Q13 - Journalists sometimes use historical photographs

[LSAT-Chang]

Can someone go over this problem with me?

I chose (A) after I had it down to (A) and (B).

So here is my thought process:

Premise: using old photographs from historical photographs for current events overstates the similarities between past and present thereby denying the individual significance of current events

Conclusion: this practice distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents

So my question was: why does it necessarily DISTORT it???

So I was trying to link something from the premise to the conclusion. So (A) had something from both parts. It has the "presenting current events as mere repetition of historical incident" from the conclusion and "overstates the similarities between past and present" from the premise.

OHH.. but (A) goes the other way around.... right? So it is a reversed logic?

I guess I was in a rush to link stuff that wasn't mentioned in both the premise and the conclusion, and after reading (A) it sounded right and circled it. From "vibe" I thought (B) was the reversal, but in fact, (B) easily bridges the whole gap.. in the first read, (B) to me sounded like a dumb answer because I thought it was so easily connecting something which isn't the right one, but I was wrong.

Is my thought process correct now?

[timmydoeslsat]

Great stuff.

I would not really even be tempted with (A) as it does not have anything about distorting public understanding.

We have this as the conclusion:

Use of historical photographs in this manner by journalists distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents.

So I will put it below the line.


Premises
__________________________________________

Use of historical photographs in this manner by journalists distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents.



Now I am looking for its evidence.


Journalists sometimes use historical photographs to illustrate articles about current events ---> Overstates similarities between past and present ---> Denies individ. signif. of those current events
__________________________________________

Use of historical photographs in this manner by journalists distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents.


So we see that "distorts public understanding" came out of left field. It is not in the premises. We can expect to see an answer choice with this concept in it and linking it to one of our given premises, which would allow us to conclude such an idea.

A) Does not have distort public understanding.
B) Does have it. Let me see how it relates to the premises.

If the work overstates similarities between the past and the present.....hmm well I do have that with a case of "use of historical photographs," as it is the necessary condition of it.....then it distorts public understanding.

Great! It works. It allows us to conclude that doing this action of using historical photographs would in fact distort public understanding.

The stimulus told us that:

Using historical photographs overstates similarities.

This assumption then simply tacks on after the similarities to let us conclude distorts public understanding.

[LSAT-Chang]

I would not really even be tempted with (A) as it does not have anything about distorting public understanding.

Very true. I was confused with the "by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents" since that was also part of the conclusion -- but the main conclusion is that this use of historical photographs in this manner distorts public understanding. Would you agree?

[timmydoeslsat]

Yes. This is the conclusion:

"Use of historical photographs in this manner by journalists distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents."

And (A) gives us nothing about distorting public understanding. We would still be left scratching our head saying, "I wonder how public understanding fits into all this!"

[farhadshekib]

Yes. This is the conclusion:

"Use of historical photographs in this manner by journalists distorts public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents."

And (A) gives us nothing about distorting public understanding. We would still be left scratching our head saying, "I wonder how public understanding fits into all this!"

Tim, I just wanna say that your contribution to forum is very insightful; great job, buddy. keep it up.

I have a question about (C).

Initially, I was tempted by it, but choose (B) as it provided a much better link btw the premises and conclusion.

I spotted one flaw in (C): it brought in a very subtle concept shift that was hard for me to spot - even upon review. (C) talks about denying the individual significance of "any articles about current events", while the stimulus talks about denying the individual significance "of those current events".

But... is (C) also wrong for another reason?

Specifically, (C) starts off with "if a journalistic practice distorts public understanding of the present by overstating the similarities between past and present".

However, the stimulus states "journalists [distort] public understanding of the present by presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents".

In this context, is "overstating the similarities between the past and present" akin to "presenting current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents"?

thanks

[legalrabbithole]

Hm the above poster made a really good point about (C), is it wrong because of the "any articles" modifier?

For me,

I diagrammed the stem like this:

historical photographs --> overstate sim. --> not individ. signif.

-------------------------

historical photographs --> distort public understanding

I got this wrong because I got careless with (C), which does NOT link historical photographs to distort public understanding. (B), however, didn't do what I expected the correct answer to do, which is link "not individ significant" to "distort public understanding". Instead, it linked "overstate sim" to "distort public understanding". It does the job (linking premises to conclusion), but yeah, kind of tricky when you expect the first 10 or 15 to be fairly easy.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Hm the above poster made a really good point about (C), is it wrong because of the "any articles" modifier?

