Q23 - A recently passed law limits freedom of speech

[linzru86]

I'm confused as to why C is not a viable option. This would show that those responsible for passing the law may not have been ignorant of history because under certain historical circumstances such laws "undermined the establishment of authoritarian regimes" and they wanted to repeat THIS pattern.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Watch the pattern on this one closely. It's so typical on the LSAT. If you learn to spot it you can pick 3 to 4 questions per test, easily.

Evidence
Those who are responsible for passing laws repeated the patterns of history.

Conclusion
Thus, those who are responsible for passing laws are ignorant of history.

Assumption
If they repeat the patterns of history, then they are ignorant of history.

To attack this argument, attack the assumption. Show that some people who repeated the patterns of history were not ignorant of history. Perfectly stated in answer choice (E).

Generalized

Stimulus:
A
==
B

You say, "hey, the assumption is if A then B."

A--> B

To undermine this argument just find an answer choice that says some A's are not B's.

A some ~B

(A) doesn't address the gap in reaching the conclusion.
(B) doesn't address the gap in reaching the conclusion.
(C) doesn't address the gap in reaching the conclusion.
(D) wouldn't challenge the conclusion that these people are ignorant of history, because the folks in the answer choice are ignorant of history.
(E) is correct because it challenges the assumption of the argument.

Does that help? If you'd like to talk about the pattern any more let me know. It's so common I could pull up 2 hours of examples!

[jeffrey.christopher.nelson]

Could I please see a few more examples? Not sure why I missed this one, for some reason this pattern didn't jump out at me this time.

Thanks.

[tianfeng102]

Here is my take on this question:

Premises:
1) Someone did A (A is silencing dissenters)
2) A has tended to promote B (B is undermocratic policies and the establishment of authoritarian regimes)
3) If one is ignorant of history, one will repeat its patterns.

Conclusion: If premise 3 is right, then someone must be ignorant of history.

As in most CR problems, it is critical to identify and understand the main conclusion. What the author does, when reaching the main conclusion, is that he/she has mistakenly REVERSED the logic statement in premise 3 to: If one repeats history's patterns, then one is ignorant of history.

However, we all know that although a sufficient condition definitely leads to a necessary condition, the necessary condition might not be sufficient enough to lead to the sufficient condition. In other words, 1) even if the necessary condition is satisfied, the sufficient condition might not occur ; or 2) even if the necessary condition is not satisfied, the sufficient condition might still occur.

E correctly points out the first scenario as the flaw in the author's arugment: ignorance of history is not required to repeat history's patterns.

[LSAT-Chang]

Watch the pattern on this one closely. It's so typical on the LSAT. If you learn to spot it you can pick 3 to 4 questions per test, easily.

Evidence
Those who are responsible for passing laws repeated the patterns of history.

Conclusion
Thus, those who are responsible for passing laws are ignorant of history.

Assumption
If they repeat the patterns of history, then they are ignorant of history.

Hey Matt, I'm a little confused as to where you got that evidence from. I didn't see that initially because I understood it as:

evidence: those who are ignorant of history will repeat its patterns

conc: those responsible for passing laws are ignorant of history

how did you get the evidence of "those responsible for passing laws repeated patterns of history"? I can see the reasoning behind all this (suff vs. necc) but I don't quite see how you extracted your evidence, conclusion and assumption. Could you please clarify for me?

[timmydoeslsat]

I believe Matt was using the first statement of the stimulus:

A recently passed law limits freedom of speech in
order to silence dissenters.

This first statement of the stimulus is a situation of evidence that can be seen as people repeating a pattern of history.

Of course when we first read this sentence of the argument, we cannot place the evidence in that type of context. It will take a read of the entire stimulus to determine that.

The stimulus can be thought of as this:

Recently passed law limits FOS.
+
It has been said that those that are ignorant of history will repeat its patterns
+
Limiting FOS is available in history
__________________________________________________
If that old saying is true, then those that passed that limiting FOS law must be ignorant of history



Notice that the last premise of my setup simply bolsters the first premise! This is because we are told of the law that limits FOS, but has that ever happened in history? If it has not, then this whole issue of repeating history could not happen! The last premise simply tells us that this has indeed happened in history.


The gap in the reasoning can be found in how the conclusion is reached.

The argument concludes that:

If saying is correct, then those that passed the law are ignorant of history.

And what is this saying?

Those that are ignorant of history will repeat its patterns

This is what is going on:

A ---> B

A = Ignorant of history
B = Repeat Patterns

We will never be able to prove that someone is ignorant of history. And that is what is going on in this stimulus.

We know that if you are ignorant of history, then you will repeat patterns.

But what happens if you repeat patterns? We do not know!

The argument assumes if B---> A!

Another way of saying what Matt said.

[LSAT-Chang]

Another sufficient/necessary mistake! I guess it is a lot easier to see those if we have an answer choice that explicitly says "mistakes a sufficient condition for a necessary condition" -- at least for me. Thanks for clearing this one up for me Timmy!

