Q4 - The case of the French Revolution

[tzyc]

I'm confused by the stimulus...(and the correct answer choise)
The French Revolution was not unique in having more benefits because it had an advantage...is this what the author says?
And the advantage is people were doing day today work as usual so there was no disrupting...
Then, in the correct answer choise
"opposing a claim"=they were not unique in having more benefits
"by undermining evidence offered in support of that claim"=because they had less harm...but in fact they served day today work so that's why there was less harm
Is this understanding correct?
Thank you!

[tommywallach]

Hey Strawberry,

This type of question is called a Procedure question, and as you noticed, it's a pretty weird question type. Basically, they're asking how the argument works. Let's look at all the pieces.

Sentence 1: Introduces an example seems to support a conclusion.
Sentence 2: Says that example doesn't support that conclusion.
Sentence 3: Explains why.

(A) This only discusses the overall claim (societies get more benefit than harm from revolution), not the evidence for it.

(B) This mentions general principles, but the argument uses a specific example (French Revolution).

(C) CORRECT. This matches our outline perfectly. We oppose the claim by undermining the example.

(D) The argument doesn't offer its own examples; it just undermines an example said to support the claim.

(E) There aren't two positions compared here.

The key on these question is to try to do what I did in my outline. Notice that I ignored content entirely. I don't need to focus on the French Revolution or societies reaping benefit or anything that could be called content. Instead, I focused on the role that each sentence played in the overall argument.

Hope that helps!

-t

P.S. Your own breakdown didn't make a lot of sense to me, because you were cutting out a lot of words. Also, your focus seemed to be on the content instead of the structure/role/procedure, so I think your attention was slightly in the wrong place. Hope this method makes more sense! : )

[magnusgan]

Great explanation using the structure of the argument. It helped me to see the argument as: some claim made, but evidence for claim actually sucks.

Is this still a valid question type or skill to have in the more recent LSATs?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Hey magnusgan, it is indeed still a relevant question type, though not one of the more common question types!

[NitorianL363]

There were plenty of strange cases.

[KanaroL490]

In fact, the French Revolution has essentially defined the era in which we now live. These events have been the catalyst for many changes in approaches to data. That's why I can say for sure that this is the way we should perceive it. By the way, when I was writing a course on this topic, I just click over here and found a lot of useful information about the French revolution from the point of view of analytics and so on. How cool it seems to me and how important it really is for a full understanding of the situation. I hope that it will be useful for someone.