LR Question 24 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Music critic: How well an underground rock group’s…
QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: Sales don’t show whether an underground rock group is successful.
REASONING: Underground musicians think that good sales mean they aren’t underground. But, on the other hand, weak sales might simply mean that the band is bad. So, we get:
Sell well ➞ maybe band is too trendy
Sell poorly ➞ maybe band is just bad
ANALYSIS: This is an interesting argument. It’s basically showing that sales are ambiguous, whether or not they are good or bad.
However, the conclusion says sales don’t show whether a band is successful. Whereas the reasoning doesn’t say what success is. It lists a couple of factors that seem related to success, but we don’t actually know whether they are.
So, the right answer should link being too trendy or being bad with lack of success.
___________
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This sounds tempting. But all it says is that underground rock grounds aren’t successful if they are on the upper or lower ends of sales.
But, it’s possible within the middle ground rising sales indicate more success. For example:- Extremely low: not successful
- Sort of low: somewhat successful
- Middle of the road: successful
- Middle high: very successful
- Very high: Woah, too mainstream! Unsuccessful.
This ranking chart is consistent with the answer choice, but also shows rising sales indicate success! (until sales get too high)
- CORRECT. This shows that both high and low sales might indicate lack of success.
The key word here is might. Low sales don’t always indicate incompetence. But, the point is that they could. If incompetence = lack of success (as this answer says), then we can never know the true meaning of low sales.
The same applies to trendiness. Selling well needn’t always indicate a band is too trendy. But it might. And this answer says that makes the band unsuccessful. That means we can never know the true meaning of high sales, either.
Hence, sales don’t reliably show success, because the meaning of high and low sales is uncertain. - This weakens the reasoning. The author seemed to be implying that a band’s own criteria were important for success. Yet this answer says those criteria aren’t important!
- This is just an isolated fact. There’s a bunch of stuff we don’t know. What if a band is competent and also sells well? Are they successful? This answer doesn’t tell us!
Without knowing that, we can’t know whether or not sales are correlated with success. - Same as C. This weakens the argument. The author was trying to imply that competence and non-trendy music were important to success. And yet this answer says those factors aren’t important!
More Resources for Principle Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Principle questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers principle questions.
But, what about medium sales? Or anywhere else along the spectrum that is not high or low? This principle question attempts to do the principle in a more complex/unexpected way and trips over its own feet. B is close to the right answer, but not actually correct. Also, “mark of success” is fairly ambiguous. The probably best reading is “if this is present it means it was a success” and that is the way it needs to work for the logic to work, but if it means anything more ambiguous than that, none of this works. It is not clear that it means that.
The stem is important. The criterion here is which answer “most helps” to justify the argument. This is expressely not a sufficient assumption question. B helps connect incompetence and lack of trendiness to lack of success. So this helps makes the argument’s case. You raise a valid point that the argument and answer haven’t addressed medium sales. But the question type is not demanding an exhaustive categorization of all sales levels – we simply have to link the terms in the argument to lack of success. As stated there’s no direct relationship between, say, incompetence and success. B fixes that.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.