Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT111 S4 Q21 Explanation

All social systems are based

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsMost Supported

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Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Stimulus

All social systems are based upon a division of economic roles. The values of a social system are embodied in the prestige accorded persons who fill various economic roles. It is therefore unsurprising that, for any social system, the introduction of labor- saving technology to undermine the values in that social system.

What this question is testing

Most Supported

Premises

Society's values live in the prestige attached to people who fill different economic roles. So if a technology comes in and wipes out some of those roles, the values built around them are bound to take a hit.

Evaluate

The stimulus tells us: tech eliminating roles → values get undermined (i.e., values change).

What can we infer? Run the contrapositive: if a social system's values cannot change, then nothing is undermining them — and in particular, technology isn't eliminating any economic roles in that society. (If it were, by the stimulus's rule, the values would be getting undermined, which is a kind of change.)

This is a "if ... then" inference, not a claim about every kind of technology or about specific industries.

Goal

The right answer captures the contrapositive: a society with unchanging values can't be one where technology is eliminating economic roles.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
21.

Which one of the following can most reasonably be concluded on the basis of

Answer choices

  1. Too Strong5% picked this

    Social systems will have unchanging values if they are shielded from

    This says technological isolation is sufficient for unchanging values — but the stimulus only tells us that role-eliminating technology undermines values. There could be plenty of other forces that change values (cultural exchange, war, demographic shifts, etc.). Just shielding a society from technology wouldn't guarantee its values stay fixed. The stimulus doesn't support that strong claim.

  2. Too Strong3% picked this

    No type of technology will fail to undermine the values in

    "No type of technology will fail to undermine the values" — i.e., every technology undermines values. The stimulus only says labor-saving technology that makes economic roles obsolete tends to undermine values. Plenty of technology doesn't make roles obsolete (e.g., a tool that simply augments an existing role). The stimulus doesn't support the universal claim about all technology.

  3. Correct54% picked this

    A social system whose values are not susceptible to change would not be one in which technology

    Why this is right

    This is the contrapositive of the stimulus's rule. The stimulus says: in any social system, introducing role-eliminating technology will tend to undermine values (i.e., the values will change). Flipping that: a social system whose values are not susceptible to change cannot be one in which role-eliminating technology operates — because if it did, the values would, per the stimulus, be undermined. This is a straight contrapositive inference, exactly the kind of conclusion a Most Supported question rewards.

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

  4. Unsupported22% picked this

    A technologically advanced society will place little value on the prestige associated with

    The stimulus says values are embodied in the prestige of economic roles, not that prestige is devalued. There's no support for the claim that technologically advanced societies place little value on economic-role prestige. Tech-advanced societies still have economic roles (with different prestige distributions); the stimulus doesn't say the prestige itself is dismissed.

  5. Out of Scope17% picked this

    A technological innovation that is implemented in a social system foreign to the one in which it was developed will tend to

    The stimulus doesn't distinguish between domestic and foreign social systems. It says role-eliminating technology tends to undermine values "in any social system" — full stop. The stimulus gives no special role to where the technology was invented. So we can't draw any selective conclusion about foreign social systems specifically.

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