Q23 - Arnold: I was recently denied

[b91302310]

This one is hard for me.
Could anyone provide full explanation?

Thanks!

[noah]

This is a tough one!

Arnold wants money! He was denied a seat on a flight because of overbooking - and he missed an important meeting because he was late! Yes, he admits, that flight was later canceled for reasons outside the airline's control, however, he insists, the airlines should pay since they denied him a seat originally.

Jamie disagrees - Arnold doesn't deserve a dime! She (he?) points out that regardless of the airline's decision, he would have missed his meeting.

The principle that Jamie is applying is that you should get paid for a denied seat (such as Arnold experienced) only if you would not have had to take a later flight if the overbooking had not occurred. This is what (C) expresses.

A simple formal expression for this is $ --> ~ other reason than overbooking and, as Jamie applies it, other reason than overbooking --> ~ $

(A) is very tempting! I actually got 3 other geeks to help me think it out. In short, Jamie never says when the airlines should pay. Jamie just says a situation in which the airlines should not pay. (A) can be thought of as ~ other reason --> $, which is the reverse of what we want. We don't know what Jamie thinks about paying people for whom the overbooking is the only reason. We know what she thinks about folks for whom there is another reason!

(B) is reversed. It should be that there is not another reason. According to (B), Arnold should be paid!

(D) doesn't address the situation - the weather is not the only reason Arnold was forced to take a later flight.

(E) also indicates Arnold should be paid.

Tough one! Did the explain it?

[jiyoonsim]

I have two questions on this problem...
First, I had no frigging idea what C) means , so I tried rephrasing as


(can be compensated) only if the passenger would not have been force to take a later flight overbooking
= only if the passenger not forced to take another flight by reason other than overbooking
= only if the passenger not missing the flight by reasons other than overbooking

Did I rephrase this correctly?
It seemed to work, fitting with your simple formal expression.


Secondly, I rephrase Arnold and Jamie after so much work as the following:

Arnold: Missed by overbooking -> $
Jamie: Missed by other reasons -> ~$

And C) is basically the contrapositive of Jamie, by saying

$ -> ~other reason

Did I understand this correctly? Please let me know - especially the first one!!

[noah]

Tough one!

I think you nailed it on all counts, and I like your final simplification. I don't think I could have pulled that off under the testing clock.

Great work.

[yama_sekander]

i had a question about A. i chose C but i want to make sure my train of thought was right... I used conditional logic to get through this one and this is how i interpreted A



the first words states "the only" so i assumed that it was talking about a sufficient condition. so i interpreted the answer as follows


overbooked original flight --> Compensate

however overbooking the original flight isn't sufficient to conclude compensation. as we can see from the stimulus, you can overbook a flight and that flight could still be delayed due to the weather.


conversely, C starts out with only if which is a necessary indicator

so i interpreted it as follows

Compensate -->not be forced to take a later flight

this is the contrapositive of what jamie said and therefore is right.

i guess for me, it came down to identifying the proper sufficient/necessary assumption. so now I'm wondering if my explanation is correct...


thanks

[noah]

That's great that you're doing review of an incorrect answer choice you didn't pick. You hear that, other students?

The wording on (A) is tricky:"if the only reason the passenger is ..."

So, what's the "trigger"? It's that there is one and only one reason the passenger has to take a later flight, and that reason is that the airline overbooked. So, formally, it'd be something like:

only reason for missed flight is overbooking --> compensate

If someone simply thought "oh, 'only' - this must be a necessary condition" that student could have run into some confusion, and perhaps mortal injury. Luckily, that wrong interpretation also seems wrong, but readers, you've been warned!

[hwsitgoing]

I'm having trouble understanding B still. Could some one please provide me with a simple rewording of what it is saying? Or even better, a conditional diagram of that statement.

B) $-> ...??

I'm having diagramming the wording of B: "forced to take later flight because of reason other than weather" and relating that to overbooking in the stimulus...

help!

[noah]

It's basically saying this:

you should pay the passenger only if there's some other reason they need to take a later flight other than the reason of bad weather.

In this scenario, Arnold might be paid (and we're looking to find an idea that supports Jamie's argument that Arnold shouldn't be paid). There is another reason - his flight was overbooked.

As for diagramming the latter part, I'm not sure that's really a useful approach, but here goes:

pay --> have other reason for taking later flight other than bad weather.

[monicajamaluddin]

I went back and forth between A and C and ended up picking C but I wanted to make sure I picked it for the right reasons.

The way I thought about it was that A essentially states that the only reason Jamie thinks the airline should have to pay is if a passenger is forced to take a flight due to overbooking. However, the stimulus does not tell us whether Jamie thinks there are other circumstances under which the airline would be obligated to pay that does not involve overbooking.

Is that the right way to think about it? That A is kind of broader than C in a sense.

