Q15 - Legislator: My staff conducted a poll

[irenaj]

I narrow down to B and C then choose B, I think both of them include one of the 2 flaws in the stimulus: the scope shift between high tax and corporate income tax, constituents opposition to high tax and supposed support for reducing corporate income tax.

I really don't see why C incorrect.

Any thought would be appreciated!

[ohthatpatrick]

Good question.

Like you said we simplify the core to be:

Prem: constituents oppose high tax --?-->
Conc: constituents support bill reducing corp tax

Since we know nothing about this bill or this corporate income tax, the author must be assuming that
- the corporate tax is a "high tax"
and
- the survey results are an accurate indicator that the constituents would oppose any bill that attempts to reduce a high tax.

(B) deals with that first assumption, hence it is correct.

(C) describes the "absence of evidence" flaw .. namely, that you can conclude that something is true as long as no one has ever proven that it's false (or vice versa)

i.e. "No one has ever proven that microwaves are unsafe. Thus, microwaves are safe."

For (C) to match the original argument, the premise would have had to say "there is no evidence that the constituents oppose this bill that reduces the corporate income tax".

For example:
A recent survey did not show any significant opposition to my recently introduced bill to reduce the corporate income tax. Therefore, my constituents clearly would support this bill.

THIS would be the absence of evidence flaw (C) is describing.

In the actual argument, the premise being relied on is that 97% of the constituents surveyed oppose high taxes. The premise IS evidence of opposition (to taxes ... the legislator's bill is never mentioned in the premise).

Choice (C) is saying that the author had no evidence of opposition to the bill, so he concluded that people must support the bill.

The actual argument said that there is evidence of opposition to high taxes, so people must support this bill which lowers a certain tax.

In general, when Flaw answer choices use the form
"Confuses X with Y"
"Mistakes X for Y"
you just need to see if the first half matches the premise and if the second half matches the conclusion.

If they match, it's right. If they don't, it's wrong.

The second half of (C) matches what is being concluded, but the first half of (C) does NOT match the premise of the argument.

Let me know if any of this is unclear.

fyi,
(A) is out of scope, since the conclusion is only about 'the constituents'
(D) describes a circular argument ... when the author assumes what he sets out to prove (Kobe is the best player. After all, no player is better than Kobe.)
(E) is backwards ... it has the premise and the conclusion flipped

[LSAT-Chang]

Hi Patrick,

Could you elaborate a little further on choice (B)? I correctly chose it but I think I may have chose it for different reasons than you suggested above, so please let me know if my reason for choosing it is not the reason why I should choose it.

So 97 percent of the constituents don't favor high tax. From this, the legislator concludes that the constituents would support the recently passed bill which "reduces" the corporate income tax.

The flaw that I spotted was that we don't know by how much he "reduced" the corporate income tax. So maybe the corporate income tax was REALLY high, and this bill "reduced" it by however much, but it could still be considered "high" for these constituents. So is (B) hinging on this idea?? I wasn't sure because I was confused for a second about the word "current" in the answer choice, but I assumed that answer choice (B) was basically saying:

the legislator fails to consider whether the constituents consider the current corporate income tax that has just been "reduced" by this bill is a high tax

Is this correct??

[ohthatpatrick]

You were pretty close with your explanation, but I think you're getting confused about one thing:

The bill has not yet passed. So the corporate income tax rate has not yet changed.

The legislator is saying he recently "introduced a bill" that aims to reduce the current level of the corporate income tax (and this argument seems to be taking place during the stage in which people would be debating whether or not to pass this bill --- whether or not to lower the current tax rate).

Of course, we don't know whether the current tax is high, low, or moderate.

Let's say the current tax is 2% (which seems awfully low), and legislator's bill wants to reduce that to 1%. Do we have reason to believe the constituents would support that idea? No, because we only know that they oppose high taxes.

Conversely, if the current tax is 80% (which seems high), and the legislator's bill would reduce that tax, do we have reason to believe the constituents would support that idea? Yes, because we know that they oppose high taxes.

So choice (B) is getting to the heart of the disconnect between the evidence: "constituents don't like high taxes" and the conclusion: "constituents would support lowering the current corporate tax"

Let me know if you want any of that clarified.

[mic_a_chav87]

Patrick,

These are fantastic explanations for a question I also missed. Thanks for your time and the detail of your responses!!

[nnn2108]

patrick

for answer choice C, can we say that because she did in fact have poll results, poll results that somewhat hinted at the fact that people would support her bill, that there was not an absence of evidence.



that is to say

does the fact that she has some evidence hinting at support, invalidate the claim in answer choice C that there was an absence of evidence

[ganbayou]

You were pretty close with your explanation, but I think you're getting confused about one thing:

The bill has not yet passed. So the corporate income tax rate has not yet changed.

The legislator is saying he recently "introduced a bill" that aims to reduce the current level of the corporate income tax (and this argument seems to be taking place during the stage in which people would be debating whether or not to pass this bill --- whether or not to lower the current tax rate).

