Q22 - Director of personnel

[b91302310]

For this question, I narrowed down answers to (C) and (E). I could see (E) is a better answer but I'm confused why (C) is incorrect. Since the director defends his situation by addressing another issue--the jeopardy of complaints, rather than directly respond to Ms. Tours' standpoint--her performance is superior to others, could we say that he sidestpes the issue? Or, is it incorrect because the issue (argument) is whether Ms. Tour can get salary raised but is not whether superior job performance is a suitable basis for awarding salary increases, which is too broad? Thus, the director does not sidestep the issue because he disagree that Ms. Tours' salary should increase and he just uses a different view to support his side.

Could anyone explain it?

Thanks.

[bbirdwell]

He doesn't sidestep the issue. In fact, he openly acknowledges that her evidence is "compelling" and that her complaint is justified. He just goes further, adding a new idea - complaining - to reach the conclusion that her request should be denied.

[KakaJaja]

Hey, I don't really understand why B is incorrect?

The last sentence said to raise the salary of Tours would send the message that one can get the salary raised if he just complains enough.

Obviously Tour not just complains enough, she does give sounding reasons?

Thank you!!

[alexg89]

Hey, I don't really understand why B is incorrect?

The last sentence said to raise the salary of Tours would send the message that one can get the salary raised if he just complains enough.

Obviously Tour not just complains enough, she does give sounding reasons?

Thank you!!

B is incorrect because it does not undermine the persuasiveness of Ms. Tours evidence, they agree that it is compelling. The bit about complaining is actually characterizing others who could abuse the system without necessarily having as valid a reason.

[medtolaw]

The director of personnel is faced with a true dilemma whether to approve or deny Ms. Tours' request for adjustments. When anyone has a dilemma they tend to weigh the pros and cons of either choice, but it doesn't happen in this stimulus. The director of personnel chose a biased conclusion based on biased evidence which is why this argument is flawed.

[mkd000]

I'm having trouble breaking down the stimulus to the argument core. Could someone help me with this? Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

I’d be happy to break down the core. What’s sort of ironic is that this paragraph is SUPER, SUPER long (the longest one I can remember ever reading in LR), but the argument core is puny.

Conc:
Ms. T’s request (for a salary adjustment) should be denied

why?

Prem:
She filed a complaint, and if we comply with her complaint, we’ll send a bad message to other employees that they can get their salaries raised if they just complain enough.

What’s a potential objection we could make to this reasoning?

Well, the first 12 lines of this stimulus were all about how JUSTIFIED and COMPELLING Ms. T’s complaint is. Her bosses clearly think that she DOES deserve the salary adjustment she is requesting.

So, common sense tells us that she SHOULD get the raise. The only reason the bosses are scared to give her a raise is that they think that doing so would send a bad message to employees, “you can get a raise if you just complain enough.”

Would it really send that message? Is that really how Ms. T is getting her raise? Because she just complained enough?

No .. she’s getting it because of one, well-justified, formal request for a salary adjustment.

Another way we might react to this argument is to say, “So what if it sends a troubling message to other employees? Ms. T deserves the raise. You’ll have to just deal with the consequences of other employees being sent a bad message.”

[pacificbonito]

Hi. Sorry if this sounds nit-picky, but I get upset when I get a question wrong and don't fully understand or agree with the reasoning, so I was hoping some of you LSAT insiders might help me to understand.

I don't see how the issue is not being sidestepped, even though it was acknowledged. I grant that I may not have a proper definition of 'sidestep'.
By ultimately concluding that the raise should not be given while simultaneously stating that it is warranted seems totally like sidestepping the issue to me.

In re-reading the material, I see I glossed over 'suitable basis' in the answer choice, my fault. However the question stem, to me anyways, states that she is ENTITLED to a raise. I internalized that in my reading (perhaps a bad habit) and operated on that precept. Again, I do feel C is tricky, but isn't any reason for denying a raise to which someone is entitled ultimately sidestepping that (theoretical?) reasoning for a raise? We're talking about "merit raises" here, i thought, and so was the main flaw in my reasoning to equate 'superior job performance' with "merit"?

I mean, I rejected E because it talks about "implications [of]... integrity". I thought the reasoning was most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that Ms. Tours is ENTITLED to a raise. Furthermore, "Ms. Tours presents compelling evidence", seeming that her sense of entitlement is not misplaced but rather VALID.

