Q10 - Computer manufacturers have sought

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption (depends on this assumption)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Computers can't currently be made significantly faster.
Evidence: CPU chips can't currently be made signficantly smaller (w/o a decrease in sophistication) and making CPU ships smaller (while maintaining sophistication) is a way to increase the speed of the computer.

Answer Anticipation:
Our first reaction might be "just because ONE WAY of increasing computer speed is a no-go, why should we accept the conclusion that there is NO WAY of increasing computer speed?"

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) YES! If we negate this, it's saying "there is ANOTHER way to increase the speed of computers". That ruins the author's reasoning, which was "if we can't make CPU chips smaller, then we can't make computers faster".

(B) Out of scope: the effects of a "slight" decrease in sophistication. The author only talked about whether we can presently make chips smaller without ANY decrease in sophistication.

(C) Out of scope/opposite: the author never makes any comment on this specific scenario of "decreasing size AND sophistication". But a common sense reading of the paragraph suggests that decreasing size and sophistication would INCREASE the speed of the CPU chip.

(D) Out of scope: what manufacturers BELIEVE.

(E) Out of scope: the author never discusses the effects of increasing sophistication.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is a recurring argument archetype in LR:
"A is one possible way of achieving X. Since we can't do A, we can't do X."

#officialexplanation

[Nina]

i feel like there are more than one gap in the reasoning:

premise: CPU chips cannot be made smaller without reducing their sophistication
conclusion: computer cannot currently be made significantly faster

gap 1: currently we cannot reduce the sophistication of CPU
gap 2: increasing the speed of computer requires increasing CPU speed.
and the correct answer addresses gap 2. but i'm not sure if gap 1 is also a "correct gap", i.e., does the author needs to assume "currently the sophistication of CPU cannot be reduced" in making his argument?

thanks!

[nbayar1212]

The the stimulus tells us manufacturers have tried to make computer chips smaller since if you do that without making them less sophisticated you can increase the speed of the chip and also the computer that its in. But, the stimulus tells us, because we can't decrease the size without decreasing sophistication, we can't make computers faster anymore! The assumption is pretty typical of the LSAT i.e one way of doing something is the only way of doing it.

The correct choice, A, fills this gap by pointing out that we have to assume there is no other way to make computers faster.

b) is wrong because it wouldn't matter if we can make the chips smaller since from what we know, to get the benefit of increased speed, the chips can't get less sophisticated. For this AC to be relevant we would need to make the somewhat complex assumption that even if we lose sophistication, being able to make the chips significantly smaller could potentially make-up for the loss in sophistication e.g. if we currently have 4 chips on a computer that give us a level 10 speed, we would need to assume that its possible to put a bunch more less sophisticate chips (say, 8 chips) and have the increased in number make up for the decrease in sophistication and potentially get to say, a level 12 speed.

c) Since the conclusion is about making computers faster, all we need to assume is that its not possible to increase the speed if we decrease size and sophistication, not that the speed will actually decrease!

d) What manufacturers is irrelevant

e) This AC deals with a situation where we keep the size of the chip the same but increase its sophistication which is quite different from the situation we have in the stimulus

As to your specific question, I don't think the first gap you mentioned exists because if we negate it i.e. say currently we CAN reduce the sophistication of the CPUs, it doesn't affect our conclusion in any particular way.

[rinagoldfield]

Hey Nina,

You’re spot-on with the second flaw here.

I don’t agree with your first flaw, however, since computer manufacturers DON’T want to decrease CPU sophistication. On the contrary, they want to decrease the size of CPUs "without making that CPU chip any less sophisticated" (emphasis added). So we don’t need to worry about whether the manufacturers can "reduce" CPU sophistication.

Does that make sense?

[chunsunb]

I assert that the answer for this question is wrong.

I say so because the negated statement of the answer, (A), is still compatible with the argument of the passage.

Note that the conclusion of the passage is that computers cannot currently be made SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

Then, the argument can still hold even if computers CAN currently be made faster without having CPU chips made smaller, as long as the computers CANNOT be made SIGNIFICANTLY faster without having CPU chips made smaller.

Thus, the argument does not depend on assumption (A): evennif the argument does not assume (A), it can still be true.

Can anyone rebut to this?

[ohthatpatrick]

I will, of course, proceed to defend LSAT's credited response, because that's my job.

