#10 - It is wrong to waste our natural resources

[brettb]

I got this question correct, but was not confident in my answer choice. I find myself struggling with MBT/Most Strongly Supported questions.

I am reviewing those questions in the LR Bible this weekend, but was hoping for some guidance on how to best approach attacking these questions? Should I diagram these questions? I always spend too much time on these questions and feel like there has to be a faster way to arrive at the answer choice.

I think the reason I got this question correct was because I went with the answer choice I thought had the least extreme language.

A - "All" seemed too strong: "Because less trash" will be recycled implies that not all trash will be recycled.
B- "Entirely" seemed too strong
C- "Most effective way": There was nothing in the stimulus that talked about other ways. Since there is nothing to compare this way to there is no way to determine if it's more or less effective than other ways.

That left me with D & E. I ended up choosing D because I felt E was still too strong. I believe there is a faster way to answer this possibly by diagramming?

All help and feedback is appreciated. Many thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

I think a good practice, especially in the early stages of studying and practicing logical reasoning, is "when in doubt, diagram." Down the road you want to marry up that mechanical approach to your developing intuition so that you only diagram when it's complex enough to be worthwhile, and simpler arguments can be handled in your ever-growing noggin. Try paraphrasing this argument into a series of if/then statements and see what happens as you diagram them. Determine for yourself whether that approach is easier and faster for you than the approach you took, which was based more on your intuition (which proved to be spot on, so don't suppress that valuable tool).

Your approach of checking extreme language was a great one - I liked it, and would have probably done it pretty much the same way rather than by diagramming. I would have read "all" in answer A and said to myself "that's not supported - some, sure, but maybe not all." Same thing with the others. Keep that up, and add diagramming as a supplement, a new tool in your toolbox that you can use, or not, as you see fit.

Good work!

[jcough346]

Is B wrong because "entirely" is too strong and/or it's unsupported in the stimulus?

[Kristina Moen]

Hi jcough,

You got it! The stimulus says that "When trash is recycled, fewer resources are wasted." We cannot infer that "By recycling more trash, the city can stop wasting resources entirely."

In the LSAT world, fewer just means less than - fewer could be 1% less. For example, Diet Brand's Cookie could have "fewer" calories than leading brands, but only have 10% less calories. This is a real-life marketing tactic!

[jcough346]

Okay gotcha. Is there somewhere where I can track down a list of these modifier words? I know they're endless but the ones that are generally used more on the LSAT? I did the Powerscore course so I can refer to those books if need be.

[Kristina Moen]

Hi jcough,

There's two sections in the first book of the full-length course that I think are helpful:
"The Importance of Language" which begins on p.1-5.
"Logical Opposition" which begins on p. 2-1.

The test uses language literally, which may different from how you use it in everyday life. For example, I might say to my friend,"You're always late!," even if she's only late 70% of the time. It wouldn't change my mind if she she said "But on October 5th, 2001, I was on time!" However, if on the test there was an argument that concluded "Susan is always late," that means that she is late EVERY SINGLE TIME. So a statement like "On October 5th, 2001, Susan was on time" would kill that conclusion.

By thinking about the language on the test this way, it will help you when you see words like "fewer," "most," less than," "always," "not all," etc.

Hope this helps.