Q5 - Political strategist: Clearly, attacking an opposing

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Attacking opponent's philosophy is usually more effective than attacking policy details.
Evidence: Attacking philosophy ties the policy details into a broader scheme, which provides a story and a context that make the attack emotionally compelling.

Answer Anticipation:
This feels like a normal Missing Link type task. There's a new guy in the conclusion, "How do we define the EFFECTIVENESS of a political attack". What is the special quality the author thinks philosophical attacks have? They are EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING. So the anticipated answer would be saying something like "emotionally compelling attacks are more effective".

However, you could also see a correct answer just clarifying that "emotionally compelling" is a SPECIAL quality that belongs to philosophical attacks, not policy attacks. So another correct answer could be "attacking the details of policy proposals is NOT emotionally compelling".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We don't care about "more likely to remember". We care about "generally more effective".

(B) YES, this sounds great. If we negate it, we get "emotionally compelling attacks are NOT usually more effective", which would neuter the relevance of the evidence.

(C) This is a silly "fake comparison" between the words 'story' and 'context'. This has nothing to do with judging "effectiveness", which is the conclusion and thus our primary concern.

(D) Tempting, but we don't care about "interested vs. uninterested". We care about "more vs. less effective".

(E) "most" = wrong in 99.7% of the Necessary Assumption answer choices it appears in. "Most" is almost always wrong, because who cares whether something is 51% or 49%? When you negate "Most", you're basically going from "51% of policy proposals are grounded in an overarching scheme" vs. "49% are". Big whoop. If it turns out that it's rare for a candidates' policy proposal to be grounded in an overarching scheme, that will just mean that maybe we can't as FREQUENTLY use a philosophical attack. But it doesn't change anything about the notion that WHEN WE CAN use an philosophical attack, it's generally more effective than a policy attack.

Takeaway/Pattern: Early Necessary Assumption questions are more likely to be testing Idea Math, and rewarding us for naming the Missing Links. This argument boils down to, "X is more effective than Y, because X is emotionally compelling".

#officialexplanation

[priyanka.krishnamurthy]

I appreciate the post. I just want to clarify negating AC E -- Would we just be negating the 'Most' to run the negation test? I suppose if you negated it as 'Most candidates' policy proposals are NOT grounded in an overarching ideological scheme' you are still going to run into the issue of, ok well 49% of the policy proposals ARE, so who cares?

I hope that makes sense -- I am always wary of most in NA questions as noted but just want to make sure going forward I am consistent with the negation technique.

Thanks
pK

[ohthatpatrick]

That's correct.

When the truth value of a claim hinges on a quantity word, we negate that quantity word.

The truth value of (E) hinges on whether more than 50% of policy proposals are grounded in an ideological scheme.

If we say that (E) is a false claim (i.e. negate it), then we're saying 50% or less of policy proposals are grounded in an ideological scheme.

Even though negating "most" is technically "50 or less", pretty much everyone in the LSAT game allows themselves the simpler (albeit technically wrong) negation:

GIVEN: Most X's are Y.
NEGATION: Most X's are not Y.

Or
NEGATION: only 49% of X's are Y.

The more you remember "this answer hinges on whether it's 51% or 49%", the better. That specificity is so meaningless to almost all arguments that it will help you remember that "most" is almost guaranteed to be wrong on Necessary Assumption.

[JoshuM710]

Thanks for this explanation. After reading I can definitely see that (B) is a Necessary Assumption, however I'm having a hard time seeing that (E) is not.

Conclusion: Attacking opponent's philosophy is usually more effective than attacking policy details
In Idea Math terms, this means "attacking an opponent's philosophy is more effective 51%+ of the time", right?

Assuming I'm correct in the above, if we are unable to use a philosophical attack in a certain scenario, doesn't that mean it's not effective in that scenario? If we assume the weakest negation for (E), "49% are grounded in an overarching scheme", then the philosophical attack can be more effective at most 49% of the time.

Am I missing something here? Or is there perhaps a different explanation as to why (E) is not necessary?