I'm having a hard time putting into words exactly why I chose C but in my mind somehow it made sense.

[timmydoeslsat]

This problem should really come down to two answer choices, B and C.

My reason is this:

Jamie tells us Arnold that the airline is ~Morally Obligated.

For us to justify her position of ~Morally Obligated by stating what an airline is Morally Obligated to do, we must do this:

We know she concluded ~Morally Obligated. In terms of Moral Obligation, we would want that to be in the sufficient condition, so we can use the contrapositive to arrive at ~Morally Obligated.

Morally Obligated ---> "Insert any idea here"

This is because she is arriving at a conclusion of ~Morally Obligated.

This is one of the most critical issues of the LSAT in my opinion. Knowing what we can arrive at and conclude from a conditional statement. Jamie is concluding ~Morally obligated.

We know that this can be accomplished by the contrapositive of:

Morally Obligated ---> "Insert any idea here"

And this is what C does for us. It gives us a negation of that necessary condition and allows us to arrive at ~Morally Obligated.

[monicajamaluddin]

wow that makes so much sense. Really helped visualize the conditional. Thanks!

[magnusgan]

Ok this was tough... I looked at it as

Jamie:
Even if not overbooked, you would've been late anyway. So airline is not morally obligated. In other words, if overbooking was not the root cause for Arnold's lateness, airline is not morally obligated.

In Jamie's mind, the decision tree would probably go:

Overbooking root cause? --> yes --> morally obligated (assumed)
--> no --> not morally obligated (explicit)

We know for a fact that overbooking was not the root cause.


(A):
Overbooking is THE ONLY cause --> morally obligated

Here we see a scope shift, from root cause to ONLY cause. Anyway we know that overbooking was not the ONLY cause. There was another cause - weather - so we know (A) is invalid.

(B):
Morally obligated --> Some other cause than bad weather

If we substitute some other cause, for example, with overbooking, then (B) would read

Morally obligated --> overbooking
~overbooked --> ~morally obligated

Since we know overbooking occurred, we can dismiss (B).


(C):
Lets just paraphrase the whole chunk below as "Condition"

Condition:
Only if the passenger would not have been forced to take a later flight had the airline not overbooked original flight...

What on earth. Ok so lets break down the condition

Airline not overbooked --> passenger would not have been forced to take a later flight

Passenger forced to take later flight --> airline overbooked

Right, but we know that the real reason the passenger was forced to take the later flight was not that the airline was overbooked, but because the weather was bad.

Weather bad --> passenger forced to take later flight

Combining the two, weather bad --> late flight --> overbooked

This is obviously bollocks so we say that the condition is false.

Because the question stem says "A principle, if established (if true), justifies Jamie's response," it commits the question to establishing the truth of the condition. The only thing left is whether (condition true) is on the left or right of the arrow; this positioning is determined by if / only if.

E.g. (A), (D), (E):
(Condition true) --> morally obligated

(B), (C)
Morally obligated --> (condition true)
(Condition false) --> not morally obligated

Since in (C) we know condition is false, we are not morally obligated, making (C) correct.

[WaltGrace1983]

This problem should really come down to two answer choices, B and C.

My reason is this:

Jamie tells us Arnold that the airline is ~Morally Obligated.

For us to justify her position of ~Morally Obligated by stating what an airline is Morally Obligated to do, we must do this:

We know she concluded ~Morally Obligated. In terms of Moral Obligation, we would want that to be in the sufficient condition, so we can use the contrapositive to arrive at ~Morally Obligated.

Morally Obligated ---> "Insert any idea here"

This is because she is arriving at a conclusion of ~Morally Obligated.

This is one of the most critical issues of the LSAT in my opinion. Knowing what we can arrive at and conclude from a conditional statement. Jamie is concluding ~Morally obligated.

We know that this can be accomplished by the contrapositive of:

Morally Obligated ---> "Insert any idea here"

And this is what C does for us. It gives us a negation of that necessary condition and allows us to arrive at ~Morally Obligated.

That's what I was thinking too, timmy! We know that the conclusion is, according to the stimulus and the stem, that the airline is "morally obligated." Thus, as you say, we need to find something that is _______ → Morally Obligated or ~Morally Obligated → _______. Luckily for us, only (B) and (C) have these possibilities. I would like to add to your explanation though.

(B) is saying: Morally Obligated → Reason other than bad weather.

(C) is saying: Morally Obligated → Not otherwise forced to take a later flight.

Now if we look at the argument, Jamie is saying:

Forced to take a later flight due to weather → ~Morally Obligated.

