@r.wang1 Nah. Build a simplified world in which the electric grid has 1200 watts of capacity. Lets say street lights use 1000 watts. And ACs typically use 50 watts. But because of the heat wave, AC usage spiked, and is trying to draw 500 watts. That results in blackouts now.
The gvmnt requested residents to reduce AC usage in their homes. But even if people do, the blackouts will continue to occur until the heat wave abates. Who cares how big of a drain street lights are? They have remained unchanged the whole time. The thing that changed was AC usage.
The fact that street lights draw a ton of power is irrelevant to the heat wave being correlated with blackouts.
@r.wang1 It's really just a matter of picking the answer that does the best job of explaining the discrepancy. On LSAT questions like this, multiple answer choices can sound reasonable or be partially correct, so the goal is to find the one that most directly accounts for what's going on.
The idea that there could be other major energy-consuming sources might help explain the situation, but it's a weaker explanation because we don't actually know whether those other sources exist or how much energy they're using. It's more speculative.
By contrast, answer choice B gives us a much more concrete explanation. We already know that air conditioning has overloaded the power grid, and we're told there's record-breaking heat. Even if homeowners reduce their air conditioning use, businesses and factories continuing to operate at normal levels would still place a significant demand on the grid. Since air conditioning is already identified as a major contributor to the problem, B provides a much stronger and more direct explanation for why the overload persists.
@kaliyahwilliams I answered A on my first attempt as well. I think it's critical to remember that we must accept all facts in these RRE stimuli to be true. In this case, the stimulus leaves no doubt that AC usage has a causal relationship to the blackouts ('resulting in'). You had it right that AC is causing frequent power blackouts. It's all about the assumptions we make along the way that trip us up.
A is not correct because the stimulus does explicitly state that overloads are caused by AC use. A assumes that because there are other significant drains, that they are still the cause for the blackouts. They could certainly present a strain on the grid, but we know for certain that the cause is AC usage because we must accept the premises to be true.
B is correct because of the truth of the premises. The stimulus only explicitly mentions that if residents were asked to stop their own personal AC usage, the blackouts would still probably happen. The stimulus does not say that if all AC usage stopped, that the blackouts would happen. The stimulus purposefully leaves out other kinds of AC usage that could also be a factor in the blackouts. It doesn't tell us explicitly anything about business and factory AC usage, but it certainly leaves room for them in the wording of the proposed rollbacks being only in residential settings. Conflating residential with all AC usage is the naive assumption that @danjpeach96 is pointing out.
I get the frustration though. Every word matters in these stimuli, and especially for these RRE questions, the correct answer requires you to read between the lines and catch naive assumptions, such as conflating residential ACusage with all AC usage. Hopefully this helps! :)
@IsabellaP exactly. why does the power draw of something like car chargers matter? It is unaffected by heat waves. The thing that changed during the heat wave was AC usage. car charger power draw probably remained unchanged. The fact that it may still outdraw AC units by 2x doesn't even matter.
I got bamboozled by "residents" as business's reside in a given population. Looking the definition resident don't exclude large organization. I should of use real world context and remember they'll never tell target to go easy...
@Tombee64 Yeah it used resident as well as "homes". If the gvmt said to reduce AC usage in my home, but my business uses 30x the AC that my home does, then turning my home AC off completely doesn't really do much.
Took me 7:54. I was stuck on A and B, and I choose B. When I reread the stimulus and it said "resident", the lightbulb lit up and that's when I selected B. Maybe non-residents are heeding the caution about not cutting back on aircon.
bruh the way the Q was worded threw me off so bad. using the word "resolve" made me automatically think, "how could we resolve this problem" so I picked E cause i was thinking, if the heat wave abates, then no blackout, and took the contropositive of everything... We should do lessons strictly on the wording of questions and having to decipher what their exactly asking us to do.
@ArdenAmarelo same. I went over a minute nd 33 seconds because I just kept going back and forth between the two. Chose A originally then said hmm my intuition is not the best so went with B and got it right haha
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145 comments
Im a dingus
@SusanLeifker same bro. Got it wrong, then during the blind review was like, "im a dingus"
A,B and D were all good answers that explained the phenomenon, but I also see why A and D were wrong because we have to find the BEST answer. :(
DAMN IT
Anyone else feel like the explanation for why A is wrong is unsatisfying?
@r.wang1 Nah. Build a simplified world in which the electric grid has 1200 watts of capacity. Lets say street lights use 1000 watts. And ACs typically use 50 watts. But because of the heat wave, AC usage spiked, and is trying to draw 500 watts. That results in blackouts now.
The gvmnt requested residents to reduce AC usage in their homes. But even if people do, the blackouts will continue to occur until the heat wave abates. Who cares how big of a drain street lights are? They have remained unchanged the whole time. The thing that changed was AC usage.
The fact that street lights draw a ton of power is irrelevant to the heat wave being correlated with blackouts.
