#9 - Even though she thought the informant was untrustworthy

[KelseyWoods]

Hi AnimalCrossingLSATer!

Congrats on your first post! Welcome to the Forum!

When diagramming that first sentence, I would take out the "promise" piece of it. The journalist made a promise that is conditional statement, but the promise itself is not sufficient or necessary--it's not IF she made a promise or if this is true, THEN she made a promise. We know she made a promise, we just need to analyze what exactly the conditions of that promise were.

So the journalist's promise was: "not to reveal his identity so long as the information he provided did not turn out to be false." You're correct that "so long as" is not a conditional phrase that we commonly encounter but it's roughly equivalent to "unless." And really, any phrase that we could reword in an "if...then..." format without changing the meaning of the phrase would be conditional. So you can kind of reason this out. The journalist said she would not reveal the identify so long as the information was not false. What does that mean? It means that the journalist promised that IF she reveals the identity of the source, THEN the information would have turned out to be false. You could also think of it in terms of the contrapositive: the journalist promised that IF the information does not turn out to be false, THEN she will not reveal the source.

So, yes, part of the problem with answer choice (A) is that even if the information turns out to be false, that does not mean the journalist would definitely reveal the source. As you noted, that would be a Mistaken Reversal of the journalist's promise.

But answer choice (A) has another problem as well. The conclusion that we are trying to justify is that "the journalist will surely reveal the informant’s identity even if the information is accurate." Even if knowing that the information being false would ensure that the journalist would reveal the source (which, again, we don't know for sure because that would be a Mistaken Reversal), that would still not prove the conclusion that the journalist will reveal her source EVEN IF the information is accurate. We need an answer choice that proves that the journalist will reveal her source whether or not the information is accurate, so any answer choice that tells us something about the accuracy of the information would basically be irrelevant.

So, yes, watch out for those Mistaken Reversals. But for this question, even with that Mistaken Reversal, answer choice (A) ends up being irrelevant to the conclusion because the conclusion specifies that the journalist will reveal her source regardless of the accuracy of the information.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[AnimalCrossingLSATer]

Hi AnimalCrossingLSATer!

Congrats on your first post! Welcome to the Forum!

When diagramming that first sentence, I would take out the "promise" piece of it. The journalist made a promise that is conditional statement, but the promise itself is not sufficient or necessary--it's not IF she made a promise or if this is true, THEN she made a promise. We know she made a promise, we just need to analyze what exactly the conditions of that promise were.

So the journalist's promise was: "not to reveal his identity so long as the information he provided did not turn out to be false." You're correct that "so long as" is not a conditional phrase that we commonly encounter but it's roughly equivalent to "unless." And really, any phrase that we could reword in an "if...then..." format without changing the meaning of the phrase would be conditional. So you can kind of reason this out. The journalist said she would not reveal the identify so long as the information was not false. What does that mean? It means that the journalist promised that IF she reveals the identity of the source, THEN the information would have turned out to be false. You could also think of it in terms of the contrapositive: the journalist promised that IF the information does not turn out to be false, THEN she will not reveal the source.

So, yes, part of the problem with answer choice (A) is that even if the information turns out to be false, that does not mean the journalist would definitely reveal the source. As you noted, that would be a Mistaken Reversal of the journalist's promise.

But answer choice (A) has another problem as well. The conclusion that we are trying to justify is that "the journalist will surely reveal the informant’s identity even if the information is accurate." Even if knowing that the information being false would ensure that the journalist would reveal the source (which, again, we don't know for sure because that would be a Mistaken Reversal), that would still not prove the conclusion that the journalist will reveal her source EVEN IF the information is accurate. We need an answer choice that proves that the journalist will reveal her source whether or not the information is accurate, so any answer choice that tells us something about the accuracy of the information would basically be irrelevant.

So, yes, watch out for those Mistaken Reversals. But for this question, even with that Mistaken Reversal, answer choice (A) ends up being irrelevant to the conclusion because the conclusion specifies that the journalist will reveal her source regardless of the accuracy of the information.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

Hi Kelsey -

Thanks very much for the comprehensive reply to this! Yes - this definitely helps, especially that I see (and get from reading your post) now that the conclusion is around the journalist revealing the identity for sure, and not around the accuracy of the informant's information, due to the "even if the (informant's) information is accurate" in the conclusion.