[matthewyoung2008]

If you view this editorial as being published in the US, it makes a lot of sense and it's easy to assume the ignorance of legislators.

However, if you pretend to view this editorial as one from an underground Russian newspaper, the assumption of ignorance on the part of lawmakers really stands out. OF COURSE Putin is not ignorant of history -- he is DELIBERATELY repeating Russia's history as a competitive authoritarian state!

[bethany.pickett]

..

[aradunakhor]

When I looked at this problem, I got stuck on one point: the 'patterns' of history that we are looking at is that laws limiting freedom of speech have usually promoted undemocratic policies.

What does it mean for a person to repeat a pattern of history? The closest concept I've heard of is to 'repeat history's mistakes' (which requires an intent, which suggests answer choice A like the poster above asked about). How can we say that the lawmakers are repeating a pattern of history, when that pattern necessarily involves a consequence (promoting undemocratic policies), which we know nothing about?

Can anyone clarify/comment? Thanks!

[Dtodaizzle]

Wouldn't the word "may" disallow the conditional relationship of -ignorant --) repeat patterns of history? In the argument, we know that "those who are ignorant of history will repeat its patterns." The usage of "will" firmly establishes that ignorant --) repeat patterns of history.

Why is usage of "may" allowed here to denote a conditional relationship?

Ps: Sorry, I am typing on an ipad. "--)" is the conditional arrow.

[donghai819]

"""""""
[quote="mattsherman"]Watch the pattern on this one closely. It's so typical on the LSAT. If you learn to spot it you can pick 3 to 4 questions per test, easily.

Evidence
Those who are responsible for passing laws repeated the patterns of history.

Conclusion
Thus, those who are responsible for passing laws are ignorant of history.

Assumption
If they repeat the patterns of history, then they are ignorant of history.

To attack this argument, attack the assumption. Show that some people who repeated the patterns of history were not ignorant of history. Perfectly stated in answer choice (E).
"""""

Hi Matt, I have a question about your core.

My core:
It has been said that those who are ignorant of history will repeat its patterns ---> those responsible for passing the law must be ignorant of a great deal of history
My diagram: (H: history)
premise: Being ignorant of H --> Repeat its patterns
conclusion: Passing the law --> Being ignorant of H
assumption: Passing the law --> Repeat its patterns
E: ~Being ignorant --> repeat its patterns

Whereas your diagram (perhaps my understanding is wrong):
Premise: Passing the law --> Repeat the pattern
Conclusion: Passing the law --> ignore H
Assumption: Repeat the pattern --> Ignore H

Your diagram and core and mine are clearly different; I wondered if my understanding of the premise is wrong.
Can any teacher correct me where I am making mistake?

[ohthatpatrick]

I'll have to jump in for Matt. I will say at the outset, I didn't approach this one with conditional diagramming at all, so don't feel like you need to.

Here was your version of the core:
premise: Being ignorant of H --> Repeat its patterns
conclusion: Passing the law --> Being ignorant of H


That's only wrong in that it's incomplete. The 1st and last sentence are not included in your core, but they're certainly relevant to the editorialist's argument.

The 1st and last sentence are the cautionary warning, the reason why the editorial is being written.

Those who passed the law have tried to SILENCE DISSENTERS.

What does history tell us about SILENCING DISSENTERS? Doing so usually promotes undemocratic policies and authoritarian regimes.

The editorial is scolding these law-passers for taking an action that historically has eroded democracy. "Don't you know the pattern of history?! Don't you know that historically silencing dissent only weakens democracy? You idiot legislators must be ignorant of history!"

So your argument core was making it seem like we knew nothing, from the evidence, about the those who passed the law.

But we do --- we know that those who passed the law were trying to silence dissent. And we know that silencing dissent tends to lead to a certain (presumably undesirable) result.

The assumption, in conversational terms, is that these lawmakers would not have tried to silence dissent if they knew that doing so would compromise democracy.

The objection (the opposite of the assumption), is that these lawmakers knew full well that silencing dissent tends to compromise democracy. Perhaps they are well aware of history and DESIRE a decline in democracy and an increase in authoritarianism.

Matt's colorful core represented a bit of synthesis. He had already combined some ideas together, in order to stress a broader, simpler pattern.

As several other posters have mentioned, another way to understand this flawed argument is this way:

IF ignorant of history, THEN repeat its patterns.
Passing this law to silence dissent risks repeating the anti-democratic patterns.
Thus, those who passed this law must be ignorant.

Here, you can see that this argument begins with
A --> B
then says that
X has done B.
and concludes that
X must be A.

In this sense, you can understand it as a simple reversed conditional logic flaw.

Being ignorant of history is one, sufficient means of repeating history's patterns.

But as (E) points out, being aware of history can be another means of repeating history's patterns.

So the fact that these lawmakers are potentially repeating a pattern of history doesn't mean that they MUST be ignorant. They COULD be aware.

