Calling Christine or any other knowledgable person Forum

[alexrodriguez]

PT 46 Section 3 Question 24

Is this your standard Sufficient Assumption Question?

I ask because I need to practice more questions like this. Do you know of any similar questions?

Would simply going through the cambridge sufficient assumption packet expose me to more questions like this?

[Jeffort]

What do you mean by "Is this your standard Sufficient Assumption Question?"

It's a standard SA question stem but it is a hard SA question since the subject matter is fairly abstract and people frequently have trouble understanding the argument core and fail to recognize that the argument is based on conditional reasoning.

[alexrodriguez]

true

[Christine (MLSAT)]

Ha! We need a Geek-Bat signal or something.

I have to agree with Jeffort. Technically, this is a perfectly standard Sufficient Assumption question. That said, it's hella hard.

The first challenge is realizing that the entire second sentence is essentially useless to us. Once you do that, what you should see is an argument core that looks like this:

• PREMISE: If people stopped believing in it, money would stop existing.
  CONCLUSION: Money doesn't exist

Because this is a Sufficient Assumption question, I know that a common format the answer could be in is "If [premise], then [conclusion]". The second challenge, though, is that our premise is ALREADY a conditional statement, which is kind of annoying. The final challenge is that the correct answer choice is the contrapositive of the common SA format ("If [not conclusion], then [not premise]"), which is made doubly obnoxious by the fact that it involves the negation of the conditional premise.

But take a hard look at the wrong answers - they are all wrong for (relatively) easily identifiable reasons. That's ABSOLUTELY the tack I would take in a real-time environment.

I can't think of any other Sufficient Assumption questions right off the top of my head that are sticky in this exact way, but if they are anywhere, I would assume that the Cambridge SA packet would have them.

Best of luck!

[Jeffort]

Ha!, we totally need an LSAT Geek Bat signal! There was an 'Ask the experts' thread a year or two ago meant as a place for students to post questions they specifically wanted answered by one or more of the LSAT teachers/tutors that are active on the forum that worked for a while as a 'bat signal'. It died out pretty fast once teachers/tutors/companies started their own individual 'Ask me anything' threads like the many we have now with one for BP, one for Manhattan, one for Mike Kim, and one for Dave Hall. I think I'm the only currently active tutor/teacher here without my own 'Ask Jeffort!' thread. lol

It'd be nice to have one general "Ask the resident TLS LSAT Experts" thread again that's inclusive for any/all resident teachers/tutors to answer students questions when people want an expert opinion without students having to decide whether to bug you in the Manhattan thread or Laura in the BP thread, Mike in his thread, etc. Students would be able to get multiple points of view and it would lessen your workload! I feel bad sitting back reading all the questions in your MLSAT Geek thread and the others and not chiming in with answers since the threads are designated for the respective OPs to answer questions, not for me to jump in and take over. You've gotta be putting in tons of hours every week writing all the super awesome very complete detailed explanations you do just to keep up with your geek thread. I sometimes want to jump in when I have free time to help field questions and offer my view/participate in some of the topics being discussed but don't cuz forum etiquette and don't want to step on anyone's toes/into their territory.

ION, every time I review this LR question about money disappearing it gets me thinking about bad economic news/weird stuff with the stock market, how the banking system and economy works, the ongoing stimulus with the Fed still pumping in I think $65billion of 'new' money into the economy every month (still don't understand where that 'new' $$ comes from, everything I've read about how the stimulus thing supposedly works sounds to me like it's just fantasy $$ the Fed just invents every month, declares it exists, and then transfers stuff around with a bunch of numbers on paper to somehow go 'poof' $65bill more suddenly exists and is trading hands to get into to economy to make it go better). Then I start taking all those 'Buy Gold! Invest in Gold & Silver!' commercials I keep seeing on TV a lot more seriously! lol

