The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass. The leaders of all major parties have stated that they opp...

Naz on December 17, 2014

So we are told that the new agriculture bill will probably not pass. Why? Because the leaders of all major parties have stated that they oppose it.

P: LAMO

C: not P

We are looking for the answer choice that supports the prediction that the agriculture bill will fail to pass.

(A): "Most bills that have not been supported by even one leader of a major party have not been passed into law."

(A) LAMO-most-not P
not P-some-LAMO

So, we know that all major parties have stated they oppose it, i.e. LAMO, and if we take (A) to be true, then we know that a majority of the bills that have not been supported by even one leader of major party have not been passed into law, i.e. "most not P."

Thus, as you can see, answer choice (A) helps support the prediction that the agriculture bill will fail to pass since we know that the leaders of ALL major parties have stated that they oppose it and answer choice (A) states that most of these types of bills will not pass.

(B) "Most bills that have not been passed into law were not supported by even one member of a major party."

(B): not P-most-LAMO
LAMO-some-not P

We must flip the "most statement" in (B) into a "some statement" to use our premise of "LAMO." Once we flip, we only know that "some not P," which could mean only one will not pass, while the rest do. Thus, our prediction that the new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to pass is not supported, since most could actually pass.

(E) "Most bills that have been passed into law were supported by at least one leader of a major party."

(E): P-most-not LAMO
not LAMO-some-P

The issue with (E) is that we have not been given any information about bills that have passed and bills that were supported by at least one leader of a major party. We only know that the agriculture bill is opposed by every leader of a majority party.

Thus, answer choice (A) is the only answer choice that supports the prediction.

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

JPB on August 17, 2021

One word flips is A is leader, B is member
When you pause and say, what? is there a difference, likely "one" word skating past your eyeballs that is the pivot

Ravi on February 6, 2022

@JPB, A strengthens by giving us a reason to believe that the assumption is true. When party leaders are against something, the legislators vote against it.