#21 - A society in which there are many crimes, such as

[kristenthompson92]

Hello-
I have been attempting the lesson 2 conditional reasoning homework and am encountering some issues that I am not sure how to resolve. Number 3 is giving me a hard time due to the confusing use of SC and NC indicator words. I am not entirely sure how answers E and D are different from each other, except for the use of the words "Many" and "some" and additionally, no indicator words are present in either answer choice so I am finding it difficult to diagram.

I am finding this trend true across the board. Are there situations where NC and SC indicators will not exist at all and if so, is there a trick to identify parts of the relationship with accuracy?

I've been going through these LR problems at turtle speed and although I'm trying to get better at identifying conditional relationships, it's not coming very easily for me.

Any help would be really appreciated !


Thanks,
Kristen

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Kristen,

Thanks for the question. I’ve moved this post to the thread explaining this question. Please reference the explanations in the posts in this thread!

You might find this helpful on key words as well: lsat/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7030&p=17840

Thanks!

[Johnclem]

Hi ,
I realize this is a must be true question and we normally do not care for the conclusion, but just wondering for this problem, is the conclusion the first or the last sentence ?

Thank you
John

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey John,

Thanks for your question!

You're right - we don't really care about the conclusion in MBT questions, but just for the sake of argument, I actually think the first sentence is a subsidiary conclusion: on the one hand, it is supported by the second, third, and fourth sentences; on the other, it supports the last sentence, which I consider to be the main conclusion (a society in which there are many crimes should be called crimeful, not lawless). I realize the first and last sentences are very similar in scope, but the first merely states a prohibition; the last presents an actual positive recommendation that results from that prohibition. Does that make sense?

Thanks,

[Johnclem]

Perfect explanation. Thank you very much !


-John

[kristine1501]

Can someone please explain why answer choice C is wrong and how answer choice D is correct? I'm reading through the explanations of how answer D is correct and it doesn't make sense to me.

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi Kristine,

Thanks for the question. I know that the reasoning underlying logical reasoning problems like this can sometimes be obtuse. Let's break it down:

• "lawless" literally means no laws
  
  no laws means no crimes

That's about it. Those are the only "meaningful" statements in that stimulus. What can we prove?

From those statements, can we prove that a society that has many laws must have many crimes? No, we don't have support for that inference.

However since to have crimes we must have laws, we can prove answer choice D. Remember, "no laws means no crimes." So what happens if we have some crimes? Clearly we must have some laws.

Does this make sense?

[Johnclem]

Hello,
A quIck question with answer choice D and E

Aren't " some " and "many" equivalent in meaning at least one ? I really can't see the difference between D and E .


Thank you
John

[Adam Tyson]

You're right about "some", John - that does mean "at least one", and it can include all of something. "Many", on the other hand, is harder to pin down, because it is subjective.

Think of a jar with 100 marbles in it. Now, if I tell you that some of the marbles are blue, we can put a range of numbers to that idea. There is at least one blue marble, and there could be as many as 100 that are blue. Everything in between would also be okay - they are all "some".

Now I tell you that many of the marbles are red. What's the number range? Is just one a part of that? Two? Would 30 be many? 100 surely would be, 51 probably is, but as we get lower we get less and less sure of ourselves, and things get harder to prove.

We will often have evidence that supports "some" of something that may not support "many" of that thing, because we may only know for certain about one, or two, or some other amount that we cannot be sure meets the vague, subjective criteria for "many". On a Must Be True question, if I have to choose between some and many, I will usually go for some, because if many is correct then some must also be correct, but not vice versa. Don't do that automatically, though, but compare the rest of the answer choices to each other to see if they are talking about the same things.

Many times we can prove some, and sometimes we can prove many, but some and many are not equal concepts.

Keep at it!

[amowuya]

Hi, ps!
It is a literal truth that the answer D and E are too strong and there are other possibilities. Like you said that It is possible that a society has many crimes but only one, or a few laws. Thus answer choice (E) is too strong to be supported by the stimulus. Contrarily, (D) is much weaker, since it merely states that crime requires law, without adding a conjecture about the number of laws and number of crimes.

But according to the logical ladder in the bible, "many" means "some". The condition relationship about "some" can be reversal which means "if and only if" relationships. In this case, answer D and E should be right too.

I'm confused. Can you explain it for me please?
Thanks!