Q22 - When a society undergoes

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: You can tell how fast society is changing by how respectful young people are to their elders.
Evidence: When society changes slowly, young people greatly value elders' advice. When a society changes quickly, the opposite (young people don't value elders' advice).

Answer Anticipation:
Hmm, weird argument to crack. It sounds like a classic LSAT "false choice" … when I hear consecutive statements that deal with opposite scenarios, I get wary. (f.e. "People who always jaywalk are evil. People who never jaywalk are virtuous." …. I would start to wonder, 'what about people who SOMETIMES jaywalk?') Similarly, maybe the author's conclusion is flawed simply because she only considers what happens with slow change and rapid change. If society is changing at some moderate, in-between pace, do we have an expectation for how young people would feel about their elders? Also, could there be other factors that also influence how younger members think about their elders? If so, we might look at the deference younger members are showing and mistakenly assume its caused by the rate of societal change, rather than by some other factor. Finally, there is a language shift from whether you value advice and whether you show someone deference. Those seem pretty close, but I could see some separation there. I could definitely still act deferentially (respectfully) to my elders, even if I'm privately thinking, "I don't care about your advice. It's irrelevant to me."

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) The author was never saying that young people know the rate of societal change. She was just saying that observing how young people treat elders could tell US the rate of societal change.

(B) "practically useful" is a little out of scope. This is close to whether advice is "relevant", but I wouldn’t say those concepts are interchangeable. 'Deference' in the conclusion is most closely connected with the idea of "finding value in elders' advice", not "practical usefulness of elders' experience". Those are close, but different. Also, this answer is about whether the experience actually is / isn't useful, when the argument is about whether youn people THINK the experience is / isn't relevant.

(C) Yes. This is more appealing because it bridges from a premise idea "how much young people value elders' advice" to a conclusion idea "how deferential they are". If we were to negate this, we'd be saying that young people's deference to elders has little to do with how much they value elders' advice. That would effectively make the premise irrelevant to the conclusion.

(D) This argument isn't about whether the advice/experience really IS less relevant; it's just about whether young people perceive the advice that way.

(E) Again we have the concept of "practically useful". It's tough to see what that matches up with. Also, the author isn't judging whether the advice is / isn't practically useful. The author is talking about whether young people JUDGE the advice to be relevant. This answer would be closer if it said that "young people value elders' advice insofar as the young people think the elders' experience is relevant to theirs."

Takeaway/Pattern: Tough answer choices! B, C, and E would all tempt me on a first pass. Ultimately, C provides the explicit ideas used in the premise and conclusion, so it is a much safer, stronger answer.

#officialexplanation

[jennifer]

I dont understand how answer choice C connects the Premise and Conclusion. It seems just to restate evidence?

[cyruswhittaker]

The question asks for a necessary assumption, so you could use the negation technique to check it.

Basically, the argument is saying that there is an association between the rate of societal change and how much the younger people value the advice of older members. The conclusion is that we can measure this rate according to the amount of deference its younger members show to their elders.

So notice that there is a subtle gap that occurs: "value," which is linked to change, in the premises, and "deference," which is linked to change in the conclusion.

Choice (C) connects these two by saying that they are correlated with one another. If this were NOT true (negation), then the conclusion would not follow from the premises.

Choice B is very close and in fact when I first did this question I chose B. However, "practically useful" is what makes choice B wrong, as it is "value" that is discussed in the premises.

[bbirdwell]

Nice analysis!

[cpatterson06]

Would I be incorrect in thinking that the reason "B" is wrong is because of the wording "think that" in the stimulus?

"B" says that they show deference based on how much the elder's experience is practically useful to them. However, I eliminated "B" because I figured that the actual practical use doesn't matter if the young people don't think it's practical.

Does that make sense or am I overanalyzing like usual.

"C" foregoes the practical use and skips to the conclusion of a value based assessment.

[bbirdwell]

I enjoy the razor's edge attention to detail, but I don't really think that's what makes (B) wrong.

Focus on doing a good structural analysis of the argument first and you won't need to split hairs like that.

Here're the bare bones of the argument:
Premises:
slow change --> great value
rapid change --> no value

Conclusion:
we can measure rates of change according to deference

What sticks out? Deference. How can we connect "deference" to "rates of change,?" Via the one thing common to both rates of change: value.

So the correct answer choice must connect deference to value. Easy peasy. See what I mean?

[farhadshekib]

I enjoy the razor's edge attention to detail, but I don't really think that's what makes (B) wrong.

Focus on doing a good structural analysis of the argument first and you won't need to split hairs like that.

Here're the bare bones of the argument:
Premises:
slow change --> great value
rapid change --> no value

Conclusion:
we can measure rates of change according to deference

What sticks out? Deference. How can we connect "deference" to "rates of change,?" Via the one thing common to both rates of change: value.

So the correct answer choice must connect deference to value. Easy peasy. See what I mean?

swag.

