Q8 - Reasonable people adapt themselves to

[tzyc]

I was not sure between (B) and (E)...
I thought (E) might be correct because the stimulus talks about persistence of unreasonable people.
Is the word "persist" in (E) trying to trick people?
(It may not talk about the same thing)

Thank you

[sumukh09]

E makes a relative claim about the persistence of unreasonable and reasonable people but we can't infer anything about which group is more persistent than the other. We only know that unreasonable people persist on adapting themselves to the world but we can't say that they are more persistent because of this.

B is correct because in the stimulus it says "ALL progress depends on unreasonable people" and if there were ONLY reasonable people then there could be no progress made.

[brendaresendiz91]

So does this mean that not all unreasonable people bring about progress?

[ohthatpatrick]

"Not all" statements are tricky. You want to rephrase them as "Some aren't" to make sure you're thinking about them correctly.

When you see "Not all A are B", you should translate it as "Some A are NOT B".

"not all unreasonable people bring about progress" is the same as
"some unreasonable people do NOT bring about progress", which is basically (D).

Do we know that from the information provided?

No, we don't. The information provided doesn't tell us that there is or isn't progress. It only gives us a rule for progress:

IF there's progress, THEN there are unreasonable people.

Furthermore, it would be perfectly compatible with this information if ALL unreasonable people are able to bring about progress.

Hope this helps.

[nandy_millette]

Since the first statement says:

Reasonable--> Adapt themselves to the world
Unreasonable--->Try the adapt the world to themselves

Can we diagram this as a bi-conditional statement

Reasonable <---->Adapt themselves to the world

[ohthatpatrick]

Oooh, I like the idea, but I don't think that both ideas are opposites.

If I say you're NOT reasonable, does that mean that you're unreasonable?

Yeah, I think that's fair.

If I say you DON'T adapt yourself to the world, does that mean you adapt the world to you?

No, not necessarily.

Who said you had to do any adapting at all? You might be aware that you can't change the world (so you don't try to adapt the world), but also feel incapable of change (you don't adapt yourself). So you just go through life, stubbornly being yourself in the face of a world that stubbornly doesn't change itself to fit your needs.

This is all sounding too much like my last session with my therapist.

Consider this one:
If you like Will Ferrell, then you always laugh at goofy things.
If you don't like Will Ferrell, then you never laugh at goofy things.

Is that a bi-conditional?


No, not quite. Because the negation of "always" isn't "never". It's just "not always".

Hope this helps.

[blairped]

If I were to diagram answer (B), is it ~P --> R OR R--> ~P ?

*P= progress R= reasonable people

I'm confused how to translate a conditional statement when it has BOTH IF (sufficient condition) & ONLY (necessary condition) as in answer (B) "IF there are ONLY reasonable people, there cannot be progress."



Urgent help needed! Thanks a lot in advance !!

[letslsat]

What about C?

[ohthatpatrick]

"depends on" = "requires"

When we write a conditional statement, the Required thing goes on the Right side (which is called the 'necessary' condition).

The last statement in the stimulus says:
"Progress ---requires---> unreasonable people"

(C) says
"Unreasonable people ---guarantees---> progress"

(C) is just an illegal reversal of the last sentence. And the last sentence is ALL we are told about progress.

If it helps, use a real world example.

"Life depends on atmospheric oxygen".

Does that mean that
"if there is oxygen, there will be life"?

Not necessarily. Life might also depend on liquid water, carbon, etc.

Or to hit closer to home
"Getting into Harvard depends on having an LSAT score above 150."

Does that mean that
"If you have an LSAT score above 150, you will get into Harvard"?

[MarkR495]

I totally see why B is correct because it is the contrapositive of the conditional statement in the conclusion:

IF progress ---- > unreasonable people

IF ~ unreasonable people (reasonable people) -------- > ~ progress

But couldn't you say that not having progress does not depend on reasonable people -- therefore you could have a case where some unreasonable people are unable to bring about progress (~ progress). You can still have (some) unreasonable people and not have progress.

I know that unreasonable people isn't sufficient to know that you won't have progress, but you could still have unreasonable people, without having progress. How is (D) worded incorrectly?

EDIT**: I just read the final line in the question again "must also be true". Yeah sure there COULD be unreasonable people without progress, but there could also be a situation where all unreasonable people bring about progress.