Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S3 · Q11 Many of the presidents and

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Many of the presidents and prime ministers who have had the most successful foreign policies had no prior experience in foreign affairs when they assumed office.

Statements

quantified (many) Many of the leaders with the most successful foreign policies had no prior experience in foreign affairs when they became leader.

conditional (anyone) if you have acute political sense, cool temperament, and can quickly absorb/retain info, then you can quickly learn to have successful foreign policy.

anti-causal (little value) If you lacked all three of these traits, then prior experience alone wouldn't be of much value in terms of your foreign policy abilities.

Evaluate

We had a curious mix of claims. I left out the snarky "although scholars would have us think otherwise", just because it seemed too little like a fact for me to think LSAC would use that.

Is there any overlapping idea?

Foreign policy is mentioned in all three claims. Foreign policy experience is explicitly mentioned in two of them (implicitly it's in all three). Three traits are mentioned in two of them.

It's hard to see an obvious synthesis. If you have the three traits you can be successful, even if you don't have experience. If you don't have the three traits, you might not be successful even if you do have experience.

Goal

Not really sure what we're looking for, so just find the most provable answer choice.

11.

If all of the statements above are true, which one of the following must be true?

Scholars and diplomats have more
Too Specific: most Unknown Comparison
We don't have any way to judge scholars and diplomats collectively vs. more than 50% of presidents / prime ministers, in order to rank who has more experience. The fact that many (at least 5 or so) presidents / prime ministers had no prior experience doesn't tell us that this is true of most presidents / prime ministers.
0% picked this
Correct
Prior experience in foreign affairs
Why this is right
This is actually a weak claim, since calling something sufficient or necessary is a very strong claim. How do you prove X is not sufficient for Y? A case where X is true but Y is not How do you prove X is not necessary for Y? A case where Y is true but X is not Do we have an example where people have successful foreign policy, even though they don't have prior experience? Sure, the first sentence tells us about some and the 2nd sentence implies that prior experience isn't necessary as well, since three traits (none of which involve prior experience) are said to be sufficient to enable success. Do we have an example where people have prior experience in foreign policy, but don't have successful foreign policy? Yes, but weirder. The last sentence is saying that if you had prior experience, but lacked all three of the traits from the second sentence, then it would be of little value to you. If prior experience were sufficient, then prior experience alone would guarantee a successful foreign policy. If they're saying it's of little value, then it's not guaranteeing successful foreign policy, and thus it's not sufficient.
Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
74% picked this
Prior experience in foreign affairs
Too Strong: Necessary Contradicted
Prior experience is definitely not necessary, because the first sentence tells us that many leaders have had successful foreign policy even though they had no prior experience in foreign affairs.
4% picked this
An acute political sense, a
Too Strong: Each Necessary
The 2nd sentence tells us that collectively these three traits are sufficient to give anyone a chance at successful foreign policy. The 3rd sentence tells us that collectively if they're missing, prior experience will be of little value. But this answer is saying individually if any of these three is missing, then it's impossible to have successful foreign policy, and the passage definitely did not convey that strong an idea.
22% picked this
A president or prime minister
Unsupported Comparison
The paragraph overall makes it seem like foreign policy experience isn't that crucial. Many succeed without it. If you have a certain magic trio of traits, you don't need it. It's possible that the experience would even be of much value to you, if you were lacking all three traits. So since foreign policy experience seems to not have any strong connection to success (from what we've been told) we have no reason to think that an experienced leader would be a more successful leader when it comes to foreign policy.
0% picked this

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