Q22 - Editorialist: News media rarely

[dan]

22. (D)
Question Type: Inference
This argument is presented in a linear fashion:

lack of thorough news coverage + secret political process ->isolate politicians from electorate -> small chance of official response to resident participation -> discourages participation

Answer (D) is a very safe choice. There are two initial sources for the issue (see diagram above). More frequent media coverage "would reduce at least one source of discouragement."

(A) is very tempting, but it’s tough to prove. The fact that politicians are isolated is one reason for the small chance of official response, but making them less isolated doesn’t account for the other reason: lack of thorough news coverage. So if we fix one problem, does that guarantee that an official response will now be "likely?" Hardly. This would be like saying: "Janice can’t run the marathon because she is not in shape and she doesn’t own running shoes. If we get her some running shoes, she’ll be able to run the marathon." What about the fact that she isn’t in shape?
(B) makes an irrelevant value judgment.
(C) goes too far in saying "the most significant factor."
(E) sets up an illogical causal relationship.


#officialexplanation

[acconway1]

I don't understand how "resident participation" is linked to the isolating factors....

[mrudula_2005]

also, in saying that B makes an "irrelevant value judgement" what exactly do you mean?

isn't the value judgement quite relevant? or are you referring to the use of "should"? Also, am I correct in saying that (B) is wrong because it is too extreme in stating that "this would avoid discouraging resident participation in local politics" - for all we know that would not single-handedly avoid discouraging res. participation - maybe you also need the news media to cover local politics more thoroughly or you need some other external factors not mentioned.

that being said, if (B) said "If local political business was conducted less secretively AND news media covered local politics thoroughly, discouraging res. participation would be avoided" would still be too extreme right? because that is essentially juts negating but not reversing the causality...??

and would you mind expounding upon how (E) sets up an "illogical" causal relationship? It seemed to just be the contra positive - or am I wrong in even setting this question up in FL terms?

What would make (E) right? I feel like saying "If resident participation in local politics were not discouraged, local politicians would likely not be isolated from their electorates" would be credited? I took out "this would cause" since this isn't a concrete, definite FL chain..just things that "tend" to lead to other things...

thanks again!

[noah]

(B) is quickly eliminated because it talks about what "should" be done (a value judgement). The stimulus just provides relationships, not suggestions.

As for (E), there are two ways to think about it's wrongness . For one, you can't create a contrapositive based on statements about what tends to lead to what.

If John is drunk, he tends to slur. Can we say, John is not slurring, so he is not drunk? No.

Even if (E) were a contrapositive, it wouldn't be a causal relationship. Just because something is the contrapositive, doesn't mean it causes something else to happen. For example:

If Lucy is drunk, she dances. Does not dancing cause her not to be drunk? No.

It's tricky business coming up with "what would make X right" - but it would have to incorporate the loose nature of the original statement. That's what (D) does!

[zainrizvi]

Is there a conditional relationship to be setup in this question? I am getting confused because (D) seems to be a mistaken negation to me.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Is there a conditional relationship to be setup in this question? I am getting confused because (D) seems to be a mistaken negation to me.

Great question! It definitely looks like answer choice (D) is a Negation of the relationship implied in the stimulus. The stimulus implies a causal relationship, so when I set up the following chain of relationships I was taking a short cut.

lack of thorough news coverage + secret political process --> isolate politicians from electorate ---> small chance of official response to resident participation ---> discourages participation

In general, I'm very hesitant to and typically shy away from putting causal relationships into notation that implies a conditional relationship. The reason being that I'm nervous about mistaking correlation for causation. If rare media coverage of local politics is a factor (implying causation) in discouraging resident participation, then more media coverage will eliminate at least one source of discouragement of resident participation.

It's an interesting play on what appears to be conditional logic. To see another example of a way that an answer choice that appears to be a Negation can turn out to be the correct answer, check out

PT45, S4, Q18 - Decentralization enables divisions

For the one on PT45, another issue that comes up on conditional relationships rears it's ugly face - relative claims. Relative claims are very difficult to place into conditional relationships. And for another example of relative claims being tough to notate check out PT11, S2, Q12

A relative claim is one that compares two things in a certain respect. Some examples of relative claims: Susan is funnier than Jonnie; Bob is older the Bill, all the used cars are cheaper than any of the new cars, etc...

I hope that helps, and let us know if you have another question on this one!

[zainrizvi]

Thanks for the quick response.

Suppose the question said these factors ALWAYS isolate politicians. At this point I'd start using the conditional diagramming, but once again, this is a CAUSAL statement, right? So you can't have that negation error I referred to?

Therefore, the answer choice (D)[reducing at least one source] would still be valid?

Basically I guess it comes down to the fact that even if you CAN diagram it conditionally(as with the always), that doesn't mean those formal logic rules are always invoked???

