#26 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[curly1]

Hi! Would anyone be willing to explain why B is incorrect and why C is correct?

I had the impression that the author agrees with Carroll and Chen's innovation in lines 36-40.

[Brook Miscoski]

Curly,

One cue that (C) is the correct choice is that the question seeks what the Author believes, but the passage mainly reports on what others believe. (C) is the only choice that gives a standard physics response and is not an opinion. Lines 30-36 establish this as the author's own observation.

Since you're sure the author agrees with a fact about physics he presents, but you can't be sure whether the author agrees with any of the hypothesis he presents, you pick (C). You don't know whether he agrees with Carroll & Chen.

[jm123]

I chose B for this answer choice because I think I got a bit confused towards the end of the passage. I thought that Carroll and Chen believed that our universe's initial state was one that resembles cold, empty space.

I then looked to the last paragraph to see how the author supports this view when it says "On this view, while the initial state that produced our universe would appear to be, taken by itself, a highly improbable one, in the vastness of the multiverse the creation of our universe is not that unlikely. Indeed it is likely not even a unique event."

Did I get this wrong because the question stem asks what the author presumes (in other words assumes)? Because then she would not reference any point of agreement because an assumption will not be explicitly stated and B would be wrong because she is stating her opinion of agreement.

In general, I seem to get most questions down to two answer choices, and then most of the time I end up choosing the wrong answer choice. This happens for all the questions I get wrong on RC. With two weeks left to the June LSAT, I feel like I am very close to breaking through and scoring very well in this section on the day of my exam. Are there any tips you may have for me? I was thinking that instead of just choosing one answer choice between the two I narrowed it down to, I should flip my approach and look for the answer that I cannot eliminate. If I cannot eliminate it based on the context of the passage it has to be the correct answer, is that correct? A lot of times I choose an answer because I feel like it may be right but I can see why it could be wrong and if that is the case, then how can the answer be right? So maybe flipping my approach and looking to eliminate answers and finding which answers are wrong instead of finding which are right will greatly benefit me.

Thank you in advance and sorry for the lengthy post!

[Adam Tyson]

Sorry to take so long responding, JM, and you probably took the test yesterday or are taking it today, so this may be a bit late for you unless you also retake later.

For this question, we are supposed to get the author's view, and answer B is the view of Carroll and Chen. We don;t know if the author agrees with them. So, eliminate it based on the viewpoints - we don't have the author's viewpoint on this subject.

In general, when stuck between two answers, find what is different about them. That difference is what makes one the better choice. And yes, frequently it is easier to eliminate a wrong answer than it is to select a right one, so if you cannot find evidence for one of the answers, see if you can find evidence against the other one. Generally, though, in RC you should always be able to find clear, direct evidence for your answer choice, so a lack of evidence is usually a good enough reason to reject an answer. One answer will have support and the other will not!

Best of luck, I hope you crushed your test!

[av171821]

Hi, I know you have already taken the exam, but I wanted to provide what I believe is an explanation for why B is wrong.

The passage states "On this view, while the initial state that produced our universe would appear to be, taken by itself, a highly improbable one, in the vastness of the multiverse the creation of our universe is not that unlikely. Indeed it is likely not even a unique event."

To me, the key words are "in the vastness of the multiverse"; what this means is that WITHIN the multiverse theory, this initial state is probable and makes sense. The author is still speaking in terms of another theory and not necessarily from his/her own perspective.

C on the other hand - ".. it is a mystery why there should have been a small, hot, dense universe to begin with. Such a low entropy state is an extremely unlikely configuration." This is coming from the author themself, not in terms of theory.

I got this wrong initially as well, but I believe that a close reading of the text made the answer clearer. When you get down to two answers, my advice would be to really carefully look at the text/trust your instinct! I hope you did okay!

[LSAT-180]

My take on this questions:

A) we know only that our universe started with a Big Bang and even if other universes started with a Big Bang the passage doesn’t talk about the start of the multiverse

B) The average initial state of most universes in the multiverse resembles cold empty space, not our universe. Our universe is one of the exceptions.

C) A hot dense state is not the normal and thus is a state of low entropy (more ordered)

D) The passage only goes as far as the multiverse, not beyond

E) We don’t know the specifics of why the second law of thermodynamics was created; only what it implies about entropy.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Excellent, 180. Notice how many of your responses focus on what we don't know from the passage. It can also sometimes be useful to think through what would make an answer choice correct. For example, answer choices (A) and (D) are close to things we know but switch the word "universe" for "multiverse" to become something we don't know. On test day, you want to just focus on finding the right answer as quickly as possible. However, when you are studying, it's valuable to see why someone would pick an answer that you recognize is wrong. Recognizing what the test makers are trying to use to trip people up will help you recognize the tricks faster and more efficiently.

[cd1010]

For RC, the questions I struggle the most with are tone questions and author's perspective, specifically questions where I'm asked to infer about what the author would agree with/presume. Like many others, I was in between B and C for this question.

One of the explanations is that the passage is only concerned with reporting other people's opinions, and not the other's own. But I have trouble squaring this explanation for AC B with the explanation for Q22 which is asking for author's tone. If the correct answer in Q22 is that the author is sympathetic with Carroll and Chen's theory, then why can't we argue that for this question, the author would agree with AC B?

Regarding C -- Last time I took physics was in HS and I've completely forgotten it! So, precisely because I don't know physics, to me this statement ("A hot and dense state is a state of low entropy") seemed very broad? The passage only said that the small, hot dense state that was the initial condition of our universe was a state of low entropy. And I thought this was different than a more broad general physics law-like sounding rule (Hot + Dense = Low entropy).

I'm taking the LSAT in a couple of days, and these Author's perspective questions still get me!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

One of the things that helps me a lot, cd, is to track the various viewpoints and perspectives in notes on my scratch paper as I read. That helps me to figure out exactly where I know something about a viewpoint and where I don't.

Here, I know that the author is sympathetic to the ideas of Carroll and Chen because they call those ideas an innovation. However we don't know specifically that this author would agree that the initial state of THIS universe would be cold and empty. In fact, the author would likely disagree---this universe started out in a hot dense state (low entropy). We know it was hot and dense (and low entropy) from middle of the passage, where the author sets out the puzzle that Carroll and Chen explain---while our universe is low entropy, it is only one of a vast multiverse of filled of different universes, most that are cold and empty.

Our universe is special, and answer choice (B) indicates that it's not. We'd eliminate it as inconsistent with the passage for that reason alone.

Hope that helps!