Of course, we don't know whether the current tax is high, low, or moderate.

Let's say the current tax is 2% (which seems awfully low), and legislator's bill wants to reduce that to 1%. Do we have reason to believe the constituents would support that idea? No, because we only know that they oppose high taxes.

Conversely, if the current tax is 80% (which seems high), and the legislator's bill would reduce that tax, do we have reason to believe the constituents would support that idea? Yes, because we know that they oppose high taxes.

So choice (B) is getting to the heart of the disconnect between the evidence: "constituents don't like high taxes" and the conclusion: "constituents would support lowering the current corporate tax"

Let me know if you want any of that clarified.

Hi, I think I got confused because I thought...in real life ppl would love lower taxes, wouldn't they??
Is it wrong because we only have to think about the stimuli and not real life story?

[hyk1310]

Dear Patrick,

Regarding this aspect of your written answer

"Choice (C) is saying that the author had no evidence of opposition to the bill, so he concluded that people must support the bill.

The actual argument said that there is evidence of opposition to high taxes, so people must support this bill which lowers a certain tax"

I want to raise an objection about the logic inherent here.


Just because the actual argument says there is evidence of opposition to high taxes, it doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't an absence of evidence that the legislator constituents oppose a bill.

Essentially, the stimulus says people don't like high tax. But the answer choice C says that there is an absence of evidence that the legislator's constituents oppose a bill, which is actually true. There is no evidence that they oppose it. Only that they would potentially support it if high tax= high corporate income tax. Moreover, you don't need a sentence that explicitly states there is an absence of evidence; if there are none mentioned in the passage, then it seems safe to say there is an absence of evidence.

I think the flaw is in the second part of answer choice C: that the existence of evidence that the legislator's constituents support that bill. This is essentially a flaw pointed out in answer B, but basically you can't equate corporate income tax= high tax.

Therefore, I don't think it's the first part that's wrong, but the second part of answer choice C that's incorrect.

Please let me know what you think.

Good question.

Like you said we simplify the core to be:

Prem: constituents oppose high tax --?-->
Conc: constituents support bill reducing corp tax

Since we know nothing about this bill or this corporate income tax, the author must be assuming that
- the corporate tax is a "high tax"
and
- the survey results are an accurate indicator that the constituents would oppose any bill that attempts to reduce a high tax.

(B) deals with that first assumption, hence it is correct.

(C) describes the "absence of evidence" flaw .. namely, that you can conclude that something is true as long as no one has ever proven that it's false (or vice versa)

i.e. "No one has ever proven that microwaves are unsafe. Thus, microwaves are safe."

For (C) to match the original argument, the premise would have had to say "there is no evidence that the constituents oppose this bill that reduces the corporate income tax".

For example:
A recent survey did not show any significant opposition to my recently introduced bill to reduce the corporate income tax. Therefore, my constituents clearly would support this bill.

THIS would be the absence of evidence flaw (C) is describing.

In the actual argument, the premise being relied on is that 97% of the constituents surveyed oppose high taxes. The premise IS evidence of opposition (to taxes ... the legislator's bill is never mentioned in the premise).

Choice (C) is saying that the author had no evidence of opposition to the bill, so he concluded that people must support the bill.

The actual argument said that there is evidence of opposition to high taxes, so people must support this bill which lowers a certain tax.

In general, when Flaw answer choices use the form
"Confuses X with Y"
"Mistakes X for Y"
you just need to see if the first half matches the premise and if the second half matches the conclusion.

If they match, it's right. If they don't, it's wrong.

The second half of (C) matches what is being concluded, but the first half of (C) does NOT match the premise of the argument.

Let me know if any of this is unclear.

fyi,
(A) is out of scope, since the conclusion is only about 'the constituents'
(D) describes a circular argument ... when the author assumes what he sets out to prove (Kobe is the best player. After all, no player is better than Kobe.)
(E) is backwards ... it has the premise and the conclusion flipped

[ohthatpatrick]

I understand that within this argument there is an absence of opposition to the bill.

But choice (C) is describing a Famous Flaw that has been tested dozens of times, and it ALWAYS comes with an explicit premise saying that "there is not opposition / there is no disproof" and then concludes "thus there is support /proof".

These answer choices are trying to describe the author's mistake in how he moved from Premise to Conclusion.

The author believes that there IS support for the bill. He thinks that the survey results constitute evidence that constituents would support the bill.

He doesn't get to his conclusion because he confused "a lack of opposition" with "the existence of support".

He gets there because he interpreted the survey results of "97% of people don't like high taxes" as applicable to how the constituents would judge his new bill.

(C) could be correct if it said "confuses the existence of support for lowering high taxes with the existence of support for reducing the corporate income tax".

This type of answer choice is only going to be right when half of it touches on an idea being used in the Premise and half of it touches on an idea being used in the Conclusion.

It is describing an argument that says
"Since my constituents have not yet voiced any opposition to this new bill, they clearly support it."