For democracy to survive, it is imperative that the average citizen be able to develop informed opinions about import...

Virginia_61092 July 10, 2015

Help

I had trouble diagramming this one. I chose answer d instead of b. Thank you

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Naz July 11, 2015

Alright, so let's diagram this:

"For democracy to survive, it is imperative that the average citizen be able to develop informed opinions about important policy issues."

So: if democracy survives, then the average citizen is able to develop informed opinions about important policy issues.

P1: DS ==> ACDIO
not ACDIO ==> not DS

"In today's society, this means that citizens must be able to develop informed opinions on many scientific subjects."

So: If a citizen in today's society is able to develop informed opinions about important policy issues, then they must be able to develop informed opinions on many scientific subjects.

P2: ACDIO ==> ADIOSS
not ADIOSS ==> not ACDIO

"Yet, as scientific knowledge advances, the average citizen is increasingly unable to absorb enough information to develop informed opinions on many important issues."

So: as scientific knowledge advances, the average citizen will not be able to develop informed opinions on many important issues.

P3: not ADIOSS

We can, through the transitive property connect P3 to the contrapositive of P2 to the contrapositive of P1 like so: not ADIOSS ==> not ACDIO ==> not DS to conclude not ADIOSS ==> not DS.

So, since we know that as scientific knowledge advances, we will have "not ADIOSS," which leads to "not DS," we know that as scientific knowledge advances, it'll be increasingly difficult for democracy to survive, i.e. answer choice (B).

The issue with (D) is we have no information on "Effective democracies." We only know what is necessary for a democracy to survive. Surviving is different from being effective. Remember, you cannot infer anything on the LSAT. The boundaries of the passage create the boundaries of our knowledge for the purposes of your LSAT prep.

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

stormbeeler September 5, 2015

Is E wrong because it only reversed the connection of P1 and P2 and or because use of some. Or is it more wrong because of P3 Trying to solidify finding the flaws in the wrong answers. Thanks.

Naz September 12, 2015

Even if we were to ignore the "some" in answer choice (E), which complicates the answer choice even further, answer choice (E) cannot be true based on the information given.

If we diagram (E), it would look like this: ADIOSS ==> DS

What's the issue here?

"ADIOSS" is a necessary condition. We know that we can never infer anything else from a necessary condition. The Sufficient and Necessary arrow only goes one way. We cannot reverse it to have ADIOSS be sufficient to conclude ACDIO and then reverse that arrow to conclude DS. Never mistake a necessary condition for a sufficient one.

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.