Carl's Coffee Emporium stocks only two decaffeinated coffees: French Roast and Mocha Java. Yusef only serves decaffei...

Motunrayo-Bamgbose-Martins December 20, 2020

Does a difference in the timeline of a stimulus impact the correct answer choice in Parallel reasoning questions

The stimulus mentions that "if Yusef still gets all his coffee from Carl's, what he served last night was Mocha Java." which discusses something that had already happened last night. meanwhile the correct choice talked about something that would happen in the future, the person would accept one over another. I previously thought that this difference would make the answer choice wrong. Please help here. I feel like in previous questions, the difference in the timeline was a reason to eliminate an answer choice, so, why not here?

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shunhe December 24, 2020

Hi @Motunrayo-Bamgbose-Martins,

Thanks for the question! No, the difference in the timeline doesn’t matter in that respect. It’s not really a “future” condition. The “would” is a subjunctive expressing a hypothetical as opposed to something that’ll happen in the future. But either way, we care more about the logical structure than the true or false. I’m not sure what the last line was, but in that case, the timeline must’ve been central to the reasoning.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.