#14 - The economy is doing badly. First, the real estate

[Dana D]

Hey Mmjd,

Answer (D) says

Real estate slump
and
low car sales bad economy

the contrapositive of which would be

bad economy real estate slump OR low car sales

So in other words, if the economy is healthy, there should either be a non-slump in the real estate market or higher car sales, which is what answer choice (D) says. It is the contrapositive of the stimulus.

[HarmonRabb]

I'm having trouble understanding why "Bad Economy" is the necessary condition and not sufficient. Can you give me some tips to help see this?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Harmon,

It's because of the structure of the argument. We want to prove that the economy is bad, so we need something from the argument to show that when it occurs, it determines that the conclusion has to follow, aka that the conclusion is necessary. Since the conclusion is that the economy is bad, that is the part of the argument we need to be necessary. Answer choice (D) must be true because we know that the sufficient in that statement occurs (per the stimulus) therefore, the necessary occurs.

Hope that helps!

[HarmonRabb]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I follow. Is my understanding correct that when a conclusion is presented, it is the necessary condition and the conditions that cause the conclusion are the sufficient conditions?

Would this be correct then (example I made up)? :

There must be many fake jobs on LinkedIn. Companies have the same role open for over a year and everybody that applies is automatically rejected in the first 24 hours with a generic message stating they were not a fit.

Role_open_over_1year AND automatically_rejected ---> fake jobs

Second made up example:

Mr. Powers has been painting the interior of house and building a new front porch. He must be getting ready to sell. It's a given that people are getting ready to sell their home when they are doing these things.

painting AND building_porch ----> selling

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Exactly Harmon. When the conclusion is stated in terms of requirement, as in here, it's structured to show that when you have the premises, you have the conclusion. That's a conditional relationship---when X then Y.

It's not always the case that an argument is structured in that way. But that is the case here. It says that we know the car sales are down, and there's a real estate slump, therefore the economy is bad.

Your examples should also work---they are phrased in terms of requirement. It doesn't matter if it's something that is actually true---you aren't analyzing that. You are looking that it is something that the argument entails must be true.

Hope that helps!