Oh well, I suppose I got lost in some sort of victim-rights considerations by interjecting my self into what have should have been an objective reading. It seems I did not understand the TRUE argument, but perhaps implications instead.

Nonetheless, could someone tell me how the issue is not sidestepped when Ms Tours ultimately did not receive a raise, assuming the personnel directors reasoning is followed?

I mean, how could there even be an argument if her raise wasn't justified? Why would they argue or deliberate or consider or whatever if there was not a valid claim, instead of simply dismissing it out of hand like some crackpot with no logic? Again, sorry for the long post. Probably agonizing over these questions is my biggest problem. Thanks for the help you guys have provided for everyone.

[seychelles1718]

I narrowed down to A and E and I do not understand why A has to be incorrect and E has to be correct.
Could anyone please help me?

Thanks!!!

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a breakdown of all five answer choices:

Let's keep in mind
AUTHOR - request for raise should be denied
ANTI-CONC (the Weaken point of view) - request for raise should be granted

(A) Would it weaken the argument, would it help us to argue that the raise should be granted, by saying that we could handle her complaint on an official basis? No, because it says in the 2nd sentence that "an official response is required". We can't get out of that.

(B) The author says that Ms. T's complain appears to be justified and characterizes her evidence as "compelling". Thus the author is not characterizing HER request as "mere complaining".

(C) the author does NOT "sidestep" or fail to address whether superior job performance is a suitable basis for a raise. The author says, after acknowledging the evidence that Ms. T had superior job performance, that "her complaint thus appears justified".

This is acknowledging that superior job performance IS a suitable basis for a raise. That's what makes (C) wrong.

What makes (C) tempting is that there is a competing concern at play here: would other employees be sent a bad message if Ms. T was granted the raise.

The author DOES sidestep the issue of weighing the potential harm of sending a bad message against the potential good of granting Ms. T her justified raise.

(D) If some of the people who got raises were entitled to them, then it seems like we'd be more convinced that Ms. T deserves a raise.

However, just because some year's Best Picture winner wasn't a truly great film doesn't mean that any of the films that were NOT picked that year truly WERE great films. So we have to be careful with that logic. The other problem is that the author openly agrees that Ms. T DOES deserve the raise. So reinforcing that point is only agreeing with something the author has already acknowledged.

Our real gripe is "How are you weighing the +/- of giving her a deserved raise vs. the +/- of sending a bad (even if erroneous) message to employees?"

(E) This gets to our real gripe. Our author talks about the downside of granting the raise. What is the downside of denying the raise? We need to consider that and weigh it against the pro/cons of granting the raise.

[laurenvarg]

I understand this flaw and got the right answer, I'm just doing an in depth study of "identifying the flaws" and am wondering how you would classify this flaw?

[ohthatpatrick]

I wouldn't classify it. It doesn't seem like one of the dozen or so recycled flaws.

If we wanted to describe it in more general, portable terms, I might say:
"The author prioritizes one of two competing concerns without justifying why she picks one concern over the other".

There's a whisper of Internal Contradiction, but it's not a pure contradiction. It just feels like the author built a pretty good case AGAINST herself.

There are definitely a number of Flaw questions that present competing views/concerns and then seem to side with one over the other without justifying that preference. Here are a couple in the same section!
Test 51, S1, Q10 (recent report vs. older reports)
Test 51, S1, Q15 (typological vs. standard model)

[laurenvarg]

This is very helpful. I thought that all flawed arguments could fall into one of those buckets int he book. I have been struggling with flaw questions so I did an aggressive deep dive into that chapter and my strategy has been to identify the flaw and then attack the answers. (not when timed, but in my slow practice). So this clears up quite a bit of confusion.

Thank you!

I wouldn't classify it. It doesn't seem like one of the dozen or so recycled flaws.

If we wanted to describe it in more general, portable terms, I might say:
"The author prioritizes one of two competing concerns without justifying why she picks one concern over the other".

There's a whisper of Internal Contradiction, but it's not a pure contradiction. It just feels like the author built a pretty good case AGAINST herself.

There are definitely a number of Flaw questions that present competing views/concerns and then seem to side with one over the other without justifying that preference. Here are a couple in the same section!
Test 51, S1, Q10 (recent report vs. older reports)
Test 51, S1, Q15 (typological vs. standard model)