[allenkw90]

I'll have to jump in for Matt. I will say at the outset, I didn't approach this one with conditional diagramming at all, so don't feel like you need to.

Here was your version of the core:
premise: Being ignorant of H --> Repeat its patterns
conclusion: Passing the law --> Being ignorant of H


That's only wrong in that it's incomplete. The 1st and last sentence are not included in your core, but they're certainly relevant to the editorialist's argument.

The 1st and last sentence are the cautionary warning, the reason why the editorial is being written.

Those who passed the law have tried to SILENCE DISSENTERS.

What does history tell us about SILENCING DISSENTERS? Doing so usually promotes undemocratic policies and authoritarian regimes.

The editorial is scolding these law-passers for taking an action that historically has eroded democracy. "Don't you know the pattern of history?! Don't you know that historically silencing dissent only weakens democracy? You idiot legislators must be ignorant of history!"

So your argument core was making it seem like we knew nothing, from the evidence, about the those who passed the law.

But we do --- we know that those who passed the law were trying to silence dissent. And we know that silencing dissent tends to lead to a certain (presumably undesirable) result.

The assumption, in conversational terms, is that these lawmakers would not have tried to silence dissent if they knew that doing so would compromise democracy.

The objection (the opposite of the assumption), is that these lawmakers knew full well that silencing dissent tends to compromise democracy. Perhaps they are well aware of history and DESIRE a decline in democracy and an increase in authoritarianism.

Matt's colorful core represented a bit of synthesis. He had already combined some ideas together, in order to stress a broader, simpler pattern.

As several other posters have mentioned, another way to understand this flawed argument is this way:

IF ignorant of history, THEN repeat its patterns.
Passing this law to silence dissent risks repeating the anti-democratic patterns.
Thus, those who passed this law must be ignorant.

Here, you can see that this argument begins with
A --> B
then says that
X has done B.
and concludes that
X must be A.

In this sense, you can understand it as a simple reversed conditional logic flaw.

Being ignorant of history is one, sufficient means of repeating history's patterns.

But as (E) points out, being aware of history can be another means of repeating history's patterns.

So the fact that these lawmakers are potentially repeating a pattern of history doesn't mean that they MUST be ignorant. They COULD be aware.

Hi Patrick. Let me just start by letting you know how much I appreciate your posts. As much as I appreciate everyone else’s post (they are really really helpful) I find your posts to be the most helpful for me personally. So whenever I click a post, I first check to see if you had responded to it.

That being said, I have a quick question. Why can’t (A) be a viable answer? If the people who passed this law were aware that silencing dissenters (historically) led to undemocratic policies and an establishment of authoritarian regimes, couldn’t one assume that they were aiming to accomplish exactly those things? Maybe it was their goal to promote undemocratic policies and establish authoritarian regimes- and maybe the editorialist overlooked that idea.

This was the thought process I had while solving this problem which is why I ended up choosing (A).

Was this too big of an assumption to make?

Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

Thanks, glad to hear they're helpful!

You're definitely interpreting the argument correctly; LSAT wants us to be thinking, "is there some away you could be AWARE of these historical patterns but still pass the law?"

Sure! You could be fully embracing the coming tide of authoritarianism.

Compare (A) to (E), which is the correct answer.

(E) is correct for exactly the rationale you gave for (A). It's saying that someone might KNOWINGLY repeat the patterns of history.

The troublesome assumption you're making with (A) is that "other purposes" refers to "the lawmakers' secret desires to usher in undemocratic policies and regimes".

Does the author need it to be true that "Silencing dissenters" is THE ONLY purpose of this law? Would it hurt the author if "Silencing dissenters AND clarifying libel statutes" were both purposes of the new law?

Doesn't seem so. So the mere existence of 'other purposes' to the law doesn't pose a big objection to the author.

The idea that the lawmakers are purposefully trying to bring about the historical patterns alluded to is a big objection. But when it comes to articulating that objection, (E) is more on the nose, since "repeat its patterns" is specifically code for "promoting undemocratic policies/regimes".

"Other purposes" in (A) is more vague.

Hope this helps.

[YITINGF233]

Thanks for you guys explanation! Based on those replies, I found an explanation which works for me. Hope it will help someone!
If A--B, then if B, must A.
If Not A--B, then if B, must Not A. So the logic of the author is wrong since it reverses the sequence of the sufficient and necessary condition.

Stimulus:
Ignorant --- Repeat
Since:
People --- Repeat
(People = who pass law and silence dissenter)
Conclusion:
People --- Ignorant

Choice E is saying:
Not Ignorant --- Repeat
Apply the description/premise in the stimulus:
People --- Repeat,
Then apply the logic of the author,therefore:
People --- Not Ignorant
Then we have a conclusion which is the opposite of the stimulus.

For me, the aha moment is realizing that I have to apply the logic in the stimulus.
The choice (E) is providing a different scenario to test the accuracy of the logic and it turns out that the logic is wrong since the same sufficient condition has two opposite results.