Logical reasoning PrepTest 152 · Section 2 · Question 24

Incorrect. This answer conforms to the conditional statement—bills on issues of fundamental importance not being amenable to compromise.

Incorrect. This answer is a negation of sorts of the conditional rule. While negations of conditionals aren't supported by the original conditional, they also don't contradict it—a conditional and its negation can both be true (that's what a biconditional is).

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Cannot Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Most bills have majority support before going to the floor. Most bills that don't have majority support can get there with compromise.
Bill concerns fundamentally important issue → not Compromise

Answer Anticipation:
Cannot Be True questions require answers that contradict a statement from the stimulus, and it's much easier to contradict a stronger statement rather than a weaker statement. Here, the first couple statements use a lot of less-than-certain language—"majority," "usually," "unlikely," "usually." While that's stronger than "some" and "possibly," it's still weaker than a conditional statement. Especially since those most statements can't be validly combined, they're less likely to lead to a correct answer than that last statement.

So we should focus on that conditional statement—"when" and "impossible" combine to form a statement that can be contradicted. We're looking for an answer that establishes the sufficient condition exists (there's a bill that concerns a fundamentally important issue to a large bloc of representatives) while the necessary condition doesn't (compromise is possible).

Answer Explanation:
This answer choice discusses bills of fundamental importance that passed because of compromise. That violates that last, conditional statement from the premise, and thus it cannot be true.

Key Takeaway:
Cannot Be True questions are all about contradictions, and it's easier to contradict a stronger statement than a weaker statement. Conditionals, when present in the stimulus of a Cannot Be True question, almost always lead to a correct answer that establishes the presence of the sufficient condition and then states the necessary condition isn't present.

Incorrect. This answer could be tempting if you misread some of the initial statements. Those premises, however, are about bills that are coming before the legislative body, not all bills. Since this answer talks about a wider group than we learn about in the stimulus, we can't tell if it contradicts the statements without more information about what percentage of bills go to the floor for a vote.

Incorrect. This answer is the inverse of answer choice (D) and is wrong for the same reasons.