LSAT 130 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q22

LR Question 22 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: When a society undergoes slow change, its younger members

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: We can measure the speed of societal change by observing how much deference young people show to their elders.

REASONING: In times of rapid change, the young don’t value the advice of elders. In times of slow change, young people find great value in the advice of elders.

ANALYSIS: This argument gives evidence about how much the young value advice. Then they make a conclusion about how much deference the young show.

It’s possible to value someone’s advice, but show no deference. The argument was assuming those two things were the same.

“Thanks for the legitimately excellent advice, you goofy old coot!” – The Youth

___________

1. It doesn’t matter what young people realize. The author’s point was that in a time of fast change, the young people won’t value advice. They don’t need to know why they find the advice useless. The point is that they will find it useless.
   (E.g. Right now old people don’t understand Snapchat. This is due to rapid change. And youth don’t need to know society is changing rapidly in order to realize that old people don’t understand Snapchat.)
2. This is the trap answer. In both cases, the point was that youth value or don’t value advice. The relevance of experience was only given as a reason for why youth don’t value advice in a time of rapid change.
   (The relevance of experience wasn’t even mentioned as a factor in times of slow change.)
3. CORRECT. If this isn’t true, then deference wouldn’t be a useful measure of change.
   Negation: There is no relation between how much youth value the advice of their elders, and how much deference youth show to those elders.
4. This is a trap. The stimulus didn’t talk about whether elders’ experience actually was relevant. It talked about whether youth perceive their elders as having valuable experience. Those are two very different things.
   (Often times, people hit age 25/30/35 etc and realize “damn, that’s what my parents were talking about.” The advice was good, but the kids only realize it later….)
5. This doesn’t matter. In times of slow change, experience wasn’t even mentioned as a factor in how much youth value advice.