Q24 - The genuine creative genius is someone

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: These rare innovators tend to anger the majority.
Evidence: These rare innovators are dissatisfied with mere habitual assent to widely held beliefs. If you're dissatisfied with mere habitual assent to widely held beliefs, you tend to seek out controvery. People who seek controversy enjoy demonstrating the falsehood of popular views.

Answer Anticipation:
Sufficient Assumption is all about proving the conclusion, so it's good to start by unpacking what ideas are in the conclusion. To prove this conclusion, we need to have
1. Rare innovators tend to be XYZ.
2. If you're XYZ, you anger the majority.

Does the Evidence provide us with either of those? It tells us about what rare innovators tend to be/do. But it provides no rule that says, "If you're XYZ, then you anger the majority". So we know the correct answer will have to provide that rule.

(Knowing just that would eliminate A and C immediately, because there's no "anger the majority", and it would eliminate D and E on closer inspection because those answers offer rules that say "If you anger the majority, then you're XYZ")

What were we told about these rare innovators? They don't like just assenting to widely held beliefs. They tend to seek out controversy, so they tend to enjoy demonstrating the falsehood of popular viewpoints. The correct answer could take any of those three details we know about the 'rare innovators' and construct a correct answer.
f.e., "If you're dissatisfied with merely assenting to widely held beliefs, then you tend to anger the majority".
"If you tend to seek out controversy, then you anger the majority."
"If you enjoy demonstrating the falsehood of popular viewpoints, then you anger the majority."

That last one is by far the most likely answer, since it rewards us for following the whole train of logic from,
"rare innovator --> dislike mere assent --> seek out controversy --> enjoy demonstrating falsity of popular views".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Without a rule that says "If you're _____ , then you anger the majority", we cannot prove the conclusion. This choice does not provide any rule about "anger the majority".

(B) Yes! "If you enjoy demonstrating the falsity of popular views, you anger the majority". We know that rare innovators tend to seek out controvesy, and controversy-seekers enjoy demonstrating the falsity of popular views.

(C) Without a rule that says "If you're _____ , then you anger the majority", we cannot prove the conclusion. This choice does not provide any rule about "anger the majority".

(D) Without a rule that says "If you're _____ , then you anger the majority", we cannot prove the conclusion. This choice says, "If you anger the majority, then you enjoy demonstrating the falsity of popular views".

(E) Without a rule that says "If you're _____ , then you anger the majority", we cannot prove the conclusion. This choice says, "If you anger the majority, then you are dissatisfied with merely assenting to widely held beliefs."

Takeaway/Pattern: Like almost all Sufficient Assumption questions, you should know what you want here before you look at answers. Focus on any "New Guy" in the conclusion, for that term MUST be in the correct answer. Focus on the "If Premise, then Conclusion" order to your prephrases, because trap answers (like D and E) like to provide correct ideas but in an incorrect order. If there is a chain of conditional logic, figure out what needs to be attached to the front or to the end of the chain in order to make the idea in the Conclusion look like the beginning/ending of that chain.

#officialexplanation

[yoohoo081]

So, my classmate and I came up with why B makes sense, but could you check this please? Or, if we reasoned wrong, please correct us! We were quite confused.

CG-> dissatisfied
RI-> anger majority
Dissatisfied-> seek out controversy
Controversy seeker-> enjoy demonstrate false

CG: creative genius
RI: rare innovators

So, we said that CG-> enjoy demonstrate false by the process (A->B->C->D).
So, if CG are RI then, enjoy demonstrate false are anger majority
CG-> enjoy demonstrate false
| |
\/ \/
RI-> anger majority

And the answer choice that matches this is B: people who enjoy demonstrating falsehood of popular viewpoints anger the majority.

We eliminated other answer choices because it was either reversal or tried to take parts within the flow and that's not allowed (example, E is the depiction of that reasoning and crossed out)

[maryadkins]

Absolutely right! Great job.

[sge4]

Since the gap occurs at the end of the chain (connecting "demonstrating falsehood" with "anger majority"), would this be both a necessary and sufficient assumption? And is that why this occurs near the end of the section -- why it makes it a more difficult question?

[maryadkins]

The question itself is a sufficient assumption question. You know it's asking for a sufficient assumption because it asks which answer choice allows the conclusion to "follow logically." But just because an answer choice to a sufficient assumption question is sufficient doesn't mean it can't also be necessary. That's the case here.

Often on conditional logic questions like this one, the sufficient assumption will also be necessary--it bridges the gap in just the right way that it needs to to work (picture the arrow being filled but not overflowing).

To your last question, more difficult questions do appear in the second half of the section. Since this is near the end, it's probably one of the more difficult ones in this section of this test.

[curicuri22]

why not D??
Could anyone explain this to me?

Thx in advance

[maryadkins]

(D) as you can see is a reversal of (B). In terms of formal logic, that's why it's wrong (see discussion above).

But another way to think about it is:

Our conclusion is that these rare innovators tend to anger the majority. That's what we need to get to. The gap is between something linking that conclusion (angering the majority) to a premise. (B) links the premises to the conclusion by telling us:

enjoying demonstrating falsehood --> angers majority

(D) makes angering the majority a condition for "demonstrating falsehood" and it's not a condition in our argument-- it's what we ultimately get to, what we ultimately conclude.

That's another way of thinking about it.

But if you have trouble understanding the distinction between (B) and (D) I suggest reviewing the chapter on formal logic and illegal reversals.