LSAT Clinic 1/22 LG Sequencing and Linearity Question

[toledoal234]

Hello! I couldn't find a specific forum thread for the weekly LSAT clinic, so please move this forum topic if it's in the wrong place!

I just had a quick question about one of the examples discussed at timestamp 00:33:56 for the 1/22 recorded LSAT clinic. Jon is discussing hurdling the uncertainty, and the two rules (with six places) are:

• W and X cannot speak consecutively

• X must speak third or fifth

From this, he writes out the laws and links them to say that W cannot be fourth, which makes sense. However, I was wondering if it would also be appropriate in this situation to draw two conditional statements from the rules:

• If X3, then W6

• If X5, then W2

I've been having some difficulty with conditional logic while self-studying, so I was wondering if this is an OK linkage to make? If so, is it recommended to try to diagram those rules out, or will it make things too cluttered/confusing? If not, why not? Thank you in advance!

[Jon Denning]

Hi toledoal - thanks for posting and welcome to the Forum! Let's see if we can help you sort this one out

I'll preface my reply with a quick reminder of something I said during the clinic, which is that arguably the most dangerous/penalizing mistake that people tend to make in LG is representing mere possibilities (uncertainties) as though they're absolute truths. So saying that some variable must go into a certain position when in fact it could go there, but doesn't have to. Or showing a Not Law for a variable or position that overstates consequences or over-restricts movement.

And I think what you'll find here is that the two conditional relationships you mention are potentially committing that same error of limiting things too much. That is, if X is in 3 then it's certainly possible that W would be 6th...but that doesn't have to be the case: W could also go 1st or 5th, for example. As long as W isn't in 2 or 4 when X is 3rd then no rule would be broken.

Ditto for X in 5: W can't go 4th or 6th, but anywhere else is allowed.

So the precise outcomes that arise from the placement of X (based on just the two rules provided in that example) aren't quite as limited as those two conditional representations indicate.

This is an extremely valuable lesson to learn early, and one that in my experience is often best learned via mistakes (committing the error and feeling the sting, so to speak). It'll train you not to go too far, and also to err on the side of allowing for more possibility rather than limiting things more than the game's constraints actually do.

I hope that helps!