--> divine angst: discouragement...and light at the end of the tunnel?

Friday, July 23, 2004

discouragement...and light at the end of the tunnel?

I've been getting really down about Logic Games. As I've practiced this week, it feels like I'm making no progress. That I don't really understand the games—I'm just getting things right because I can flip the page and see the answer.

But today, I think I turned a corner. Maybe it's that I studied during the day (on my lunch hour), maybe it's just that I wasn't at home, where I get too comfortable and tend to fall into brain-fuzz/TV mode. Maybe it's just that I finally started to absorb some of this logic crap.

All I know is that, suddenly, conditional reasoning doesn't seem so daunting. And conditional reasoning was killing me—I mean really totally absolutely confusing me. I mean, doesn't it make sense that "If A, then B" is the same as "if B, then A"? And, particularly, the "unless" statements were turning my brain into scrambled eggs.

But now, magically, I see it. "A unless B" means the same as "if not A, then B," or, better yet, "If not B, then A."

And what do you know? I also understand that, using the above statement (If not B, then A), given "B," I still know nothing about A. I only know something about A when I know that B is not.

By the way, if you just read through that, haven't recently taken a logic course, PowerScore, TestMasters, or any other LSAT prep that teaches this crap, and you understood it—well, you're the reason the LSAT is so damn skewed. Right? Some people just naturally ace the games, and I am tempted to hate every single one of them.

Of course, I got all the Reading Comprehension questions right on my (only) practice test. So maybe I shouldn't hate you too much.