Sufficient assumption tactic

[JAkeG658]

Ohthatpatrick mentioned an approach to sufficient assumption questions in his post for PT 62 q17. https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/forums/q17-one-should-never-sacrifice-one-s-health-t3870.html

On Sufficient Assumption, start with the claim you're trying to prove and ask yourself what we were told about these ideas in the Evidence (if there's any new term/idea that was NOT discussed in the evidence, it automatically must be in the correct answer).

I read this as: look at the conclusion, if there is any important thing there that was not discussed in the evidence, we should look for that thing in an answer.

I was wondering if this method also applies to necessary assumption questions? I noticed it helped considerably on questions like PT 71, q22. The support never addresses what an acceptable practice is, so I immediately looked for it in an answer choice and finished the question seconds after reading it. I want to know if this is always an option for necessary assumptions.

[ohthatpatrick]

No, it's not always an option, but it's an incredibly good starting point.

Necessary Assumption arguments can contain multiple assumptions, so there might be more than one New Guy in the conclusion.

for example:
The tension involved in watching a basketball game raises one's blood pressure.
Thus, watching exciting sports can diminish your heart health.

Since we need to connect "basketball" to "exciting sports" AND we need to connect "raising blood pressure" to "diminish heart health", this would not be a Sufficient Assumption stimulus. (There's more than one gap to fix)

But it could be a Necessary Assumption stimulus, and since either of the two aforementioned missing links could be a correct answer, we can't say that "any new term in the conclusion is GUARANTEED to be in the correct answer".

Nevertheless, reading the conclusion for a New Idea / Overly Strong Idea is still the most important reading tactic for all Assumption Family questions. So it's a great starting point for thinking of missing links or potential objections, but you can't have the same mechanical guarantee that a new idea in the Conclusion will be in the correct answer (just a strong premonition).