Q9 - In a party game, one person

[acechaowang]

I got the question correct by POE. But I am having trouble what the heck this stimulus is talking about. Could anyone explain the meaning of this passage and why B D are wrong and A is right? Thanks a lot!

[chike_eze]

I got the question correct by POE. But I am having trouble what the heck this stimulus is talking about. Could anyone explain the meaning of this passage and why B D are wrong and A is right? Thanks a lot!

The passage is trying to explain why it is that a person is able to coherently reconstruct a particular dream (which was never told) by asking questions to a group of people who he thought knew the details of the dream (which they did not).

It must be then, that the person constructed the dream using his sense of what he thought it could be. And then by asking questions which the group answered yes/no to, he produced what he thought was coherent and structured.

Correct=(A) Yes. He must have thought that the dream told had some kind of structure and order, which is why he presented what he thought to be the dream in the same way.

(B) "less apt to reach a false understanding" -- the stimulus is about the person telling a story (dream) where none exists. (B) Suggests that there was something to understand in the first place... this is not the case, because no dream was told in the first place.

(D) "Interpreting another person's dream" -- this is clearly wrong. No dream was presented, so there was no dream to interpret. The stimulus concerns how a person was able to relate a dream that makes sense, even though none was told in the first place.

[isaac.botier]

Here's my take on it. Hope it helps!

Q9. (A)
Question Type: Principle Example (in reverse)

Generally with Principle Example questions we are given a principle in the prompt and we need to find an example in the answer choices that satisfies the identified criteria. This question is a bit of a remix of that concept. We are given an example in the prompt and we need to find a principle in the answer choices.

The prompt describes a party game in which someone leaves the room while he thinks a dream is being related to the other people at the party. The person then comes back in the room and tries to guess what the dream was about by asking the other party people yes or no questions. The twist on the game is that there wasn’t a dream related. The person asking the questions ends up constructing a coherent and ingenious narrative based on arbitrary answers to his yes or no questions.

We need a principle that would conform to this example of a person making up a dream narrative that is both coherent and ingenious even though there was no real dream and the answers to his questions were arbitrary.

(B) is out of the scope. This answer choice is saying that people are less likely to reach a false understanding of what someone says than to make no sense of it. The example in our prompt doesn’t involve any comparison of a false understanding v. no sense at all.

(C) is also out of scope. The example in our prompt doesn’t support the notion that dreams are just a collection of images and ideas without coherent structure. It’s important to note that the reason it’s surprising that the person playing the party game constructs a coherent and ingenious narrative is not because dreams lack structures, but rather because a dream wasn’t actually related to the other party members.

(D) is incorrect because there is no interpretation/understanding of an actual dream here. If we were to diagram this answer choice it would be: interpret -> understand (the word requires tips us off that the understanding is necessary). There isn’t an interpretation of a real dream and there is no understanding.

(E) is incorrect because the person guessing about the dream in the prompt is not inventing a dream narrative to explain his own behavior.
--

(A) does a good job of providing a principle for us. The person constructing the dream narrative is playing the game thinking that there was a real dream and that the dream had some order and coherence. This leads him to construct a narrative that has both order and coherence even though his mean friends are just messing with him.

[shirando21]

how do we know that person has the presumption that the dream has order and coherence?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

how do we know that person has the presumption that the dream has order and coherence?

We aren't told explicitly that the person attempting to reconstruct the dream presumes the dream has order and coherence. But we do know that the person has an understanding that the people who remained in the room had a recent dream related to them and that it was the questioner's job to reconstruct that dream by asking questions.

We're only asked to find a proposition that "most closely" conforms to the example in the stimulus. Was there another proposition that you felt conformed more closely?

[bp0]

Ok so let's break this down:

A) you are stating that you simply presume that something has order and coherence which leads the person to construct a dream narrative that is coherent.

Sounds a little far fetched to me. People are walking around with presumptions that other people have coherent dreams?

D) Interpreting another person's dream REQUIRES that one understand the dream as coherent narrative.

This would make the person interpret it as a dream.

So which is stronger- having the presumption that a dream is coherent before constructing it (A) or requiring that one understand it as coherent (D)?

Any thoughts on this?

