Q24 - Political scientist: When a bill comes before

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be False)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Bill comes before legistlature -> majority usually ready to vote for it.
Bill unlikely to get majority approval -> compromise that allows passage usually possible.
Bill concerns really important issue -> compromise impossible.

Answer Anticipation:
Must be False questions usually do one of two things:
1. Contradict a conditional rule.
2. Contradict an available inference.

The only real conditional rule here was the last sentence, since the first two "when" ideas were only associated with "usually" consequences. We could contradict the last rule with an example that said, "This bill DOES concern a fundamentally important issue to lots of reps, and a compromise WAS possible."

If we were trying to make an available inference by combining these ideas, it looks like we could say "if the bill is about something important, compromise will be impossible, thus, if the bill isn't at first likely to get majority approval, then it will not come before a legislative body". Contradicting that would probably sound like, "We've got this important bill that at first didn't have majority approval, but it DID come before a legislative body".

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Doesn't contradict anything

(B) Doesn't contradict anything. We don't know anything about "51% or more of unimportant bills".

(C) YES! This contradicts the last sentence. These bills render compromise impossible, so there's no way that they pass AS A RESULT of compromises.

(D) Doesn't contradict anything. We can't say what proportion of bills are fundamentally important to at least one large bloc.

(E) Doesn't contradict anything. This is the flipside of (D), and we can eliminate it based on the same gap in our knowledge.

Takeaway/Pattern: If we know that Must Be False most commonly gives us a correct answer that contradicts a provided conditional rule, we can anticipate that the correct answer will go against the conditional rule in the final sentence.

#officialexplanation

[peterbobolis]

With regard to the inference you made, I don't understand how you can say the bill won't come before the legislature. Doesn't that imply that you've negated the necessary of a conditional that is not one? Namely, aren't you illegally negating the idea: "majority usually ready to vote for it."?

[ohthatpatrick]

I wasn't really selling that as a must be true inference, just trying to communicate the gist of how you could tie these ideas together.

When a sentence is about what's usual / typical, then we wouldn't call it a conditional, but we could if we want to stretch language.

f.e.
"When someone is a first year student at Harvard Law, they are usually overwhelmed."

Is that conditional?
We could say "No, because it doesn't provide certainty"
or we could say "yes, because it indicates a certain probability"

i.e., you could 'force' a conditional, by saying
"IF you are a first year student at Harvard Law, then you are probably overwhelmed"
the contrapositive would sound like
"IF you're not someone who's probably overwhelmed, then you're aren't a Harvard 1st year"

That's really sloppy, so I don't try to turn probabilistic ideas into conditionals, but for the sake of intertwining the overlap between our three ideas here, I was making use of that 'forced' contrapositive of likelihood.

If the bill is important, then compromise is impossible, so if a majority isn't already prepared to vote for it, then is USUALLY wouldn't come before the legislative body.

[peterbobolis]

All is clear now. Thanks so much for the fast reply!!!