#22 - When a society undergoes slow change, its younger

[Administrator]

This stimulus presents the relationship between the rate of societal change and the degree to which
young people value the advice of their elders. If societal change is slow, there is greater respect for
the advice of elders, and, conversely, if societal change is more rapid, young people see less value in
the advice of their elders. Based on these premises, the author jumps to the conclusion that the rate
of societal change is reflected in the amount of deference (i.e. respect) which younger members of
society show to older members.

Although it is somewhat subtle, we might note the leap from valuing the advice of elders, to showing
deference to elders:

Premises: Slow societal change greater value placed on elders’ advice
Rapid societal change lesser value placed on elders’ advice

Conclusion: Rate of societal change is reflected in the deference shown to elders.

The stimulus is followed by an assumption question stem. Since there is a clear leap from greater
value to greater deference, the correct answer choice will provide the Supporter Assumption which
links these elements (the choice which links greater perceived value with greater deference).

Answer choice (A): This stimulus is not about whether or not society’s young members can
determine the rate of societal change, but rather whether the amount of respect that the youth have
for their elders provides an accurate gauge of the societal rate of change. Since this choice fails to
provide the Supporter Assumption required for the author’s argument to be properly drawn, this
answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): This choice provides a clever wrong answer. We need to link deference with how
the young assess the value of their elders’ advice. This choice instead links deference with how much
actual value is provided by the elders. Because of this subtle but important distinction, this choice is
incorrect.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice; it is the one which links the rogue elements
as prephrased in our discussion above. If deference for elders and valuing of their advice vary
together, then this allows the argument in the stimulus to be properly drawn:

Slow societal change greater value placed on elders’ advice greater deference

Rapid societal change lesser value placed on elders’ advice lesser deference

Between the premises presented in the stimulus, and the Supporter Assumption provided by this
answer choice, the author’s argument (that degree of deference for elders provides an accurate gauge
of the societal change rate) is properly drawn.

Answer choice (D): This is another clever incorrect answer choice. The argument is that a faster
changing society leads the youth to assess elders’ advice as less relevant. This does not require
the assumption provided here, which is that the experience of the elders is less relevant in a faster
changing society.

Since this choice doesn’t even reference the degree of deference that the youth have for their elders,
it cannot link the needed elements from the stimulus and thus cannot be the Supporter Assumption
that we are looking for.

Answer choice (E): This choice links the value that young people place on the advice of elders with
the practical value that this advice holds for them. This does not provide the needed link between
young peoples valuation of elders’ advice and their degree of deference for elders, so this choice is
incorrect.

[netherlands]

Hi there PS,

This question really isn't necessary to answer this question but I wanted to ask. The stimulus states that:

When society changes slowly elderly advice is valuable
When society changes quickly elderly advice is not valuable

Then is seems to be saying:

If we know value/deference (assumed to be related and perhaps even synonymous) then we can know the rate of change.

Would that not be a mistaken reversal if this were a conditional reasoning question?

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, Netherlands, and a good analysis of the stimulus. The key to this supporter assumption question is that we need to show a link between "deference" and "value". We can't assume that they are synonymous, but it appears that our author does believe them to be related - that's the assumption he has made, and gives us our correct answer C.

That said, has the author made a mistaken reversal? Not quite. If we only had one premise, such as slow change -> great value, and we tried to conclude that great value meant slow change, that would clearly be a classic MR situation. Here, however, the author has presented us with two premises, both of which you diagrammed nicely. If we ignore for a moment the assumed link between deference and value and focus only on value (our necessary condition), what would we know if that value was high? High value would be another way of saying "not low value", and that gives us a contrapositive of the second statement: low value -> quick change. You can see that the same thing would happen if we said value was low, leading us to the contrapositive of the first premise. So we could logically conclude that measuring value would give us some indication of the rate of change.

It's not perfect - it fails to take into account the possibility of some middle ground where the rate of change is neither high nor low. If this were a flaw in the reasoning question we might be thinking about some sort of false dilemma. For our purposes, though, just recognizing that the author has assumed a link between deference and value is enough to get you where you need to be.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

[netherlands]

Ok, that makes a lot of sense! Thank you for explaining that! I feel like I've read things in the lr bible before where they mention connections between conditionals and the contrapositive of another conditional and I never really did get it so this is good to understand!

[Chantal]

Hello! I see why C is definitely the correct answer (it links up deference to elders in the conclusion with value of elders' advice in the premises), but I'm having trouble understanding why A is completely incorrect. The stimulus roughly states that if society is undergoing slow change, then young people place more value on elders' advice, while if society is undergoing rapid change, then young people place less value on elders' advice. The conclusion is then that we can measure the rate of societal change based on younger people's deference to elders.

Answer choice A states that a society's younger members can often accurately discern whether that society is changing rapidly. If A were negated, in that society's younger members often cannot accurately discern whether society is changing rapidly, does that not weaken the conclusion? I was of the understanding that if younger people cannot accurately discern whether society is changing rapidly, then they would inaccurately assess the value of elders' advice. And thus young people's deference to elders (which I get is a different concept from value of elders' advice, hence why C is better) would be a poor measure of the rate of societal change.

I'm having trouble seeing why A is wrong other than the fact that it's a worse answer choice than C. Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Chantal,

I think there are a couple disconnects in the thought process you described, but the biggest one is that there's nothing in the stimulus that is inherently related to the idea that "if young people can't accurately discern whether society is changing, they wouldn't be able to accurately assess the value of elders' advice." In fact, nothing in the stimulus is about the "accurate assessment" of the value of advice (and so nothing depends on that). All the stimulus says is that when society changes slowly, younger members value the advice of older members. But nothing about that conditional relationship requires the young people to know how fast society is changing (or even whether it's changing). And nothing about that conditional relationship requires the young people to give an accurate assessment of the value of advice. In fact, that conditional relationship doesn't tell us anything about (or require us to assume anything about) young people's knowledge or assessments of anything at all, whether accurate or inaccurate. It just tells us what they value.

So, my advice would be to be very careful about the inferences you're drawing from the negation of an answer choice. If those inferences are not inherently connected to ideas discussed in the stimulus, then you should probably discard the answer as irrelevant, as answer choice A is.

The simpler way to get rid of answer choice A is to look at the concepts in the stimulus and see whether anything in the stimulus necessarily relates to young people "discerning" (or "knowing") things. The stimulus is purely an argument about what young people value (which doesn't necessarily relate to what they discern or what they know) and what they "defer" to (which again has no automatic/necessary relationship to what they discern or know). As soon as you see that, you can eliminate answer choice A as irrelevant.

I hope this helps!

[KG!]

How would you negate answer choice D?

[Adam Tyson]

There could be many ways to negate that statement, KG! Just be sure that however you do it, the end result is something that contradicts the answer, making it false. So how about "the speed at which a society changes doesn't indicate how relevant older members' experiences are to younger members." Or perhaps "The experiences of older members of society can remain very relevant to younger members even if society is changing quickly." I think both of these would do the job of saying "that's not true" in response to answer D.

We could also be more direct about it and just change the word "less" to the word "more" and have a negation that is directly opposite from the answer.