The bigger issue with answer choice (C) is that it reverses the relationship that would enable the conclusion to be properly drawn.

So for example if the argument was

A ---> B

---------
A ---> C

The assumption would be B ---> C, but this answer choice would be like C ---> B

Let me know if that doesn't clear this answer choice up though!

[HoodyHoo]

Can someone explain why E is wrong.

[ohthatpatrick]

Sure, let's test (E) by adding it to the evidence and see if we can derive the conclusion.

(E) gives us
IF J's believe CE's mere repetitions, then Public Understanding of present will be distorted.

We're trying to prove, among other things, that public understanding of the present is being distorted. So (E) is a rule that would prove part of the conclusion.

In order to use the rule that (E) gives us, we need to activate the trigger.

Were we told in the evidence that J's believe that CE's are mere repetitions of historical incidents?

Nope.

The only thing we were told about J's was that they use historical photos to illustrate current articles, thereby overstating similarities between past/present, thereby denying the individual significance of current events.

We have no idea if Journalists believe that current events are mere repetitions of historical incidents. Hence, the rule that (E) gives us is useless. We can't trigger it, so it doesn't go anywhere.

Contrast (E) with how (B) works.

(B) gives us a rule that's triggered by "a journalist's work overstating the similarities between past/present". Can we trigger that?

Yes, as we just said, the evidence tells us that J's use historical photographs, thereby overstating the similarities between past/present.

Okay, well then, according to the rule in (B), what happens when J's use historical photographs? The public's understanding of the present is distorted by presenting current events as mere repetitions.

We just derived the whole conclusion!

Hope this helps.

[HoodyHoo]

Thanks for clearing that up!

[dmsqlc1121]

Here is how I approach most of the sufficient assumption Qs.

First, look for a new idea or words in the conclusion that was not mentioned in any of the premise.

In this case, you can detect "distorts public understanding of the public" and "presenting current events as mere repetitions"


Second, eliminate the answer choices without the detected new words.

When you see that there is multiple new ideas in the conclusion, it becomes difficult to eliminate the wrong answer choices. But you can apply the above strategy and see that answer choices (A), (C), (D), and (E) have "presenting current events as mere repetitions," and answer choices (B) and (E) have "distorts public understanding of the public."

Automatically you know that (E) can be eliminated because there aren't any link to the premise of the stimulus. Even if (E) was true, it is merely a restatement of the conclusion, not connecting the link, which is exactly what we need to do in suff. assumption Q types.

Part of the reason that this question in particular seemed not so clear cut out for process of elimination is because all of the answer choices have the new idea in them. Normally, this technique cuts so much time, but this question, as you may have seen is distributed in a way of link. (i.e., A -> B -> C -> D,...)

In such cases, I know that the right answer choice must put the new words in the latter/necessary part of the answer choice,
or
since the contrapositive may also be an answer,
a negated new idea should be in the former/sufficient part of the answer choice.



(A) "mere repetition" is in the former/sufficient part and is not negated, so eliminate.

(B) "distorts public understanding of the present" is in the latter/necessary part, so keep.

(C) "distorts public understanding of the present" is in the former/sufficient part, so eliminate.

(D) This is quite tricky because of the whole "not, unless" part, if you diagram this, you see that
"mere repetition" is in the former.sufficient part, therefore eliminate.

(E) both "mere repetition" and "public understanding distortion" is present in the answer choice, but you see that there aren't any ideas from the premise of the stimulus to see the link between the premise and the conlcusion. Therefore, eliminate.



So, we only have (B) as our answer:

(B) links "overstates the similarities between past and present" with "distorts public understanding of the present" just fine.



I see that my post is all words and you may find it hard to visualize, so here is a simple diagram that may help you visualize what I demonstrated above.



[Stimulus]

A -> B -> C
Therefore,
D

key to the diagram:
A: journalists use historical photographs to illustrate articles about current events
B: overstates the similarities bewteen past and present
C: denies the individual significance of those current events
D: distorts public understanding of the present by representing current events as mere repetitions of historical incidents.

Answer choices can be any one of the following:
1. A -> D or ~D -> ~A
2. B -> D or ~D -> ~B
3. C -> D or ~D -> ~C


So if we apply this to our answer choices,

(A) D -> B; wrong
(B) B -> D; correct!
(C) D -> C; wrong
(D) D -> A; wrong
(E) D -> D; irrelevant, thus wrong.



Let me know if there are any questions!