LSAT 104 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q26

LR Question 26 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Researcher: The vast majority of a person’s dreams…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: You shouldn’t think you have ESP just because you dream about something that happens later.

REASONING: Most of your dreams will never come true.

ANALYSIS: I’ll give a parallel argument: Suppose I go to a shooting range, and fire 100,000 shots.

One of them hits the bullseye and almost all of the rest miss the target completely. Am I a sharpshooter?

No. You need to look at my success rate (which was terrible). Likewise with dreams. What percentage of your dreams predict the future? If you dream a large enough number of dreams, some of them will predict the future. That doesn’t mean anything, it’s just randomness.

The structure is: If enough things happen, some are bound to turn out a certain way. So you shouldn’t attach any significance to things turning out that way.

___________

1. This is a different situation. This is talking about statistical significance. The more tests you do, the more confidant you can be in the result.
    
   With dreams it’s the opposite. The more dreams you have, the less likely you are to have ESP is a handful of dreams predict the future.
2. This could mean that 50% of people benefit, and 50% don’t. Depending on the risks of surgery, that might be a great success rate.
3. This is a good argument. It shows that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation: there are other possible causes.
4. CORRECT. This does it. A large number of people eat apples, too, and some of them die. But this doesn’t mean apples kill you: even more people eat apples and don’t die.
5. This is a decent argument, the conclusion is just strong enough. It only says it’s too soon to rule out power lines as a cause of cancer. Power don’t necessarily cause cancer, we need more research.

Recap: The question begins with “Researcher: The vast majority of a person’s dreams”. It is a Parallel Reasoning question. Learn more about LSAT Parallel questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.