PrepTest 152

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Prediction accurate/Precognitive ==> Predicted event happens
Some predicted events don't happen.
Therefore, often not precognitive.

Answer Anticipation:
Necessary Assumption questions with conditional logic have been rare historically, but they've been more common in recent years. Here, we are presented with a conditional rule, and the premise deals with the trigger of the contrapositive.

Whenever a single conditional rule is relied on to reach a conclusion, it's important to make sure that the premise that triggers it matches the sufficient condition given. Here, the condition is that the predicted events don't happen. However, premise is just that they sometimes don't happen. That switch in degree is something that has to be bridged for the argument to work.

Answer Explanation:
Exactly the connection we were looking for. Note that this answer would also serve as the correct answer to a Strengthen with Sufficient Premise question.

Key Takeaway:
For any argument that relies on the triggering of a single conditional statement, check to be sure that the premise triggering it matches with the actual condition. The LSAT will often feature a term shift here that can lead you to the answer. Also, for Necessary Assumption questions, be sure that you don't select an answer overshooting the conclusion.

First off, this answer is about people, not characters in books. Big difference. Second, this answer overshoots what's needed for the argument to work. The conclusion is just that these characters are often not truly precognitive, not that they always lack precognition.

The argument relies on the established premise that some of these works do feature predictions that don't happen. Also, it would be difficult for an answer that leaves a question open to be necessary to reach a conclusion relying on something not happening.

The argument just cares about whether the characters have precognitive abilities, not how much that matters to the plot.

This answer also overshoots the argument. The conclusion given is just that these works often lack truly precognitive characters; this answer goes past that to stating they never feature truly precognitive characters.