Q23 - Inventor: All highly successful

[smiller]

Question Type:
Inference

Stimulus Breakdown:
highly successful entrepreneur → main desire to leave mark on the world
highly successful entrepreneur ⟷ (see solution → implement solution)
~ highly successful entrepreneur → too interested in leisure or job security to always implement solution

Answer Anticipation:
We know that people who always implement the solutions they discover are highly successful entrepreneurs, and every highly successful entrepreneur’s main desire is to leave a mark on the world.

Correct answer:
(C)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Unsupported: The stimulus tells us about characteristics of highly successful entrepreneurs, and tells us about people who are not highly successful entrepreneurs, but never mentions what percentage of all people fit into each of those categories. Based on the information in the stimulus, we can’t infer that most people do not want to leave a mark on the world, or why people don’t. We know why some people don’t implement solutions to problems, but not why people do not want to leave a mark on the world.

(B) Unsupported: We know that people who invariably implement solutions are highly successful entrepreneurs. But we don’t know if all of those entrepreneurs, or any of them, have an interest in leisure time or job security.

(C) Correct. This is a connection that we predicted above.

(D) Unsupported: We know that a highly successful entrepreneur’s interests in leisure and job security don’t prevent her from implementing solutions, but we have no idea if they affect her ability to see solutions.

(E) Out of Scope: We don’t know anything about people whose main desire is to implement solutions. We know about people whose main desire is to leave a mark on the world.

Takeaway/Pattern:
If this problem left a mark on your score, watch out for answers that rearrange the language found in the stimulus, using ideas from the stimulus to create statements that can’t be supported.

#officialexplanation

[andrewgong01]

"highly successful entrepreneur ⟷ (see solution → implement solution)" For this arrow I was confused as to how you got the bi-conditional arrow. The chain I have (for the entire argument) was :

See Solution --> Implement --> Entrepreneur - Desire leave mark. (this still allows us to get to "C" though ).

"entrepreneurs are unique in that XXX" was the Part I was unsure about but now that I see the answer key is "unique" a conditional like if and only if on the LSAT ?

[ohthatpatrick]

"unique" in many contexts would only tell me for sure that "others = lack it".
It wouldn't tell me for sure that "members = have it".

If we say "Crow's Disease is unique to the Trash Can Islands",
then I know that
anything that ISN'T in the Trash Can Islands is free from Crow's Disease,
but I don't know that
everything IN Trash Can Islands HAS Crow's Disease.

The reason this is a biconditional is because the trait we identify as unique to successful E's is that "WHENEVER they see a solution, they implement it". And the sentence itself begins as a categorical statement about 'successful E's'.

If we said, "Post Traumatic #Blessed Syndrome is unique to highly successful entrepreneurs", it would mean 'only found within their ranks', not 'found throughout all of their ranks'.

But if we say "highly successful E's are unique in that they have six toes on each foot", then we are implying that the trait applies to all highly successful E's.

[Smokyearlgrey]

I think the word "unique" is very important here.

For clarity, I am going to change the phrase (see problem -> implement change) to "risk-takers"

Successful entrepreneurs are unique in that they are "risk-takers"
This means other people cannot be risk-takers because its unique to successful entrepreneurs.

other people ➔ not risk takers

so, if there is a person who is a risk-takers, it has to be the successful entrepreneur.

Suppose in addition that, all successful entrepreneurs are female.
then, all risk-takers are female.

Please correct me for any flaws!

[PhoebeL747]

I think an easy way to view the double arrow is that the third sentence is the negation of the second sentence, therefore the two sentences together create a biconditional.

[ohthatpatrick]

That's a great thought. I don't think it's technically accurate here though.

You're saying that if we have,
If highly successful E's ---> always do X
and we have
If all other people --> never do X

Then we would have a biconditional, where any time someone is doing X we know for sure that they're a highly successful E.

But the third sentence doesn't say that all other people NEVER do X; it only says "they don't always have the motivation to do X".

The 3rd sentence only tells us that "someone who is not a highly successful entrepreneur MIGHT not implement a solution they see".

If we saw that someone was NOT implementing a solution they see, we would know that this person must belong to the group of "all other people".

But if we saw that someone WAS implementing a solution they see, we wouldn't know whether that person was a highly successful entrepreneur or someone from all other people.

[abrenza123]

Patrick, are you saying that if we saw someone implementing a solution they see, we wouldn't be able to tell if they were highly successful entrepreneurs because we wouldn't know if they necessarily implement a solution WHENEVER they see a solution? It could have just been that one time, or 50% of the time? Because of the "not always" in the 3rd sentence, seeing someone implement a solution they see wouldn't be enough to trigger the biconditional, correct? we would need to know that someone implements a solution whenever they see one in order for it to be triggered

[ohthatpatrick]

That's exactly right.

A trigger like in (B) guarantees that you're talking about a highly successful E, since it says "people who invariably implement their solutions".

But if we had a trigger that was just saying
"Anyone who implements their solution", it wouldn't guarantee that we're talking about highly successful E's.