@r.wang1 It's really just a matter of picking the answer that does the best job of explaining the discrepancy. On LSAT questions like this, multiple answer choices can sound reasonable or be partially correct, so the goal is to find the one that most directly accounts for what's going on.
The idea that there could be other major energy-consuming sources might help explain the situation, but it's a weaker explanation because we don't actually know whether those other sources exist or how much energy they're using. It's more speculative.
By contrast, answer choice B gives us a much more concrete explanation. We already know that air conditioning has overloaded the power grid, and we're told there's record-breaking heat. Even if homeowners reduce their air conditioning use, businesses and factories continuing to operate at normal levels would still place a significant demand on the grid. Since air conditioning is already identified as a major contributor to the problem, B provides a much stronger and more direct explanation for why the overload persists.
the correct answer definitely should have been A
@kaliyahwilliams Why?
@danjpeach96 because the stimulus says that Air Con is causing frequent power blackouts and they also says thats not the only reason black outs occur.
@kaliyahwilliams Oops you should re-read it! It does not say anything about other reasons for blackouts. That is one of those naive assumptions.
@kaliyahwilliams I answered A on my first attempt as well. I think it's critical to remember that we must accept all facts in these RRE stimuli to be true. In this case, the stimulus leaves no doubt that AC usage has a causal relationship to the blackouts ('resulting in'). You had it right that AC is causing frequent power blackouts. It's all about the assumptions we make along the way that trip us up.
A is not correct because the stimulus does explicitly state that overloads are caused by AC use. A assumes that because there are other significant drains, that they are still the cause for the blackouts. They could certainly present a strain on the grid, but we know for certain that the cause is AC usage because we must accept the premises to be true.
B is correct because of the truth of the premises. The stimulus only explicitly mentions that if residents were asked to stop their own personal AC usage, the blackouts would still probably happen. The stimulus does not say that if all AC usage stopped, that the blackouts would happen. The stimulus purposefully leaves out other kinds of AC usage that could also be a factor in the blackouts. It doesn't tell us explicitly anything about business and factory AC usage, but it certainly leaves room for them in the wording of the proposed rollbacks being only in residential settings. Conflating residential with all AC usage is the naive assumption that @danjpeach96 is pointing out.
I get the frustration though. Every word matters in these stimuli, and especially for these RRE questions, the correct answer requires you to read between the lines and catch naive assumptions, such as conflating residential AC usage with all AC usage. Hopefully this helps! :)
Most confident I've felt on a question. 25 seconds under ayooo
Almost fell for A but got it right with B
I'm still confused on how A is wrong? Is it just because it doesn't include anything about the "heat wave"?
@IsabellaP exactly. why does the power draw of something like car chargers matter? It is unaffected by heat waves. The thing that changed during the heat wave was AC usage. car charger power draw probably remained unchanged. The fact that it may still outdraw AC units by 2x doesn't even matter.
I understood the word "resolve" as something that would fix the problem, so I completely misinterpreted the question's meaning😭
I got bamboozled by "residents" as business's reside in a given population. Looking the definition resident don't exclude large organization. I should of use real world context and remember they'll never tell target to go easy...
@Tombee64 Yeah it used resident as well as "homes". If the gvmt said to reduce AC usage in my home, but my business uses 30x the AC that my home does, then turning my home AC off completely doesn't really do much.
@SalmaanEjaz this is fr how i felt LOLLL LETS GOO!!!
@ryumi Harvard here we come
Took me 7:54. I was stuck on A and B, and I choose B. When I reread the stimulus and it said "resident", the lightbulb lit up and that's when I selected B. Maybe non-residents are heeding the caution about not cutting back on aircon.
Dam I got tricked by A, it doesnt explain why the blackouts still occur. And its vague. Gotta avoid the vague answers. I also answered too fast
Selected a during the initial and B during the Blind review... twas disappointed in myself lol
read it too fast and fell for A...immediately regretted and knew it was B once i peeked and saw 0%
ofc I fell for D
bruh the way the Q was worded threw me off so bad. using the word "resolve" made me automatically think, "how could we resolve this problem" so I picked E cause i was thinking, if the heat wave abates, then no blackout, and took the contropositive of everything... We should do lessons strictly on the wording of questions and having to decipher what their exactly asking us to do.
So... fine, I get that B was the better choice, but that question was dumb.
Is it just me...or are the RRE question types hard to grasp what the heck???
@ChandaM I feel the same. I keep seeing comments of people saying that this is super easy and obvious and im like wow, im dumber than I thought lmao
I was so confident with A...
I got it down to A and B, but ended up going with A because I thought "why would business owners not be considered residents?" 😭
@ArdenAmarelo THIS!!!
@ArdenAmarelo same. I went over a minute nd 33 seconds because I just kept going back and forth between the two. Chose A originally then said hmm my intuition is not the best so went with B and got it right haha
in other words, there's no fucking strategy to get these right. Just hope your intuition does the work...
LET'S GO! HUGE DUBS
i was stuck between b and d, got it right in blind review
Shoot, I originally read/understood that as "most businesses and factories in the region use ac". Obviously see my error now lol