Q21 - All social systems are based

[mymansupa]

Hey... I KNEW (C) could have been correct, I just could not wrap my head around the double negative!!! They always give me a hard time... which in turn made me choose (E) and I knew it was wrong (I just chose it because it was clever worded) It psyched me out, because I know (E) interchanged "a social system foreign" with a "foreign social system" I just could not explain the double negative... Any tips on how to dismantle double negs.??? Thank you...

[cyruswhittaker]

I know what you mean about the double negatives..they can be especially tricky, especially when under time pressure.

For me, it helped me to see choice (C) as an if-then statement, with the part following "would" as the "necessary" part of the statement. You can also think of it without the negatives as its contrapositive.

I'm not sure if this will help you, but I find that some LSAT questions seem to provide answers/questions in particularly contorted ways, and it can be helpful to restructure the phrase mentally in a way that is more comprehensible.

Good luck tomorrow!

[LSAT-Chang]

I was down to C and D on this one and I see why C is correct but what is wrong with D?? Is it because we have no evidence of technologically advance societies placing "little value" on prestige associated with an economic role? I thought the last sentence tells us that technology will tend to undermine the values in the social system, and doesnt D say that??

[timmydoeslsat]

I will go through the entire problem to be thorough.

Stimulus:

Social Systems ---> Division of economic roles

Values of a social system ---> Embodied in prestige given to people who fill various economic roles
________________________________________________________

Introduction of labor-saving technology in any social system that makes certain economic roles obsolete will tend to undermine values in social system

That is a mouthful of a conclusion. I would look at it like this:

Labor reducing technology most of the time will undermine values of a social system


Answer choices:

A) This is basically an illegal negation. We know:

Tech ---> Changing values
~Tech ---> ~Changing values

Eliminate.

B) We know that labor saving technology will undermine the values in a social system. However, there may be technology that has no effect on values in a social system. I would imagine that technology that does not touch labor would fit the bill.

Eliminate. Way too strong.

C) This makes sense.

It is worded in a difficult way, but


Technology can eliminate economic roles ---> ~Social system that has unchanging values

We know this is true because to tamper with the economic roles would be to tamper with the values.


D) There are a couple of things wrong with this answer choice.

One, a technologically advanced society could be a society that has little labor saving technology, but a lot of other great technology.

Secondly, I think the word "little" is too strong. They may place great value on the prestige, it would just have to be the case that the values of that social system would be changing. They would not remain stagnant if it were to include labor-saving technology.

E) Talks about foreign technological innovations. We are told nothing about that aspect, especially "tend" for that matter.

[LSAT-Chang]

Thank you for the thorough explanation. This really helps a lot!! I can see I made wrong inferences in (D), I assumed "technologically advanced society" = "labor saving technology" definitely fell into one of those detail creep answers!

[jimmy902o]

My first impression about answer choice C was that when it said "a social system whose values are not susceptible to change" was out of the stimulus' scope. My understanding was that it focused on systems that were susceptible to change and that an answer like C should be thrown out because there is not enough (is this example any) information on it to make a value judgment.


For example consider this argument, "mike was not doing well in his science class so he decided to spend and extra week studying before taking his final exam, and got an A" and similar to C we would throw out an answer choice that stated "the reason mike got an A was because he did not watch any television"...thought likely we dont have enough evidence to prove this answer

not sure if that is the best analogy but want to provide more insight into why i think C should be wrong. any clarification would be appreciated

[ohthatpatrick]

My first impression about answer choice C was that when it said "a social system whose values are not susceptible to change" was out of the stimulus' scope. My understanding was that it focused on systems that were susceptible to change and that an answer like C should be thrown out because there is not enough (is this example any) information on it to make a value judgment.

For example consider this argument, "mike was not doing well in his science class so he decided to spend and extra week studying before taking his final exam, and got an A" and similar to C we would throw out an answer choice that stated "the reason mike got an A was because he did not watch any television"...thought likely we dont have enough evidence to prove this answer

Hey, there.

I think your analogy isn't quite a good match. Your sample choice (C) brings in something totally new: "watching television".

Q21's choice (C) is not bringing in something new.

As you said, it's dealing with the opposite of what we were talking about.

"didn't mention it" and "mentioned the opposite of that" are two importantly different things.

Suppose we were told:
Everyone who spends an extra week studying gets an A on the science exam.

Could we infer:
(C) Anyone who doesn't get an A on the science exam didn't spend an extra week studying.

Yes, because (C) is just the contrapositive of the original statement.

It's okay that, before, we were talking about people who DO get an A and, now, we're talking about people who DON'T get an A.

In Q21, it said that
Any social system that introduces labor-saving tech that renders some economic roles obsolete will tend to change values.

So we can infer that social systems in which the values CANNOT be changed would have to be one in which there won't be labor-saving tech making some economic roles obsolete.

Hope this helps.

[dean.won]

i think this basically what patrick is saying but... is C the contrapositive of the conclusion? with the word "change" substituted for "weaken"?

[boy5237]

Basically, C is the contrapositive of the conclusion.

It says: Economic Role Obsolete -> undermine social system values

C says: Not susceptible to change of social values (or not undermined social system values) -> will not eliminate economic roles (or not economic role obsolete or economic role will be sustained)

[vincent.m]

Hey guys,

I missed this the first time and I just want to see if this could be right:

It says the introduction of labor-saving technology that makes certain economic roles obsolete will tend to undermine the values in that social system.

So,

A: Out because who's to say there aren't things other than technology that could change values.

B: Out because we only know about one type of technology.

D: Out because "A technologically advanced society will place little value..." The language says tends, so can we say it will definitely happen?

E: Foreign technology is out of scope

C: Correct because if the values are definitely not susceptible to change then technology that only tends to undermine the values in a social system will not be able to change the economic roles.

[nickwiggins]

Hi Patrick,

Helpful explanation. My fundamental problem with C is that it treats "the undermining of values" with "susceptibility to change" as synonymous in the logic chain of ~ undermining of values --> ~ introduction of labor-changing technology and introduction of labor changing technology --> undermining of values. For example, one could say that a regime is being undermined by opposition elements, but that regime may not be susceptible to change (see Russia, others). Is this just an example where we need to be flexible in our interpretation of language? I sometimes find it hard on the LSAT to know when to make literal interpretations of language and when to be more flexible.

Thanks,
Nick

[ohthatpatrick]

Picture something that cannot be changed:
speed of light?
our mortality?
the fact that girls don't possess a Y chromosome?

(It's a testament to how far science has come that as I write these examples, I'm thinking, "Hmmm, maybe this COULD be changed")

Anyway, assuming we can't change the speed of light, our mortality, or girls' having two X chromosomes ...

Can we undermine any of those things?

Can you undermine the speed of light? Can you undermine our impending death?

It's not like going faster / slower undermines the speed of light. It still is the same ol' 300,000 km /sec. It's not like extending your life span undermines its finite nature.

I think, as you surmised, you're picturing real world uses of 'undermine' that are more synonymous with "in opposition to / disapproval of / differing goals"?

I probably have a more narrow definition of 'undermine' as "to make worse / to make harder". With THAT definition, undermining something always changes it.

To your broader question, YES you'll definitely have to be flexible with how you interpret utterances of words that can imply different things in different contexts. And also, remind yourself that the question stem asks "which can MOST reasonably be concluded", not "which one MUST be true".

That difference always buys you a little looseness with language.