#12 - In a scene in an ancient Greek play, Knights, the

[bkinsella05@gmail.com]

I would like to know if my line of reasoning is correct. I arrived at answer choice (D) in the Blind Review after analyzing the fact that Demosthenes' companion had to ask for an explanation of the prophecy. Had Demosthenes read out loud, his companion wouldn't need to press him for information of the prophecy to begin with. Therefore based on the given information, (D) is justifiably rejected and is the correct answer choice.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi bkinsella05!

Yes, your reasoning is correct. Demosthenes looks at a writing tablet and "continuously expresses his amazement at the contents." He's clearly reading the tablet, since he's examining and expressing a reaction to the contents. If he had been reading the contents aloud, his companion would have had no reason to ask what was written. We can therefore infer that he must have been reading silently to himself, making (D) the correct answer.

[hinarizvi]

I think the language of the question stem is throwing me off - In asking what can be justifiably rejected, it's asking what must be false, correct? And C doesn't HAVE to be false, because like you say below, based off of one given instance/example, we can conclude that that instance happens at least sometimes, but we cannot conclude that it never happens. We also cannot prove OR disprove that something happens rarely/most of the time/often based off of one instance. It could be true, we just don't know. Since C could be true, it does not have to be false, making it a wrong answer choice. Is that correct?

Hi Liz,

Great question--how could you streamline your problem-solving? I'd like to address this a bit abstractly so that you can apply the same reasoning to similar problems.

1) You tried to prephrase, but of course you couldn't guess what "cannot be true" without reading the answer choices. Here, you can't prephrase because there are too many conclusions that could and couldn't be drawn. Instead, just make sure you understand the stimulus, maybe by rereading and summarizing it quickly to yourself.

2) Also understand structurally what this stimulus is. It's an example. What types of things CAN be proved with an example? That X has happened at least once/sometimes. (An example shows that it cannot be true that X never happens.) What CAN'T be proved with an example? That X happens rarely, often, most of the time, always. Those things could be true.

3) Cross out any answer choice that COULD BE TRUE/COULD BE FALSE but you can't say for sure.

(A) One example does not tell us about ancient Greek plays generally. COULD BE TRUE

(B) There is nothing in the stimulus about whether the play is fictional or not. COULD BE TRUE

(C) The word "commonly" shows that this is the same as A. One example does not tell us about ancient Greek plays generally. COULD BE TRUE

(D) It CANNOT BE TRUE that something did not happen at all if the stimulus is an example of it happening.

(E) The word "rarely" shows that this is the same as A and C. One example does not tell us about ancient Greek plays generally. COULD BE TRUE

Even if you were uncomfortable about D because of the difference between ancient Greek plays and ancient Greece itself, the other answer choices have all been eliminated. D is the only possibility because it says that something never happened, which can be disproven by one example. Luckily, that's all the stimulus is: one example.

On the other hand, you shouldn't assume that an ancient Greek play shows nothing about ancient Greece because the actors wouldn't likely be doing things on stage that would be completely incomprehensible to their audience.

I hope this helps!

[Halfie]

I think the language of the question stem is throwing me off - In asking what can be justifiably rejected, it's asking what must be false, correct? And C doesn't HAVE to be false, because like you say below, based off of one given instance/example, we can conclude that that instance happens at least sometimes, but we cannot conclude that it never happens. We also cannot prove OR disprove that something happens rarely/most of the time/often based off of one instance. It could be true, we just don't know. Since C could be true, it does not have to be false, making it a wrong answer choice. Is that correct?

I think people are being a little overly strong in saying this is completely equivalent to "must be false." "Most justifiably rejected" clearly just means which one do we have the most reason to believe is false. And C we truly have no idea about - like you said, one scene does not tell us anything about what is common. However, Demosthenes is clearly reading purely by looking at the tablet; expressing amazement at somethings contents is different than reading those contents out loud.

In fact, in order to express amazement at a written text's contents, and then have your companion react to that by pressing you for information, indicates that your companion is also aware that you were reading the contents, and that you weren't saying those contents out loud (hence the companion's desire to have those contents explained). Combine this with the fact that this was a play in ancient Greece, we can pretty justifiably conclude that at least some of the time, people DID read silently to themselves. So, we have justifiable grounds for rejecting the idea that nobody ever read silently to themselves. As some people mentioned, that might not be 10000% true, but the question does not ask for that, it asks for the most justifiable rejection. The only way this could be wrong would be if in this specific play, Demosthenes was a unique human, the only one to ever have developed the fictional ability to read silently, and nobody in reality had this ability. That does not seem likely, so we can justifiably reject that.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Halfie,

You're right that based on the wording in the question, the answer does not need to be 100% false.

Just as Most Strongly Supported questions are very similar to Must Be True questions but require a lesser degree of certainty, this question similarly requires a lesser degree of certainty than an actual Cannot Be True/Must Be False question.