When we take the contrapositive, we get the following:

Morally Obligated → ~Forced to take a later flight due to weather

So let's look at (B) again. There is a reason why Arnold had to take another flight: the airline overbooked! So (B) is definitely satisfied by the constructs of the stimulus. However, this doesn't mean that (B) is the correct answer. In the argument, Jamie emphasizes that the reason why Arnold should not be refunded the money is because he would have missed his flight anyway due to bad weather. Thus, according to (B), we have to pay Arnold! This is wrong.

(C) is right because it emphasizes Jamie's reasoning.

[robinzhang7]

Wow. I read all of the above and I think I am even more confused now. Many people had various ways (some questionable) but I wanted to run through this one last time to clear this up for any others out there who are still struggling to understand answer choice B from answer choice C.

We'll skip Arnold's argument.

Jamie reasons by the following:
Other reasons, besides Overbooking, resulting in missed flight --> ~M
Contrapositive...

M --> No other reasons besides overbooking resulting in missed flight
in other words...
M --> Overbooking is the sole reason that warrants the airline pay up

Based on that we evaluate answer choices B and C.

(B) says:
M --> reasons other than bad weather

There is a reason other than bad weather that forces the passenger to take a later flight - overbooking.

So are we allowed to say:

M --> O? Wouldn't that make answer choice B the correct answer? The only thing I can see wrong with B is the fact that this answer choice opens up the possibility of an infinite number of other possibilities such as other natural causes, tardiness, etc.

(C) is still confusing to me. The correct answer, I presume, is looking for the reverse of answer A which is...

M --> Overbooking sole reason

However does answer choice C actually state that? To make it easier to read, I rearranged the phrases into:

"had the airline not overbooked the original flight, the passenger would not have been forced to take a later flight." does this say that Overbooking is the sole reason?

Could a Geek run through this for me? Thanks!

[aescano209]

Ok, I got this question wrong originally, and I must say that it is quite a lengthy problem not only from the stem, but also with the answer choices. Regardless, I want to try to answer this problem here to see if my logic is correct and if it is, hopefully this helps other people out in the future.

Ok, so in this problem we are looking for a principle that would strengthen Jamie's argument. Ok, well what is his argument?

Conclusion: Airline is not morally obligated to pay you any compensation.
Evidence: Regardless, if the original reason was being overbooked, you still missed your flight because of some other reason.

I noticed immediately that this statement along with looking at the answer choices very briefly that this could be formatted in conditional statements. This here very crucial because it is actually why I got it wrong. The argument Jamie is making can be formatted like this:

- Other reasons for missed flight other than being overbooked --> ~morally obligated.
- Contrapositive: Morally obligated --> ~other reasons for missed flight other than being overbooked (essentially just meaning that the only reason was from being overbooked)

Ok well with this we are looking for something that would help us strengthen Jamie's argument. Before we approach the answer choices I would just like to quickly clarify something. If you notice all the answer choices have conditional indicators such as "IF" "THE ONLY" "ONLY IF" "EVEN IF". Keep note of this because it does affect the answer choices either making it necessary or a sufficient answer choice. Ok now let's move on to the answer choices.

(A) is the answer choice that I originally chose because I formatted Jamie's argument incorrectly. This is saying that "if the only" (which indicates a sufficient condition) for the missed flight is the overbooked flight --> morally obligated. But keep note that the contrapositive of the original argument is Morally obligated --> ~other reasons for missed flight other than being overbooked. So we are only given a situation above for if someone is morally obligated then we have to satisfy only being overbooked essentially. This answer choice takes the necessary condition of the contrapositive and says it is sufficient to trigger being morally obligated. We cannot do this and this is a flaw that pops up many times in flaw questions. This answer choice is mistaking something that must be necessary and saying it is sufficient to trigger something else. Eliminate.
(B) First note that this is giving us a necessary condition from "only if". Ok, so why is it wrong? Well it is wrong because it provides us with something necessary for being morally obligated. It would look something like this: Morally obligated --> Other reasons to miss flight other thank overbooked flight. Well this actually weakens his argument by supporting Arnold's. Eliminate
(C) is the correct answer because it essentially provides us with our necessary condition in the contrapositive. Morally Obligated --> "only if" the passenger would not have been forced to take a later flight had the airline not been overbooked. (essentially meaning that overbooked would have been the only reason). Check correct answer.
(D) is wrong because as indicated by "the only" would provide us with a sufficient condition. This formatted would look like: If the only reason was bad weather --> morally obligated. This is wrong because we know that Arnold missed it originally for some other reason so this conditional logic isn't triggered. Eliminate
(E) is wrong because this actually supports Arnold. The formal logic is this: other reasons for the missed flight aside from just overbooking (i.e. bad weather) --> morally obligated. Well, the thing about that is it actually weakens Jamie's argument by saying actually, other reasons is sufficient to being morally obligated. Eliminate.

Hopefully my explanations are correct, and if so I hope it helps others who had trouble with this question.