Q2 - The fact that the amount of matter that we have

[Wackyjacky]

Hey,

Can someone please help me understand why D is correct.

It implies that we know from the stimulus that Klein believes that there is an issue with not finding ALL the matter when in reality Klein goes out of the way to let us know that the problem is "ONLY" 1/10th was found. Even without the word 'only' I feel like it would be an unwarranted assumption to assume that Klein is "committed" to needing ALL the matter to be found. But with the word ONLY in Klein's passage, it's more than an assumption, it seems incorrect to assume one would need ALL the matter of the prediction found?

Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

It seemed like you were interpreting the use of 'only' incorrectly.

You seemed to hear this emphasis:
What's the big deal? I was ONLY five minutes late? (this de-emphasizes the idea that there's a problem)

Klein was saying something more like this:
How were you an hour late? My house is ONLY a five minute walk from your house! (this is STRESSING how much of a problem there is)

Klein was stressing how MUCH of a problem there is with Einstein's theory, given that we've ONLY found 1/10 of what he predicted. (Einstein is 90% wrong!)

================

Question Type: Identify the Disagreement

Task: Find two overlapping claims that contrast.

I like to read both sets of statements and then return to the first person's and figure out which of the 2 or 3 statements the 1st person made is the 2nd person disagreeing with.

Klein's 2 ideas:

1 - we've only found 1/10 as much matter as E predicted

2 - this gives us good reason to abandon E's view

Does Brown disagree with 1, 2, or both? (it's almost never both)

Brown seems to agree with #1. He implies that, yes, we've only found 1/10 as much matter, but that doesn't mean E was wrong, it might just mean we haven't found the other 9/10 that actually IS there.

Brown disagrees with #2. He is rejecting the idea that we abandon E's view (given the great successes of E's theory).

So our pre-phrase for the answers might be something like "should we or shouldn't we abandon Einstein's view?"

(A) They agree about this

(B) Only Brown mentioned this, so no comment from Klein.

(C) Neither person mentioned what would be possible without Einstein.

(D) Yup! This has our pre-phrase ... "whether we should abandon E's theory". It's a little suspicious that it's so dead-on, but that's what get sometimes with the earlier questions in an LR section. Klein would agree. "Finding only 1/10 of what E predicts gives us good reason for abandoning his view." Brown defends E's view and suggests that instead of abandoning it, we focus on finding the other 9/10.

(E) They potentially agree on this ... it's more or less an assumption that underlies (A).

Hope this helps.

[Wackyjacky]

Ohthatpatrick,

Thanks for your explanation (and for the 100's of other posts you wrote over all these boards) I especially appreciate the overall strategy for attacking this type of question.

I still do not understand this question because I was interpreting 'only' exactly as you said. In fact, precisely because Klein is emphasizing the problem that 90% of the matter is missing is why I have my problem. How do we know anything about a hypothetical case where E's theory would predict 99.9 of the matter. Answer choice D would say that Klein would abandon E because of that missing 0.01%. "The failure to find ALL of the matter should lead us to abandon..." When in Klein's argument he emphasis's the issue of missing 90%! Is there not a leap in assuming someone that was mad about a missing 90% of matter would also be mad about ANY missing matter?

Using you analogy: If A is upset that B did not walk to her house and A says to B "How can you not come you are only 5 minutes away!!" Would we assume from that statement that A would have the same reaction to B even if B was 500,000 miles away? Obviously not.

[ohthatpatrick]

I totally agree with you that it's a weirdly written correct answer. The "all" in (D) is definitely stronger than what Klein is committed to.

Klein would probably think Einstein's theory was worth holding on to if its predictions were at least MOSTLY correct. If we had found 80% of what Einstein predicted, then Klein might think that Einstein's prediction/theory is pretty accurate.

If we had found 99.9% of what Einstein predicted, Klein would probably believe Einstein's prediction/theory is ROCK SOLID!

So it's not really about "all" vs. "not all".

But (D) is still the credited response. It's still the MOST supportable answer because they're fundamentally arguing over whether or not to abandon E's view.

Before I defend LSAT's wording, I just want to remind you (and everyone) that some LSAT questions simply aren't written perfectly and you have to use your judgment about the best answer, i.e. try to think about what the test writers would have considered the credited response.

The way I would defend (D), though, is to point out the difference between "the failure" and "a failure".

If (D) said a failure to find 100% of what E predicted should make us abandon E's theory, then you would have the crazy extreme idea that's bothering you:

Fail to find 100% --> abandon it

However, by saying the failure we are referring to a specific failure, not ANY ol' failure.

Which specific failure to find all the matter was discussed?

The one in which we only located 1/10 as much matter as what Einstein had predicted.

So (D), by using the definite article 'the' (rather than the indefinite article 'a') is only referring to this current 10% state of affairs. Thus, it's NOT making the extreme claim from before. It's saying:

Only finding 10% of what was predicted --> abandon theory.

If there's one thing I'm SURE makes all students happy, it's learning that their primary issue with a problem hinges on "the" vs. "a".

[Wackyjacky]

Thanks so much, your explanation was great. I do not think I even paid attention to the word THE vs A. Definitely something I will keep in mind from now on.

[obobob]

I also thought Brown's "it would be better to conclude" as a clue that the respondent, Brown, is saying something else about Klen's conclusion.
Is that a fine approach?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, it sounds like you're saying you were hip to the friction point being:
"should we, or should we not, abandon Einstein's theory?"

Saying "it would be better to conclude" certainly conveys "Klein, I don't like your conclusion".

The hair-splitting we were doing over (D) is probably not something that the vast majority of students find necessary on this problem. A student just had an interesting way of potentially invalidating the absolute correctness of (D) ... although not invaliding its status as the most supportable answer.

As I said in my original post, all I do for these is look at the first person's claims (and if necessary their assumptions) and try to figure out what the second person is going against.

Brown is certainly not arguing that "we've found more than 1/10 of what Einstein predicted".
and Brown certainly seems like he IS arguing "this is NOT good reason to abandon Einstein's view".

That's enough to get us to like (D) the most.