If there are any resident economics experts here that read this, can you give me some sort of an understandable explanation about how the math works with this and where that stimulus $$ actually or ultimately comes from? I'm not an econ expert, but is it just basically printing more money and then handing it out or something like that? The more I learn about banking and the major financial systems, the more it looks to me like a lot of $$ is just 'invented'/made up/pulled out of thin air/fictional/imaginary in our heads and derived from/based on beliefs/beliefs of value of actual things including the way the arg describes. Like with FB since it went public. It's supposedly worth how many billions of $$s these days? That's not real value, just believed/perceived value based on what the current going rate people are willing to pay for shares of stock at any given moment, but if everyone were to want to sell their shares, it would suddenly be basically worthless/worth a hell of a lot less if only a few people are willing to buy it, and then all the on paper $$/value would just 'poof' vanish off the page and go into the deleted $$ afterlife! I'm trying to better understand the full big picture of the entire economy and financial markets and how the parts relate/interact and stuff and this LR question always makes me curious about this stuff again.

[Onomatopoeia]

Ha!, we totally need an LSAT Geek Bat signal! There was an 'Ask the experts' thread a year or two ago meant as a place for students to post questions they specifically wanted answered by one or more of the LSAT teachers/tutors that are active on the forum that worked for a while as a 'bat signal'. It died out pretty fast once teachers/tutors/companies started their own individual 'Ask me anything' threads like the many we have now with one for BP, one for Manhattan, one for Mike Kim, and one for Dave Hall. I think I'm the only currently active tutor/teacher here without my own 'Ask Jeffort!' thread. lol

It'd be nice to have one general "Ask the resident TLS LSAT Experts" thread again that's inclusive for any/all resident teachers/tutors to answer students questions when people want an expert opinion without students having to decide whether to bug you in the Manhattan thread or Laura in the BP thread, Mike in his thread, etc. Students would be able to get multiple points of view and it would lessen your workload! I feel bad sitting back reading all the questions in your MLSAT Geek thread and the others and not chiming in with answers since the threads are designated for the respective OPs to answer questions, not for me to jump in and take over. You've gotta be putting in tons of hours every week writing all the super awesome very complete detailed explanations you do just to keep up with your geek thread. I sometimes want to jump in when I have free time to help field questions and offer my view/participate in some of the topics being discussed but don't cuz forum etiquette and don't want to step on anyone's toes/into their territory.

ION, every time I review this LR question about money disappearing it gets me thinking about bad economic news/weird stuff with the stock market, how the banking system and economy works, the ongoing stimulus with the Fed still pumping in I think $65billion of 'new' money into the economy every month (still don't understand where that 'new' $$ comes from, everything I've read about how the stimulus thing supposedly works sounds to me like it's just fantasy $$ the Fed just invents every month, declares it exists, and then transfers stuff around with a bunch of numbers on paper to somehow go 'poof' $65bill more suddenly exists and is trading hands to get into to economy to make it go better). Then I start taking all those 'Buy Gold! Invest in Gold & Silver!' commercials I keep seeing on TV a lot more seriously! lol

If there are any resident economics experts here that read this, can you give me some sort of an understandable explanation about how the math works with this and where that stimulus $$ actually or ultimately comes from? I'm not an econ expert, but is it just basically printing more money and then handing it out or something like that? The more I learn about banking and the major financial systems, the more it looks to me like a lot of $$ is just 'invented'/made up/pulled out of thin air/fictional/imaginary in our heads and derived from/based on beliefs/beliefs of value of actual things including the way the arg describes. Like with FB since it went public. It's supposedly worth how many billions of $$s these days? That's not real value, just believed/perceived value based on what the current going rate people are willing to pay for shares of stock at any given moment, but if everyone were to want to sell their shares, it would suddenly be basically worthless/worth a hell of a lot less if only a few people are willing to buy it, and then all the on paper $$/value would just 'poof' vanish off the page and go into the deleted $$ afterlife! I'm trying to better understand the full big picture of the entire economy and financial markets and how the parts relate/interact and stuff and this LR question always makes me curious about this stuff again.

Jeffort: if you're sober right now, your intellectual curiosity is truly something to behold, lol

[Jeffort]

lol, totally sober! I've always been naturally curious about everything since I was a kid and my brain needs to be constantly fed.