Geneticist: Genes, like viruses, have a strong tendency to self-replic

EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT

The most important thing I can teach you about Sufficient Assumption questions is this: They are easy. I literally breathed a sigh of relief on this question when I saw that it was asking for a Sufficient Assumption. There’s a lot going on here, but the Sufficient Assumption question type makes things easy. All we have to do is 1) figure out what the argument’s conclusion is, and 2) choose an answer that would take the given evidence and make the argument’s conclusion inevitable.

It’s like Legos, or a jigsaw puzzle, or beginner Sudoku, or pre-algebra. It’s extremely learnable.

The geneticist’s conclusion is, “The label ‘selfish’ as applied to genes is a misnomer.” Why does the geneticist believe that this is a misnomer? Well, says the geneticist, “selfishness only concerns bringing about the best conditions for oneself,” and therefore, “creating replicas of oneself is not selfish.”

And that last step is where the problem lies. The geneticist has only assumed that creating replicas of oneself is not selfish, because the geneticist hasn’t shown that creating replicas of oneself doesn’t bring about the best conditions for oneself.

Other than that, it’s a solid argument. So to make the argument watertight, we need to add a single premise: “Creating replicas of oneself does not bring about the best conditions for oneself.” If that’s true, then the geneticist’s argument is solid.

A) It’s easy to analyze the answer choices on a Sufficient Assumption question. Either they are exactly what you’re looking for, or they are not. This one is not, because it doesn’t involve the concept of creating replicas of oneself.

B) This is almost identical to our prediction. That happens on the Sufficient Assumption questions, which is why they’re easy.

C) We’ve already precisely predicted the correct answer. This doesn’t seem anything like the perfect answer we’ve already found, so it’s easy to eliminate.

D) This answer doesn’t involve the concept of bringing about the best conditions for oneself, so it’s out.

E) Nope, not even close to our prediction or to B, which was frighteningly close to our prediction. So it’s out.

Our answer is B, because it almost exactly matches our prediction.