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Basically I guess it comes down to the fact that even if you CAN diagram it conditionally(as with the always), that doesn't mean those formal logic rules are always invoked???

Exactly right, that's a huge step in the process. Understanding that conditional logic is a tool, not a crutch. We can't use it every time we think it might be possible, nor should we use it every time it's possible either.

Suppose the question said these factors ALWAYS isolate politicians. At this point I'd start using the conditional diagramming, but once again, this is a CAUSAL statement, right? So you can't have that negation error I referred to?

Therefore, the answer choice (D)[reducing at least one source] would still be valid?

Correct and correct. It sounds like you're seeing the difference between causation and correlation. Fundamentally it's easy to comprehend the difference. But seeing the implications of the difference as you just did is tough. Nice work!

[ivanau12]

Quick question on (E):

Let's say...
lack of thorough news coverage + secret political process = A+B
isolate politicians from electorate = C
small chance of official response to resident participation = D discourages participation = E
so that A + B --> C --> D --> E.

Would the contrapositive of that not be
-E --> -D --> -C --> -A or -B

so wouldn't -E --> -C, so that
-discourages participation --> -isolation or answer (E)?

Thanks in advanced! Your posts have been extremely helpful for all the MLSAT self-study students out here!

[htumonroe]

Ok, Im not into all this diagramming in a minute and 25 seconds so Im trying to get this...
My answer was A
The argument says that isolation is caused by News Media rarely covering politics and secretive political business. Im reading A as saying that if you get rid of isolation (rare political coverage and secretive political business) then you will likely get participation that will elicit a positive response.

How is my reasoning wrong?

Mike

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Answer choice (A) is not bad, but it does go too far. The stimulus states that the chance that any particular act of resident participation will elicit a positive official response is reduced when local politicians are isolated. Does that mean that when local politicians are not isolated, any particular act of resident participation is likely to elicit a positive official response? No. We could only say that the chance would be higher than if the local politician were isolated.

In short "increased" does not mean "likely."

Hope that helps!

[FlaneurR675]

The stimulus here presents a series of causal statements:
1. Media not covering LP thoroughly and LP being secretive each tend to isolate (=cause the isolation of) LPoliticians
2. Isolation of LPoliticians has the effect of (=causes) reduced chance of political participation eliciting positive official response
3. Reducing the chance of the said situation in turn discourages (=causes people to refrain from) participation in LP
Your approach to reading these types of inference stimuli (MBT, MSS) should be to gain a general sense of the flow of reasoning, NOT to stress out over retaining the details.

A: Negating the original statement "reduced chance of political participation eliciting positive response" does not equal "political participation likely eliciting positive response". More importantly, the causal relationships do not imply a biconditional relationship, so even if the negation was correct the statement is still not supported by the stimulus.
B: "should be" is a prescriptive statement that is absent in the stim
C: nothing in the stim suggests such and such is the "most important factor"; it is just one of the factors as far as the text is concerned
D: more frequent coverage reducing one source of discouragement is a plausible paraphrase of the causal chain (this does not suggest biconditionality, only an elimination of a causal factor)
E: this sounds like a "contrapositive" of the statements in the stim, except that causality does not necessarily imply conditionality.

Lesson: causal statements only work exactly as described in the stimulus, and do not guarantee (bi)conditionality

[AyakiK696]

I was stuck between D and E, and went with the wrong choice of E in the end because of the way I diagrammed the statement using conditional logic. So how exactly can we tell whether a statement is conditional or causal? I'm a little confused, because they seem to be almost the same thing in some cases. For example:

If Jill drinks milk, she falls asleep.

So this is conditional, because it indicates a sequence of events that necessarily follow each other, but it's also causal because she fell asleep BECAUSE she drank milk? I definitely should have been a lot more careful about the "tends to," but I still don't quite see why it wouldn't work as a conditional statement.

[ohthatpatrick]

I would not call
"If Jill drinks milk, she falls asleep"
causal.

You're only doing that because common sense tells you that milk can help you fall asleep. There's no structural reason to consider that 'rule' a causal statement.

Here's what's ultimately going down:
when LSAT reveals to us in an LR or RC passage that X caused Y,
we can make a most strongly supported inference that
if X had not happened, Y would not have happened

That inference is a conditional statement, although it's in reference to a cause/effect story we were told.

You CANNOT validly infer this inference. It doesn't HAVE to be true that if one cause hadn't transpired, its effect wouldn't have transpired. But .. it's a highly supportable idea, and LSAT frequently rewards this thinking in correct answers on "most supported / most likely to agree / suggests" type question stems.

The stimulus gave us cause/effect ideas:
"These factors tend to isolate"
"This has the effect of"
", which in turn discourages"

So we can take a given cause/effect relationship, such as
"local politicians' being isolated from electorate ULTIMATELY CAUSES discouragement from resident participation"
and we could say
"if local politicians were less isolated from the electorate, this would cause resident participation to be less discouraged"