[513852276]

Ok so let's break this down:

A) you are stating that you simply presume that something has order and coherence which leads the person to construct a dream narrative that is coherent.

Sounds a little far fetched to me. People are walking around with presumptions that other people have coherent dreams?

D) Interpreting another person's dream REQUIRES that one understand the dream as coherent narrative.

This would make the person interpret it as a dream.

So which is stronger- having the presumption that a dream is coherent before constructing it (A) or requiring that one understand it as coherent (D)?

Any thoughts on this?

For choice A, we know from stimulus that "one imbue it (dream) with order and coherent", but not sure whether dream is presumed to "have order and coherent", and there is nothing in principle which is conflict with the stimulus. For choice D, we don't know whether interpret dream "require ..understand...as a coherent narrative", neither do we have any information about "interpret other's dream". In stimulus, the person only "construct a dream" which is never exist, so it is not "the other's dream". So, choice A might be the better choice:)

[ganbayou]

Hi,
Just wanted to double check...so "the presumption that something has order and coherence" is "the understanding that someone else will relate a recent dream to the remaining group" right?
So the person left room assumed someone will tell a true, coherent story about a dream (which that person in fact did not) right?

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

That's exactly right.

For the sake of the previous posters, watch out for STRONG and COMPARATIVE language on Inference questions.

This isn't a normal inference question, but it's essentially asking which answer choice is the closest match for what we read.

When they ask us to sort of "draw a principle-conclusion" from a set of facts, the most common form of trap answer is simply to sum up the moral of the story with overly strong language.

Since we're almost always just reading about one specific occurrence, you're safer picking answers that say "X is possible / may occur / can happen", as opposed to picking answers that say "X is often / usually / typically the case".

(A) _____ can lead to _____ (super weak, only needs one example to prove)

(B) "less apt", COMPARISON

(C) "often", TOO STRONG

(D) "requires", TOO STRONG

(E) "often", TOO STRONG

In the case of (D), it is too strong to say that dream-interpreters ALWAYS understand the dream to be coherent. We only know, from the last sentence, that the people interpreting the dreams USUALLY constructed something coherent.

[andrewgong01]

Do you have any recommendations on what happens when we encounter a question like this. I personally found this the hardest question in the section and most likely because I never understood the passage. During the prep test, I just did not understand the passage at all on two occasions (the first time when I did the questions sequentially where I spent 2 mins and the second time when I had a few mins to spare in the end). If we encounter similar issues on test day where we just don't get the passage like something is not clicking is there anything you would recommend we do to try and at least guess correctly?


Also, when the passage said "no dream has been related", what was it for you that drew the connection of this sentence to the fact that it means the group never actually discussed a dream because this was the part I did not understand but now that I know what it refers to (no dream was said in the group) the answer makes more sense

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

Any time the stimulus is just NOT getting absorbed, I read it a 2nd time. If it still feels hopeless, then just circle that problem number and move on.

If you happen to know any cheap tricks for that question type, apply them so that you can get a higher-than-random guess.

For this question type (which is really just a spin-off of Inference: "Which answer is best supported by the paragraph you read?"), we would be dubious of strong language.

(A) is the safest guess because it's the weakest claim, so you'd get lucky here.

In terms of understanding the 3rd sentence, it wouldn't click after first reading "no dream has been related", but reading the end of that sentence, "The group simply answers the questions according to some arbitrary rule" means that they're just messing with the person who left the room. They're not thinking about whether the answer to a question is ACTUALLY "yes or no". They're just doing something like "2 No's, 1 Yes .... 2 No's, 1 Yes".

I will usually get more specific, like I just did with that hypothetical example, in order to better get a concrete feel for what's being talked about.

[ghorizon09]

This seems to test if we can recognize a self-fulfilling-prophecy. The presumption that something has order and coherence (prophecy) can lead one to imbue it with order and coherence (fulfillment of prophecy).

Answer A.

Additionally, the conclusion includes the word "both" coherent and ingenious, so I looked for an answer choice that includes 2 ideas. This eliminated B,D & E.

Left remaining are A and C.

C is incorrect, because it doesn't explain why "Surprisingly, the person usually constructs a dream narrative that is both coherent and ingenious."

Only answer A resolves the "surprising phenomenon or paradox" and thus, it is the correct answer.