[wallace.rachael]

Would answer choice B be correct if it said "on how much of the elder's experience is valuable to them" instead of "on how much of the elder's experience is practically useful to them"?

I wondered if there was also something wrong with the wording "depends on" in answer B.

Thank you!

[monster_omiga]

I can understand why (C) is correct. But can somebody explain why (A) is wrong?

Let's put the gap between deference and value aside for the moment and assume deference=value. If we negate (A), that means the young members cannot often discern whether the society is changing rapidly, then they may go on to value the elders' advice even though the society is changing rapidly. Then the correlation between society's rate of change and young members' value in elders' advice. Then the conclusion breaks down.

So I think A is also a necessary assumption. Any thoughts? Thanks!

[timmydoeslsat]

I can respect the discussion about this, but I just want to make sure that the issue we are setting aside, the jump from value to deference, is a big deal in this argument and it is most definitely what this argument must rely on for it to make any sense.

Even if you negate A, and it is the case that the young people cannot accurately discern whether the society is changing rapidly would not matter. Whether or not they are aware is not an issue as the premises tell us that when a society does change rapidly, certain consequences happen, whether or not the young people are aware of it.

[shirando21]

I was able to narrow down to A and C.

But I don't find the explaination above convincing enough. I don't think the argument exclude the possibility that the younger member discern inaccurately whether the society is changing rapidly or slowly. Are we supposed to assume they can discern accurately from the argument?

Can anyone have a closer look on it and give an example or something to further discuss A?

[timmydoeslsat]

I see that (A) is about whether the young can accurately discern whether the society is changing rapidly. Perhaps they cannot. They could still discern whether a society is changing slowly. And even with just that one option, this argument can still live.

[jimmy902o]

Can someone please go over D? i cant figure out whats wrong with it. thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

(D) is what we would call a 'premise booster' in Manhattan LSAT land. It feels like it's trying to convince you of the second sentence of the stimulus.

Remember, though, that an assumption addresses the gap between the premise and the conclusion.

If you look at the correct answer, (C), you see the very heartwarming quality of 1/2 premise, 1/2 conclusion language. It attaches the concept of "deference" (which only appears in the conclusion) to the concept of "how much the young value their elders' advice" (which appears in both premises).

However, if we look closer at (D), is it really just reiterating what was said in the 2nd sentence?

No.

The 2nd sentence says that "the faster a society changes, the less young people think that the the experience of older members is relevant to younger members".

(D) meanwhile isn't talking about what people think, it's stating as a fact that older people become less relevant.

The author doesn't have to assume that young people are factually correct in what they think.

If we negate (D) and say, "Hey, the experience of older people is relevant NO MATTER the pace of societal change", would that hurt the argument?

No. The author would just say, "I never said older people's experience becomes irrelevant; I just said that younger people THINK that older people's experience becomes irrelevant."

Hope this helps.

[jimmy902o]

yea definitely, thanks for the analysis

[andrewgong01]

When I was doing this problem I went with "C" for the reasons you mentioned above as that was my prephrase. However, I am still not sure how to eliminate "A" because to me we would have to assume young people can accurately discern the pace of change of society in order to listen or not listen to advice based of wether or not young people think elders' advices are relevant to them. In turn, since we are observing the extent to which society changes (based of "deference") , we would need to assume young people are making an accurate judgement on societal changes.
In other words, society could be changing really slowly but young people think society is changing rapidly and hence do not listen to advice. As a result, we would see a lot less deference and wrongly conclude society is changing fast (when in fact young people reacted wrongly when in reality society is not changing fast). Or is "A" also ruled "wrong" because in my reasoning I have assumed deference and listening to advice to be the "same" concept?
Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

(A) is not necessary because when you say something of the form
"When X happens, Y happens"
"When X doesn't happen, Y doesn't happen"

You're not committing to the idea that Y is aware of X.

When the moon is on your side of the Earth, you have high tide.
When the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth, you have low tide.

This doesn't assume that "the tides can often discern whether the moon is on the near/far side of Earth".

It is just saying that the tides are a metric of where the moon is.

Similarly, the way young people act is a metric of societal change, but that doesn't mean that young people are AWARE of the rate of change.

If the author thought that young people can OFTEN ACCURATELY discern the rate of change, then "we may measure the rate at which a society is changing" simply by asking some young people.

[WesleyC316]

Answer choice A really gave me a pain in the ass, but now I've figured it out. At first I was thinking, if a youngster cannot discern whether the society is changing rapidly, how can he correctly decide whether to value the advice of the old or not? But then I realized that's not necessarily true, because he could simply be reacting to other aspects of social changes. Consider this way: When a society undergoes slow change, there are no new iPhones released every year. When there are no new iPhones released every year, a youngster may find great value in the advice of the older generation: sticking to the old ones. In this way, a youngster doesn't need to discern the speed of social changes in order to make the right reaction, and the argument still stands.

Hope this will help anyone who's bothered by A just like me.