LR Question 5 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Essayist: If Earth’s population continues to grow…
QUESTION TYPE: Identify The Conclusion
CONCLUSION: Colonizing other planets would only be a temporary solution to overcrowding.
REASONING: Earth will be too crowded if our population keeps growing at a geometric rate. Even if we send half the population to Mars, population growth will soon leave Earth just as crowded.
ANALYSIS: LSAT authors usually use the phrase “some say” to indicate an opinion they will disagree with. This argument does that in the second sentence. Then this author says “however” in the third sentence to indicate that they do disagree with the opinion in the second sentence. That’s the conclusion.
Note that the author’s conclusion is about what would be true IF the population keeps growing geometrically. The author doesn’t say that the population WILL keep growing geometrically. This is an important distinction on the LSAT, and it eliminates two answers.
___________
- This first sentence is not the conclusion. It is just a fact that supports the conclusion and adds context to the argument. .
- The author didn’t say population will continue to grow geometrically. She just said what would happen if population grew geometrically.
- This is just a fact that supports the author’s point. Since this is true, then it’s likely that in a few centuries we will have one person per square foot if population grows geometrically.
- Same as B. The author didn’t say that population will grow geometrically.
- CORRECT. The word “however” in the third sentence indicates that the third sentence is the conclusion. The author disagrees with the opinion in the second sentence. Whenever an LSAT author says “some say”, then their conclusion is probably disagreement with the “some say” opinion.
Recap: The question begins with “Essayist: If Earth’s population continues to grow”. It is a Identify The Conclusion question. To practice more Identify The Conclusion questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
More Resources for Identify the Conclusion Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Identify the Conclusion questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers identify the conclusion questions.
Why is A wrong? I thought “colonizing Mars is just a temporary solution to the population problem” is used to support the idea that if the human population continues to grow then there will be ten people for every square meter.
So the argument goes like, since colonizing other planets won’t be a viable solution in the long run, Earth would be overpopulated if the population continues to grow.
Their conclusion is that “some people” are wrong. Those people are saying “this overpopulation would not be a problem”. The author’s point is that it in fact it would be a problem.
A is just a hypothetical. We don’t know if population growth will continue geometrically. Everybody in the question is arguing about whether or not overpopulation would be a problem in the hypothetical scenario that geometric growth continues.
I was stuck between A and E and I’m still not convinced E is the better choice. I get how you can interpret the first sentence as merely an introduction, but I’m not sure why that’s more accurate than considering the passage as having the following structure: conclusion -> possible solution that would make conclusion false -> possible solution is inadequate to make conclusion false.
Good question. The issue at stake is not what will happen with population growth, but whether that will be a *problem*. Some say it won’t be because we can migrate off the earth, the author says this will be only a temporary solution (and so we will still have a problem).
The LSAT distinguishes between facts (e.g. “My house burned down!”) and beliefs/moral statements (e.g. “It is a problem that my house burned down!”)
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
Legend, this is amazing insight . It was my question, how do we know that THIS is the conclusion, that many other LSAT sites take for granted. Lsat hacks is the goat