcoming loneliness

So the conclusion is about overcoming loneliness and hobbies not being great for that. Why would hobbies need to be all-consuming in order for this to be true? They could just take up some of your time and still be bad and helping you overcome loneliness.

The correct answer will link the fact that sometimes kids will get even lonelier thanks to hobbies with the much more extreme conclusion that hobbies are therefore simply NOT a good way to get over loneliness. (B) does this.

And thanks for the breakdown, timmydoeslsat"”looks great.

[ying_yingjj]

Thanks to all the previous posts.

Without your explanations, I would not be able to understand what (B) was talking about.

Now it is easy for me to do the analysis once I understand it. Just sharing my analysis in case it may help you to diagram. It has a lot do with keywords "sometimes" and "may". Since sometimes and may are not definite in terms, we should go little flexible on the diagrams. The logic of the passage is:

1. an all-consuming hobby ------> sometimes maybe able to make friends

and

2. an all-consuming hobby (when lost interest) ------> sometimes may intensify (exacerbate) loneliness (even worsen kids original loneliness)

Conclusion: an all-consuming hobby --------> not a successful strategy

Bc of the "may" and sometimes, we have sometimes 1 and sometimes 2, both are valid.

Look at 2 and extend it to the newly appeared term "not successful", 2 looks like:

an all-consuming hobby (when lost interest) ------> sometimes may intensify (exacerbate) loneliness -----> not successful

This connects the argument perfectly.

So I think for this question, the indefinite term "sometimes" and "maybe" have to be analyzed as I wrote above.

[jeanne'sjean]

Just want to confirm that if (B) is also the SUFFICIENT assumption for the argument to work?

[DavidH327]

B) A conditional statement:

Success strat ---> ~Intensifies loneliness

And as we can see from the contrapositive:

Intensifies loneliness ---> ~Success strat

To show its necessity, show the necessary condition absent even when the sufficient exists. So to negate B to say this:

Even if a strategy intensifies loneliness ---> It is a successful strategy.

That would ruin the author's conclusion. This is because the author could no longer matter of factly state that this hobby strategy is not a successful one.

So when doing a negation, can I also do
Success strat ---> Intensifies lonliness?

In this case, it doesn't look like harming the conclusion because it can still be "not successful strategy" even though it intensifies lonliness.

I am just confused on how to negate conditional statement.
If its negating necessary condition, then which necessary condition do we choose?

[Emmeline Ndongue]

B) A conditional statement:

Success strat ---> ~Intensifies loneliness

And as we can see from the contrapositive:

Intensifies loneliness ---> ~Success strat

To show its necessity, show the necessary condition absent even when the sufficient exists. So to negate B to say this:

Even if a strategy intensifies loneliness ---> It is a successful strategy.

That would ruin the author's conclusion. This is because the author could no longer matter of factly state that this hobby strategy is not a successful one.

So when doing a negation, can I also do
Success strat ---> Intensifies lonliness?

In this case, it doesn't look like harming the conclusion because it can still be "not successful strategy" even though it intensifies lonliness.

I am just confused on how to negate conditional statement.
If its negating necessary condition, then which necessary condition do we choose?

I came up with the same negation! "even if" is different than only if.
"Even if a strategy intensifies loneliness ---> It is a successful strategy."
this means
"Strategy intensifies loneliness-->it's a successful strategy + Strategy doesn't intensify loneliness-->it's a successful strategy"
it basically means no matter it intensify loneliness or not, it's a successful strategy

I believe the wording here is in question. I really hope Timmy can come back and clarify this