Logical Reasoning

PT109 · S4 · Q25 Essayist: Every contract negotiator

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Essayist: Every contract negotiator has been lied to by someone or other, and whoever lies to anyone is practicing deception.

Statements

Conditionals

Contract negotiator → Been lied to

Been lied to → Has lied to someone

Has lied to someone → Practicing deception

Evaluate

On Must Be True we're primarily looking out for Conditional or Mathematical language. When we see conditional trigger words like "Every", "Whoever", and "Anyone", we think about whether any of these conditional rules would chain together.

In order to chain together, you need an overlapping term, so after turning the first claim into a conditional, we want to find an idea that overlaps with "contract negotiator" or "been lied to".

Hence, we skipped over the 2nd fact so that we could look at the 3rd one, which contains "been lied to". On our paper, we would probably just chain as we go (rather than writing all three out separately as I did above).

Once we've attached the 1st and 3rd claim, we see that the 2nd claim picks up right where our chain left off. So the three fit together like this:

Contract Been Has lied to Practice negotiator → Lied to → someone → Deception

Goal

We can anticipate that the correct answer might reward us for assembling the whole chain by testing "If contract negotiator, then practice deception", or its contrapositive.

But the correct answer doesn't have to connect the 1st to the 4th. It might connect 1st to 3rd, or 2nd to 4th.

25.

If the essayist's statements are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. Correct

    Every contract negotiator has practiced

    Why this is right

    This connects the 1st to the 4th as we anticipated: Contract Been Has lied to Practice negotiator ? Lied to ? someone ? Deception

    Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    78% picked this

  2. Not everyone who practices deception

    Unsupported Distinction

    Not all A's are B translates into "Some A's are not B". So can we prove that "some people who practice deception are not lying?" Nope, We only heard about people who were lying. This chain doesn't combine the concepts of "practicing deception and not-lying": Contract Been Has lied to Practice negotiator ? Lied to ? someone ? Deception

    3% picked this

  3. Not everyone who lies to

    Contradicted

    This contradicts the second claim, "whoever lies to anyone is practicing deception".

    2% picked this

  4. Whoever lies to a contract

    Reversal

    We knew "if you've been lied to, then you've lied". This answer is saying "if you've lied, then you've been lied to". That's an illegal reversal of the conditional (and the conditional also isn't stipulating that the person receiving the lie and telling the lie is interact with only one person. It could be that X lied to Y, and Y lied to Z. This answer is making it seem like there's a reflexive nature to the rule where you lie back to the one who lied to you) Contract Been Has lied to Practice negotiator ? Lied to ? someone ? Deception

    4% picked this

  5. Whoever lies to anyone is

    Reversal

    We knew "if you've been lied to, then you've lied". This answer is saying "if you've lied, then you've been lied to". That's an illegal reversal of the conditional. Contract Been Has lied to Practice negotiator ? Lied to ? someone ? Deception

    14% picked this

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