QUESTION TEXT: Taylor: From observing close friends and relatives,…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: Telepathy is possible between people who are psychologically close, such as between friends or family.
REASONING: A good friend or family member often knows what you are thinking.
ANALYSIS: This is a tricky question, because it uses the word “psychic” in an uncommon sense. Most people think psychic means “telepathic” or “paranormal”. That’s definition number one in most dictionaries. But look at definition two from my Oxford dictionary:
Psychic 2. of or relating to the soul or mind: he dulled his psychic pain with gin.
This is really the only sensible definition of “psychic” in the context of the question. If you read “psychic” as meaning paranormal, then the first sentence would mean: “It is indeed possible that psychic people are psychic”. That’s not just circular reasoning – it’s bloody stupid. No one would make such an argument, and the LSAC would never print it. So E, one of the most popular answer choices, is wrong. If there are two possible meanings in an argument, you should avoid the totally ridiculous meaning.
You should ask yourself: why are they telling me this? The author is saying close family members know each other’s thoughts, and therefore they must be telepathic. The author’s error is ignoring an obvious alternate explanation: family members have experience with each other. They know common reactions and body language.
___________
- Sample size is not well understood. You can have reliable results from just a few hundred people. And the bigger the effect, the smaller the sample size required. The “amazing” frequency here is presumably so remarkable that only a small sample is needed.
You do not need a large sample size to determine that arsenic is often fatal if ingested. You do need a large sample to conclude that a green button will lead to more website sales than a blue button. - CORRECT. You’re allowed to use common sense on the LSAT (yes, really!). You know from experience that you can often guess what close friends and family are thinking. You’re not telepathic – you just know them pretty well.
- What emotion? This answer didn’t happen.
Example of flaw: You’ve got to work on this business with me! Don’t you care about me at all? I’d be so sad if you didn’t help. - The author didn’t say this. They said family members have an “amazing” ability to know what we’re thinking. Presumably family knows far more than the norm. But regular people could still sometimes get things right.
- Very tempting, but this answer depends on a misunderstanding of the full meaning of “psychic”. See the explanation above.
Recap: The question begins with “Taylor: From observing close friends and relatives,”. It is a Flawed Reasoning question. To practice more Flawed Reasoning questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
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Linds says
Hi, I am curious as to the recommended approach when answering these questions under timed conditions. Should you read the prompt and spend time coming up with your own view on why the passage is vulnerable to criticism (the. way its done in the explanation)? Or should you read the prompt, then look at the answer choices and then identify the vulnerability. Sometimes I find that reading the answers choices first (before processing what I think the criticism is on my own) can get me confused but im not sure if this is the recommended approach. Thanks!
FounderGraeme Blake says
I’d generally recommend attempting to come up with the flaw on your own first. However, if you’re stumped, move on to the answers. You can’t always spot the flaw and that’s ok: sometimes the answers will give you a cue, or sometimes you’ll have to skip then review the question.
Basically: do try to identify the flaw first, but don’t get stuck on it.
Lyndsie says
I kind of jumped on A because it seemed immediately right. I’m wondering, if B (clearly the better option) hadn’t been there, would A work as a criticism worthy of being a correct answer?
I feel like I’ve had questions in the past where the sample size is the flaw in reasoning.
TutorRosalie (LSATHacks) says
No, A couldn’t be right. If you’re only proving possibility, and the effect size is large, sample size is irrelevant. E.g. you really just need to find one person born with three arms to know that three arms would be possible.
If one person could truly be demonstrated to have psychic powers, that would be sufficient to say that psychic powers are possible. The problem lies elsewhere. Sample size is for when you’re making a statistical relationship.
Kara says
I read the premise as ‘the frequency with which fam/friends know what one another are thinking is not a coincidence’
You would have to already believe in telepathy to accept the premise that it’s not a coincidence?
FounderGraeme Blake says
So, that is indeed the part of the argument where they show the premise. But there are some key terms we need to exclude. They say we “cannot dismiss” this phenomenon as coincidence. Those are conclusory terms. The argument goes like this:
1. Friends and family often know what each other are thinking
2. We can’t dismiss this as a coincidence
3. So, it must be telepathy
The coincidence part is an intermediary conclusion, which is used to support the claim about telepathy. It’s definitely a very subtle argument!
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
NH says
If you take out the word psychic altogether, it just reads “by observing friends and family with close ties, it’s clear that telepathy is possible”. Her reasoning uses the premise that “frequently family members and good friends know what one is thinking”. When I picked E it wasn’t because of the word psychic, it is because to accept the reasoning she gave for telepathy, I’d have to accept that her observations of family members frequently knowing what one is thinking, actually correlates with family members being right about what the other person was thinking. Family members may think they know what you are thinking or may have a better idea than the rest of the public, but her reasoning does not prove to me that anyone actually has the ability to know what someone else is thinking, she”d have to give proof that family members or friends are more often right than wrong about their assumptions. Sometimes knowing someone really well can make you read even more into something than the person is really thinking, and to say her observations of them being right is the proof, further relies on me believing that she is right in observing that they are correct…but what if she doesn’t know what they are thinking! Hence without evidence, I’d have to accept her conclusion that telepathy is real to accept her reasoning that frequently we know what people we are close with are thinking…. Clearly I need to let this one go, but I would love to know what I’m missing.
TutorLucas (LSAT Hacks) says
Let’s break down (E) into its component parts:
(1) “appeals to a premise”: What is that premise? The frequency with which good friends and family members know what one is feeling or thinking can’t just be coincidence
(2) “one would accept only if one already accepted the truth of the conclusion” What is the conclusion? That telepathy is possible between people with close psychic ties.
Broken down this way, it’s easy to see that we don’t need (2) to accept (1). It would not be very difficult to convince someone that the fact that our family members and friends know what we’re thinking and feeling isn’t just coincidence. If the person we’re trying to convince is rational, they’d just say it’s likely because those people we’re close to spend lots of time with us, and have listened to how we think and feel at a number of different points in time and can extrapolate from there.
Memberdena says
How would E be wrong when not keeping in mind the crazy definition of psychic?
FounderGraeme says
Well, IF the author were making a stupid, circular argument using the crazy definition of psychic, then E would be right (I.e. “I know psychic people are psychic, because they have psychic powers”).
But the author isn’t doing that. They present actual evidence that’s different from their conclusion, and it’s clear they’re using a different definition of psychic.