Q23 - Columnist: The relief from the

[debbie.d.park]

How do I correctly translate choice B to "if, then" formation?

I suffered on this question, thinking that the underlying assumption was "Loss of self-sufficiency ---> Diminished well-being". Correct me, if I'm wrong.

Many thanks in advance!

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question.

I'm a little confused by your reasoning here. What gave you the idea that you need to convert answer choices into conditional statements? That's not our job. Our job on assumption family questions is to identify the argument core and then evaluate the logic, looking out for any potential gaps, i.e., assumptions.

The core of this argument is that because modern technology leads to reduced self-sufficiency, it diminishes the overall well-being of its users.

Now, your instincts were right on the money! The big gap here is that there's a connection between self-sufficiency and well-being.

(B) is correct. We need to assume that self-sufficiency contributes to well-being. If it didn't, there would be no way to conclude here that modern technology reduces its users' overall well-being.

(A) is out of scope. Fulfilling life?

(C) is out of scope. The argument is not at all about freedom.

(D) is out of scope. The argument is not about justifying the loss, just whether there is a loss.

(E) tries to strengthen the conclusion, which already explicitly tells us that modern technology diminishes its users' well-being. We don't need to assume that this is inherently true of all technology.

In general, be careful not to rely too much on conditional logic. Only categorical statements -- statements about ALL of something -- can be turned into conditional ones. This argument talks about trends, tendencies, effects, but NOT about absolutes.

Does that answer your question? If you're still confused about the applicability of conditional logic to LR questions, don't hesitate to follow up.

[jamiejames]

I believe giladedelman was more eloquent in his explanation than I'll be, but here's mine.

Gotta bridge that gap! Got ourselves a necessary assumption question here.

There's a lot of information here that you don't need to pay attention to after reading the argument.

Down to the bare bones, here's the argument:

Modern technology relieves us of physical labor. This leads to a loss of self sufficiency. Clearly then, modern technology diminishes well-being of users.

Wait, what? Where's the connection between relieving us of physical labor, and that labor, or lack thereof, affecting people's well-being?

Let's look through the answer choices.

B) Self-sufficiency contributes to a person's well-being. Bam, that's it. Let's negate it: Self-sufficiency doesn't contribute to a person's well being. Well, that destroys the argument, and that's your answer!

Conditional logic isn't necessary here, what's more necessary is being able to see through the parts of the argument that are just fluff, and then seeing where the gap is between the premise, and the conclusion, and finding an answer, that when negated, destroys the argument.