Logical Reasoning · Inference
PrepTest 111 · Section 4 · Question 21
Phase 1 (your first ~400 questions): read the guidance, then answer. No clock.
Step 1 · Pre-Question Guidance · read this first
- “all”
- “therefore”
- “tend to”
Playground logic
In Ms. Rivera's class, what the class values shows up in how much praise each class job gets. A gadget that wipes out a job tends to shake those values. Flip it: a class whose values cannot be shaken is not a class where a gadget can wipe out a job.
Step 2 · The kid story
The Robot Plant Waterer
Ms. Rivera's class runs on jobs: line leader, plant waterer, pencil sharpener. Every class has jobs. And you can tell what the class cares about by how much praise each job gets. The plant waterer gets a gold star every Friday. Then Grandpa donated a robot that waters the plants all by itself. No more plant waterer job. Suddenly nobody knew what a gold star was for. Kevin said, 'If the robot took the job, the class stops caring about plants, I guess?' Priya sipped her juice box. 'So here is the chain. Jobs carry what we value. A gadget that removes a job tends to shake what we value.' Lulu wrote on her clipboard: 'So a class whose values can never be shaken cannot be a class where gadgets remove jobs.' Priya gave her a high five.
Step 3 · Try the model question
Every class at school has class jobs. What a class values shows in how much praise each job receives. So it makes sense that, in any class, a gadget that makes some class job unnecessary will tend to shake up that class's values.
Which answer do the statements above best back up?
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Guild of Lamplighters
Mr. Whitfield addressed Judge Pemberton. 'Your Honor, the old town honored its lamplighters above all, and the honor given to each job showed what the town held dear. When automatic lamps arrived, the lamplighter job vanished, and the town's sense of what mattered wobbled.' The opposing lawyer scoffed. 'So what?' Mr. Whitfield smiled. 'So, Your Honor, if a town's values truly could never wobble, then it could not be a town where a machine is able to wipe out a job. The rule runs both ways once you flip it properly.' The judge wrote that down. 'Contrapositive accepted. Not the reverse, mind you. Just the flip.'
Step 5 · Work the real question
Open PrepTest 111, Section 4, Question 21 in your official copy from LSAC (for example in LawHub) and read it there.
Your answer
How to apply it
Turn the passage into a chain: one thing is built on roles, so removing roles tends to disturb it. Write the contrapositive too. Then test each answer against the chain and its contrapositive. Keep only the answer that the chain actually guarantees, read in a proper direction. For every other choice, ask whether the passage truly forces it, or whether it needs a word, a direction, or a situation the passage never supplies.