Thanks again!

-Dustine B. ("AnimalCrossingLSATer")

[KwakuS]

Hello,

Thank you for your previous responses on this question. After reading these answers, I am a little confused as to why B is not a viable answer. C is more clear and more direct, one could say, but B could work as well. If the information is accurate, and we take a power plant safety violation to be a public safety violation (which may be a slight stretch in reasoning but could still work), couldn't B qualify as a right answer?

Thank you,
Kwaku

[Beatrice Brown]

Hi Kwaku! Happy to help you out with this

To see why answer choice (B) is incorrect and answer choice (C) is correct, let's first diagram the conditional statements in the stimulus:

Premise 1: information provided by informant not false journalist will not reveal informant's identity
Premise 2: Judge or editor orders journalist to reveal identity journalist will reveal identity
Conclusion: Journalist will reveal informant's identity

The gap between the premises and conclusion that we need to address is that we do not actually know that the journalist will certainly reveal the informant's identity. How can we ensure that the journalist will reveal their identity? One way to do so would be to trigger the sufficient condition of the conditional statement in the second premise, which is that the judge or her editor will require her to do so.

Answer choice (C) matches this prephrase. It gives us another conditional statement, which can be diagrammed as:

Information is about safety at power plant judge will order journalist to reveal identity

The stimulus told us that the information is about safety violations at the power plant, meaning that the suffcient condition is triggered. Since the sufficient condition is true, the necessary condition (that the judge will order the journalist to reveal the informant's identity) must also be true. And if the judge orders the journalist to reveal the identity, then the conditional statement in the second premise is triggered and we know that the journalist will reveal her informant's identity. Answer choice (C) therefore bridges the gap between the premises of the argument and the conclusion, forcing the conclusion to be true by adding this new conditional statement.

Answer choice (B), on the other hand, does not force the conclusion to be true, meaning it is incorrect. Let's diagram this conditional statement:

Editor orders to reveal informant's identity information from informant is accurate + concerns public safety

This conditional statement, when added to the premises, does not force us to conclude that the journalist will reveal her informant's identity. The only way to do so would be if we know the editor will order her to reveal her informant's identity, but this is in the sufficient condition of the new conditional statement. Since it is in the sufficient condition, we cannot know that this is true; we can only know that the necessary condition is true if the sufficient condition is true, not whether a sufficient condition must be true. Since this conditional statement does not force the conclusion to follow, this answer choice is incorrect.

To sum up, the difference between answer choices (B) and (C) is that answer choice (C) forces the conclusion to be true when we add the new conditional statement to the argument, whereas answer choice (B) does not force the conclusion to be true. When answering a Justify question with conditional reasoning, we want to look for an answer choice that adds a new conditional statement that forces the conclusion to be true or a piece of information that would force the conclusion to be true (such as by triggering one of the existing conditional statements in the argument). Here, answer choice (C) does so by forcing the sufficient condition to be true in a conditional statement where the conclusion is in the necessary condition.

I hope this is helpful, and please let me know if you have any other questions!

[cd1010]

Hello -- Can you clarify how to approach sentences with "even if"? When I did this Q during PT, I saw the phrase "even if the information is accurate", so then I felt I had to connect it to the terms in the first sentence, but then couldn't easily do it because of 'even if'. Thanks!

[Dana D]

Hey CD,

"Even if" is really the same as "if" for the purposes of conditional reasoning and diagramming. The last sentence is just telling us that the information being accurate is not enough of a reason for the journalist to not reveal the informant's identity, which is important because the first sentence says that the journalist promised that as long as the information was not false, she'd keep the identity a secret. This alerts us that there must be some other factor that is forcing the journalist to break that promise. The second sentence tells us she will break the promise if ordered to do so by a judge or her editor, which leaves us wondering why either party would order her to do that?

Answer choice (C) is correct because it tells us why a judge would order her to reveal her informant's identity - it's because of the concerns over safety, which means the journalist will break her promise despite the information not being false.