But let me preface it with a couple warnings/disclaimers:

- not every correct answer is written perfectly. your goal is still to figure out the best answer (sometimes it helps to put your head in the perspective of the test-writer and think about what he/she was probably thinking or trying to express with a given answer)

- You shouldn't be using the Negation Test with a mindset of, "If I negate the correct answer, it will FALSIFY the conclusion."

For example, consider this argument:
All boys like sports --> Andy likes sports

Obviously, the assumption is "Andy is a boy".

If we negate that and say "Andy is a girl", is that compatible with the conclusion?

Yes, totally. The negated assumption did NOT contradict the conclusion.

Well then why do we think it's obviously correctly stating an assumption being made by the author?

We don't measure an assumption based on whether negating it would / wouldn't contradict the conclusion (if negating an answer choice DOES go against the conclusion it's correct ... but if negating an answer choice doesn't contradict the conclusion, that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong)

We need to consider assumptions based on the reasoning.

The reason that "Andy is a boy" qualifies as an assumption is because the author was clearly trying to connect "Boys like sports" to "Andy likes sports".

Similarly, in Q10, the author is making this leap
"CPU chips can't be made significantly smaller"
and so
"Computers can't be made significantly faster"

Because the premise AND the conclusion both include the modifier of 'significant', THAT part of the conclusion isn't a loose part of the author's reasoning. The 'significant' is a match. (just like the two iterations of "like sports" from our sample argument)

The loose part of the reasoning is that the author said:
IF you make a chip smaller --> THEN you increase the speed

and then reasoned
IF you can't make chip smaller --> THEN you can't increase speed

We need to see and react to this flaw, this illegal negation, and anticipate an answer that says "Hey, just because I can't reach objective X using method Y, who's to say I couldn't reach objective X using some other sufficient method?"

Note: I'm ignoring the w/o sacrificing sophistication for simplicity (since it's consistently reiterated)

Notice that the author's original rule was that changes in chip size are proportional to changes in computing speed.

That's why the move from premise to conclusion contains the matching modifier "significantly". But that's also why the "significantly" doesn't affect his reasoning. He's still plugging in the rule of direct proportionality.

His reasoning problem is that he thinks a sufficient cause of increased speed (smaller chip size) is a necessary cause of increased speed.

In the end, you don't have to love the answer. I agree it would line up more with the argument's language if it said 'significantly smaller'. But it's still a correct commentary on the author's reasoning problem. The author's confusion derives from thinking that one possible way is the only way.

Hope this helps.

[chunsunb]

Now that I think about it, I was wrong. If computers can be made faster without their CPU chips getting smaller (through other means), then they can be made significantly faster without their CPU chips getting significantly smaller (through other means, employed in significant degree). *Mic drop*

[BensonC202]

Please looking into my analysis, since I believe that I may offer the new light to find the right answer more efficiently.

1. ( less Sized / CPU -> ~ less sophistication ) -> ( increase speed for both CPU and Computer )

2. ( less Sized / CPU -> less sophistication ) -> ( ~ increase speed for both CPU and Computer )

Apparently, if 1 is the illegal negate to 2 and vice versa, and if both of them are still true, then it must be true that they be presented as the correlation :

3. ( Less Sized / CPU -> ~ less sophistication ) < - > ( increase speed for both CPU and Computer )


A. ( Increase speed for Computer ) -> ( less sized / CPU ). If negated, it becomes ( increased speed for computer ) -> ( no less sized / Cpu ), the correlation would not exist, thus it will be the right answer.

B. It does not address the core of the argument, which is the correlation exists. We do not need to know whether the size of the cpu chip be necessary changed, if the chip " can " be slightly less sophisticated. For example:

( To reduce the size of engine is possible only if the numbers of the turbos would not be decrease ) -> better the mpg of that engine.

Vs

( Even if the 4 turbos can be decrease to 3.5 or 3, the size of the engine can't be reduced. ) we do not need to care about this condition, since we only need to care about whether the size of the engine can be reduced only if the numbers of turbos are the same.

C. It is also the out of scope condition, since we are discussing increasing the speed of computer but not decreasing.

D. Eliminate due to " believe "

E. ( less size / CPU -> ~ less sophistication ) -> increase speed of computer does not the same as ( Increasing the sophistication -> no less + no increase size / CPU ) -> speed, since ~ increasing sophistication does not equal to ~ less.