LSAT 146 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Voting records regularly show that people over 65…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Each new generation of people is increasingly disconnected from politics.

REASONING: Young people vote less and old people vote more. Voting records consistently show this.

ANALYSIS: This argument has an ambiguity. There are two possibilities:

1. People who were 25 forty years ago, and 65 now, voted in large numbers back then, and also now. (i.e. This generation of people always voted)
2. People who were 25 forty years ago did not vote then, but do vote now. (i.e. voting isn’t generational. Instead, it’s something you do more of as you get older)

The argument’s data supports both possibilities, but the author assumes that the first one is the case.

To make a proper comparison, the author should have said something like “voting records show a steady decline in the number of 25 year old who vote. 40 years ago, more 25 year olds voted than do today”.

___________

1. CORRECT. See the analysis above for a full explanation. Basically, the argument ignores that people change with time. It’s like saying “old people are better able to walk than babies. This shows that new generations are increasingly unable to walk”.
    
   That’s really silly reasoning. To properly draw the conclusion, you’d need to compare earlier babies to present babies, e.g. “Babies in 1970 walked earlier than babies do today, so babies are becoming less mobile”.
2. Generation size actually doesn’t matter. The argument talked about the likelihood that people will vote. That means it’s talking about the voting rate, and not the number of people voting. The LSAT frequently tests the difference between rate and number.
3. This….is not a flaw. Conversation would be impossible if we had to explain every phenomenon we talked about. Conversations would grind to a halt!
    
   Example of situation: Kids, take your umbrellas! I think it’s going to rain today. Rain is a phenomenon where water falls from the sky and blah blah….
4. This is a very hard flaw to do, because it’s really stupid. It didn’t happen in the argument: you’d know it if you saw it.
    
   Example of flaw: If the fire spreads to Mr. Smith’s house, Mr. Smith will die. We can’t allow that to happen. So, we must make absolutely sure not to personally kill Mr. Smith. Then all will be well.
    
   (The speaker should have talked about preventing the cause: we must make sure not to let the fire spread. But they got mixed up and talked about not doing the effect.)
5. The conclusion was that citizens “are becoming increasingly disconnected”. This is a statement about current trends: what is happening in the present. But, it’s possible for trends to change, and the author surely knows this. They’re not making any claim about what changes may happen to voting trends in the future. Indeed, people who point out alarming trends often do so in order to make society change those trends and fix things.