Q14 - It would not be surprising

[lisahollchang]

I answered B instead of C for this one and am confused as to why B is incorrect. Isn't the fact that migration occurred along these routes made possible by the fact that the terrain was so easily traveled, making the statement an intermediate conclusion supporting the conclusion that trade routes may also have been opened early than believed?

On the other hand I can see now why C is correct. I'm just not sure how B is incorrect.

Thanks for your help!
Lisa

[bbirdwell]

Stick close to the question task. You are asked to evaluate the role of the entire statement that the migration "began one million years ago."

As far as we are concerned, this is an inarguable fact. Therefore, it cannot be any kind of conclusion, intermediate or otherwise. Conclusions are claims that need support. Facts are premises that do the supporting.

The fact that the terrain was easy does not support when the migration began. Do you see?

It's easy to walk from my house to the bakery. I walked to the bakery today. These are both simply statements. Neither one supports the other. In other words, you have no idea whether i walked to the bakery today BECAUSE it's easy to do. You simply know that both these things are true.

[lisahollchang]

Oh my, your explanation really helped clear up why B is wrong. Thank you so much. This is definitely something I'll need to look out for on future questions!

[shirando21]

why is A wrong? what is a conclusive evidence?

[a3friedm]

why is A wrong? what is a conclusive evidence?

I reasoned that A was wrong because it states "It is cited as conclusive evidence for the claim that trade links between China and the Middle East were established long before 200 B.C."
however, the claim was "It would not be surprising to discover that the trade routes between China and the West were opened many centuries, even millenia, earlier than 200 B.C contrary to what is currently believed."

You see, we still dont know whether or not it actually opened prior to 200 B.C. I'm not sure if that was the right way to get out of this answer choice and I just got lucky, so any advice would be appreciated

[bbirdwell]

This is a great opportunity to compare answer choice (A) to answer choice (C) to gain some insight into how the LSAT works.

Notice how they are in the same ballpark, but have important differences in language. And we want to choose the kind of language that best matches the stimulus.

(A) is out because the evidence is not conclusive. as a3friedm pointed out, the evidence here supports the claim that "It wouldn't be surprising." This is far from conclusive. Conclusive would be more like "This clearly proves X."

(C) avoids this trap by better matching the argument. The statement supports the conclusion that the routes COULD HAVE been established earlier.

[ttunden]

another main reason why B is wrong is because in the stimulus, the statement in question( migration occurred at least 1 mill years ago) supports our main conclusion which is the 1st sentence.

B doesn't say this. This is why C is better because C states that, the statement, supports the main conclusion. It's tough, you can make an argument saying that the statement is an intermediate conclusion but I eliminated B since it never stated that it supports the main conclusion, like C does.

[PaigeG29]

Another reason why we can easily cross B off our possible correct answers is the fishy word snuck in there: "It is an intermediate conclusion made plausible by the description of the terrain along which the migration supposedly took place."

Besides the main points already mentioned that the one million years is a factual statement, and that it has no relation of being made possible by the terrain, I also like to think of it as a red flag when I come across weird, out of place, snuck in words like supposedly. There is no "supposedly" here, the migration absolutely took place, what is up for debate is exactly when it started happening along this route. Just like to keep an eye out for weird words that might totally change the sentence that we easily skim over.