#MovieFailMondays: Independence Day – Part 2 (Or, How Movies Can Teach You About Logical Fallacies and Help You Ace the LSAT)
Each week, we analyze a movie that illustrates a logical fallacy you’ll find on the LSAT. Who said Netflix can’t help you study? ??
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Yes, yes, we’ve done Independence Day before. But we’re doing it again because:
- I want to.
- It’s almost actual Independence Day.
- It gives me an excuse to go see Resurgence soon and write a follow-up post to this one.
- There are just so many plot holes in Independence Day (though it manages to survive them all to still be awesome).
The film begins like any other disaster film–viewing the day-to-day lives of its main characters. After all, we need to know who these people are before we can see their growth through crisis. Disaster films are well known for complex and subtle character development.
While we can’t know for sure based on what we see on screen, it seems like a pretty solid assumption that none of the characters believe that aliens exist in a substantial way, or at least none of them are interested in immediately invading Earth.
Everyone, that is, except Russell Casse. A paranoid, drunk, alien-abduction claiming crop duster who must have been a stretch for Randy Quaid to play because, as far as we know, he’s never been abducted by an alien.
Everyone who hears Casse’s story believes him to be crazy, hearing tale of his abduction and, as was the style at the time, probing. But he gets the last laugh after the aliens come down, right?
Well…
Aliens are shown to exist. In fact, they blow up the White House spectacularly. But there are still some characters who think of Casse as a crazy person, claiming nonsense.
There are two problems I’d like to discuss here.
Just because aliens exist doesn’t mean that Casse was, in fact, abducted by them. He still could be a crazy person who wasn’t actually abducted. Automatically believing that Casse saw the many-tentacled, body-suited green men because aliens exist would be a flavor of Unproven vs. Untrue (or Absence of Evidence) flaw. Just because the argument against him has some evidence disproven (that aliens don’t exist) doesn’t mean he’s right. Flipside, just because there’s a piece of evidence that something could be true doesn’t make it so.
Second is more relevant to RC. Many of the characters in the movie had already decided Quaid was crazy, and they didn’t update that view in light of new evidence. While, as discussed above, we can’t conclude that he was abducted by aliens, we should also at least stay flexible towards the possibility. In Reading Comprehension, be careful about forming ideas on what the Scale is too early. Often, the author will shift gears towards the end of the passage, away from what it seemed to be about. You don’t fully know what the Scale is until that final line, so stay flexible until all the evidence is in! ?
Want to learn more about Logical Reasoning on the LSAT? Don’t forget that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free. We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Matt Shinners is a Manhattan Prep instructor andjdMission Senior Consultant based in New York City. After receiving a degree in Biochemistry from Boston College, Matt scored a 180 on his LSAT and enrolled in Harvard Law School. There’s nothing that makes him happier than seeing his students receive the scores they want to get into the schools of their choice. Check out Matt’s upcoming LSAT courses here!