LR Question 24 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Clearly, a democracy cannot thrive without effective…
QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption
CONCLUSION: Democracies need good news media.
Democracy ➞ Media
REASONING: Democracies need a knowledgeable electorate. Electorates can’t be knowledgeable without unbiased information about the government.
Democracy ➞ knowledgeable electorate ➞ unbiased information
ANALYSIS: Sufficient assumption questions are very formulaic. You can follow a three step process.
- Identify the conclusion and split it apart.
- Attach the evidence onto the parts of the conclusion.
- Spot the gap. This will be the answer.
Democracy Media
Democracy ➞ knowledgeable electorate ➞ unbiased information Media
The gap is between unbiased information and the media.
___________
- This gets things backwards. The argument said democracies require media, but that doesn’t mean that media always lead to democracy.
- This just reverses one of the statements from the argument. It doesn’t help show that unbiased information requires the media.
- This just reverses the evidence we already have. It doesn’t help us prove anything about media.
Knowledgeable electorate ➞ democracy - This is just a weird statement. It says that democracy will fail if people encounter any biased information. That’s crazy! Virtually all democracies would fail if that’s true.
More to the point, this doesn’t let us connect the reasoning to the need for media. - CORRECT. This fills the gap.
Unbiased information ➞ media.
More Resources for Sufficient Assumption Questions
- Conditional Reasoning Article: Learn about conditional statements.
- LR Diagrams Guide: Learn how to draw LR diagrams.
- Intro to Conditional Reasoning: Learn conditional reasoning basics.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Sufficient Assumption questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers sufficient assumption questions.
Hi Graeme,
your explanations have helped me immensely in acquiring applicable methods for each question type. Very grateful for this website!
Just wondering if you could help me with the above question, LSAT prep test 73, section IV question 24. I’ve been using the negation technique a lot, and was torn between E and B for this question, because the negation for B (or at least, my idea of what the negation should be), reads: “an electorate will be knowledgeable about political issues even if they don’t have access to unbiased information.”
Doesn’t this ruin the reasoning of the argument?
Cheers
No, it’s a wrong negation. The negation would be: “An electorate may not be knowledgeable even if they have access to unbiased informaton”.
Example: cat –> tail
You negate by saying “maybe a cat could not have a tail”. You instead said “Maybe even something not a cat could have a tail”. The latter doesn’t contradict the statement.
Graeme, thanks for all you do to help us LSAT takers. Quick question, how can you spot a Necessary Assumption question from the more formulaic Sufficient Assumption questions.
What a great idea to split the conclusion and add the evidence to spot the gap. It very clear.
Necessary assumptions will say things like “required” or “the conclusion is valid ONLY IF”.
It’s best not to think of necessary and sufficient assumption questions as being in the same category. They’re completely different.