#20 - One of the most vexing problems in historiography

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Cnyberg,

I'll expand this reply tomorrow or the following day when I have a bit more time, but in the meantime I'd urge you to rethink this problem and how you are approaching it It's easy to want to argue with the LSAT, but it is regrettably a fruitless game (I even wrote a blog about it: You Can’t Argue with the LSAT). LSAC makes the rules here and so it is what they think that matters, and since they say (B) is correct, they clearly disagree with your line of thinking. So, to me, the better question to ask here is not what's wrong with your thinking but instead, "Why do they think they’re right and why do they disagree with you?"

To that end, Rachael in fact pointed you to a key spot in the stimulus for justifying their reasoning. I'll also add briefly for now that answer (B) is additionally restricted to "events for which there are conflicting chronologies and for which attempts have been made by historians to determine the right date." What LSAC is saying there is that these have been looked at and historians have come up short. So it's not just any old event, but a rather smaller group of events for which there are problems. And, I'd add that the recommendation in the stimulus is also clear that we first eliminate competing sources, including "the less credible ones." That's going to eliminate your very humorous scenario involving Clouseau and Pyle And your time travel argument will fail on common sense grounds—you don’t have the ability to here to rely on something that far-fetched (if we did, many LSAT answers would suddenly be questionable). Last, note the nature of the question stem here: "Which one of the following inferences is most strongly supported by the information above?" (italics added) LSAC may well have realized that "cannot" in (B) was very strong, and so they built themselves an escape clause here by allowing for a lower level of provability. They don't often use that backdoor as justification for why an answer is right (and I personally don't think they need it here), but it means that you as a student have to occasionally give them more latitude with the correct answer.

Well, that ended up going longer than I intended so I don't think further expansion is necessary, but the key is that LSAC disagrees with you here, and we are just the messengers. So my advice to you would be to examine why they think you are wrong (I've listed several reasons above that would helpful to examine) and understand how you can absorb that information into your approach to LR going forward.

I hope that helps. Thanks!

[Loyd_Xmas]

Mr. Killoran,

Thank you for responding to my question! I love your bibles and would rather read one of them than the Lord's Bible any day of the week. I feel that deep discussions of weird questions like this are incredibly helpful in understanding LSAT question writers' mindsets.

I agree with most of the statements in your post, but the devil's advocate in me questions four of the claims in it. I quoted each below in bold print and wrote my response to each beneath each claim.

1.

And, I'd add that the recommendation in the stimulus is also clear that we first eliminate competing sources, including "the less credible ones." That's going to eliminate your very humorous scenario involving Clouseau and Pyle

Pyle and Clouseau are meant to be historians in my aforementioned example, not sources. The historians are the ones analyzing the sources.

2.

And your time travel argument will fail on common sense grounds—you don’t have the ability to here to rely on something that far-fetched (if we did, many LSAT answers would suddenly be questionable).

Does common sense dictate that humanity will never invent a time machine in the future? If so, than Albert Einstein himself lacks common sense. Einstein thought it was possible to fold space-time (no need to cite this because Google, with the help of common sense, yields numerous sources referring to this). You don't have to be an Einstein to realize that just because humanity is CURRENTLY incapable of time travel does not mean it will ALWAYS be.

3.

Last, note the nature of the question stem here: "Which one of the following inferences is most strongly supported by the information above?" (italics added) LSAC may well have realized that "cannot" in (B) was very strong, and so they built themselves an escape clause here by allowing for a lower level of provability.

To this the devil's advocate inside my brain replies, "This would support choice (b) as the correct answer IF there is an answer choice that is better than choice (b). Choice (b)'s proposition is COMPLETELY unsupported. It is a fallacy for anyone to say that, just bc SOME historians couldn't date the event, it is IMPOSSIBLE for ANY historian to date ANY historical event (that definitely happened) during the existence of mankind. This is true because of what I mentioned in my last post on this thread: You don't know what you don't know! The fact that we don't know what we don't know has been a reason why many past LSAT answer choices are incorrect. Also, given that the assertion made in answer choice (b) is unsupported but possible, Why is answer choice (c) not better than (b)? It is also unsupported and possible, BUT it also does not defy common sense, as I would argue that choice (b) does, since (b) purports to know the future. The devil's advocate in my head also says that fortune telling is (most likely) currently impossible, and that likelihood that fortune telling currently exists < the likelihood that time travel will be available in the future.

4.

It's easy to want to argue with the LSAT, but it is regrettably a fruitless game.

I know that you are referring to one's mindset while taking the exam, but the devil's advocate in my head also mentioned that it is possible (and not unprecedented) for a student to protest a question if a student believes that the test makers erred. I would say that it is also possible that some faulty past LSAT questions were never discovered; however, this seems HIGHLY improbable! I suspect that there could be an argument for why choice (b) is the best answer, but I have not read or realized why it is yet (if it is indeed an unflawed correct answer).

Once again, I want to emphasize that I am not yet sold on the idea that (b) is not the most supported answer choice in this question. I really hope that someone will solve this conundrum and that we can learn something from this.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi C,

Thanks for the reply! You're getting deep down a rabbit hole here and this is going beyond the scope of the forum and more towards a tutoring environment, but I'll do what I can to assist. I will start by first saying thanks for the kind words--I'm very glad the books have helped

Next, let's turn to this closing portion of your reply:

Once again, I want to emphasize that I am not yet sold on the idea that (b) is not the most supported answer choice in this question.

I fear if you may have superficially considered the first paragraph of of my initial reply to you. It's a delicate thing to say and I mean no offense, but your opinion on how valid (B) is here is meaningless (as is my opinion here, for that matter); the only opinion that matters is LSAC's, and they say (B) is correct. All else flows from that fact, and in any response I make, I attempt to interpret what they would say. So, I'm not trying to explain your reasoning or why it is wrong, I'm trying to explain why they believe what they believe. At a certain point then, my response is likely going to be, "That's what they think and you may have to accept that you disagree with it despite my best attempts at convincing you otherwise." That may seem like a minor perspective shift, but it's incredibly important in my opinion.

That said, let's look at your four numbered points:

1. It wasn't lost on me that both those characters are examples of bumblers, and I assumed they were intentionally chosen as stand-ins for historians who also had elements of incompetence. I did not assume they were the actual sources, lol!


2. I'll be blunt: LSAC won't countenance this line of reasoning. It's far-fetched and you can see their point here in ignoring it as reasonable. If we can whip out time machines and teleporters and telepathy at any given point as being reasonable, then much of LSAT LR and RC will be unsupportable.


3. I've noted above that (B) is not completely unsupported. It may not be bullet-proof but there is certainly support for it, and I've referenced various points for it. You've returned here to argue for your reasoning when my goal is to explain LSAC's, not yours (because again, anyone's opinion but LSAC's is irrelevant). We're now disagreeing on the relative merits of their support when we already know LSAC thinks it's sufficient.

If there were a better answer here then yes, that would be the correct answer because it asks for the one most strongly supported, not just the only answer that is supported. But there is not, at least in my personal view, and much more importantly, in LSAC's view.


4. I'm actually referring to more than just the test-taking mindset. I wrote the You Can't Argue With The LSAT article linked above specifically to address issues that I occasionally see with people reviewing questions. Being so sure you are correct about a question is a danger in my experience, mainly because it doesn't benefit you in the least as far as figuring out how LSAC thinks.

There are indeed faulty LSAT questions! Some questions were pulled from the exam prior to release, some after release, and a few that still exist. It's not that LSAC is perfect; they do make errors (although very few relatively, and this is not one of them imho, for whatever that's worth). Even so, studying and taking the test with the mindset that they've made errors is far more dangerous than beneficial.


So, where do you go from here? In your shoes, I would go back into this and try to strip away what has become a very strong aversion to (B), and instead look at it from the test maker's viewpoint: why do they think it works? Why do they think this has more support than any other answer? Why were they comfortable with "impossible" in (B)? Why do they ignore the time travel argument? And so on. Ignore your objections here and focus on their thinking. I think that's the best route here because you will very likely encounter other problems you don't love (we all do), and in those moments, you want to see the exam through their eyes in order to get the right answer.

Thanks!

[lsatstudent99966]

Hi there,

It's clear that (A) is wrong, but could I confirm whether my understanding of why it's wrong is sound? I see at least two reasons:

1. The stimulus doesn’t specify that historians only attempt to determine dates when there are conflicting sources. It’s possible historians also work in other situations, so we can't conclude that in most cases where they attempt to date events, there's no plausible chronology.

2. Even when there are conflicting sources, the process described in the stimulus (eliminating less credible sources) could still lead historians to establish a plausible chronology.

Many thanks!

[lsatstudent99966]

Sorry, I have another question regarding the explanation of (E). I understand that "undermine the credibility" is unsupported. But isn't "as many as possible" supported? The stimulus says that historians should minimize the competing sources by eliminating the less credible ones. Isn't it reasonable to infer that the stimulus suggests comparing sources and eliminating as many of the less credible ones as possible?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi lsatstudent,

Your understanding of the problems of Answer A looks good.

Also, as a general rule, whenever you see an answer choice for a Must Be True (or Most Strongly Supported) question that has a word like "most" in it, first check to see if that word or idea of majority appears in the stimulus (including anything stronger, such as "all." If not, the answer is wrong. Even if the concept does appear in the stimulus, you then need to confirm that the "most" term in the stimulus refers to the same thing or group as the answer choice, as wrong answers often incorrectly mix the groups/terms in the stimulus. Although the word "most" does appear in the stimulus ("one of the most vexing problems," it is not used in the "more than half" way that is used in Answer A.

As for your second question, while I agree that "minimizing" would suggest reducing as many sources as possible, the part in the stimulus about "eliminating the less credible ones" was preceded by the words "perhaps by," meaning that this is only one possible suggested way of minimizing the sources.

[lsatstudent99966]

Hi lsatstudent,

Your understanding of the problems of Answer A looks good.

Also, as a general rule, whenever you see an answer choice for a Must Be True (or Most Strongly Supported) question that has a word like "most" in it, first check to see if that word or idea of majority appears in the stimulus (including anything stronger, such as "all." If not, the answer is wrong. Even if the concept does appear in the stimulus, you then need to confirm that the "most" term in the stimulus refers to the same thing or group as the answer choice, as wrong answers often incorrectly mix the groups/terms in the stimulus. Although the word "most" does appear in the stimulus ("one of the most vexing problems," it is not used in the "more than half" way that is used in Answer A.

As for your second question, while I agree that "minimizing" would suggest reducing as many sources as possible, the part in the stimulus about "eliminating the less credible ones" was preceded by the words "perhaps by," meaning that this is only one possible suggested way of minimizing the sources.

Thanks a lot Jeff! With regard to (A), I didn't even recognize there's a wordplay of "most" in the stimulus before seeing your response!

Based on the explanation of (E), can I confirm one small point?

Since the stimulus says, "Historians should attempt to minimize the number of competing sources", we can infer "The soundest approach is to eliminate as many of the competing sources as possible," right? But we can't infer "The soundest approach is to eliminate as many of the less credible competing sources as possible" because this particular piece of additional information is preceded by the word "perhaps" in the stimulus, right? (However, I also feel like it's a bit tricky here...? Because it sounds like "eliminate as many of the less credible competing sources as possible" is the most reasonable way to "eliminate as many of the competing sources as possible"? )

Thank you very much!