I think this one is really weird. D jumped out to me first as a possible answer, but then I changed my mind because I was like "wait why would we care about the other marketing campaigns" -_-
@GnatTaylor This question hit me, especially after doing a level one before it, like total whiplash ended up choosing D just cause it kinda sounded right.
So, I'm confused about what makes a question easy or difficult. I got that immediately and was expecting it to be easy. Yet I totally missed the easy one, like three questions back. Anyone else?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my takeaway from Weaken questions here is that doing so does not always mean we're weakening the strength of the premises. The whole objective of W questions is to undermine the logical framework of the author's argument that their premises --> conclusion. Here's where the issue comes in: the previous lessons say weakening the premises doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusion isn't true, that instead our objective is to just weaken the author's assumption that their premises fully support the conclusion. However, the explanation of D being the correct answer indicates that there ARE some cases where an additional explanation (cost in this situation) does weaken the author's conclusion.
Does anyone know why my timing keeps showing up as zero? I always try to pay attention to my timing in order to help me evaluate where I'm at, but for some reason the last few questions I've done it says I took no time. Is there something I can do to fix this?
@Bree2003 Ive been having the same issue for the past two days, I'm glad its not just me. I tried clearing my cache and that helped for two questions but its already back to showing as zero again.
Does anyone else have to refresh the page every time before running the practice questions? It happens on my phone, my laptop, and my ipad. Just wondering if anyone else has this issue!?
I knew it was D from the very beginning and I thought about how the company's overall position was irrelevant to the argument. I keep seconding guessing myself way too much.. I keep getting it wrong initially and right in my BR. Idk how to stop second guessing myself..
I am feeling fustrated as I am always between the right answer and a wrong answer (usually the most picked wrong answer) and always choose the wrong answer in WSE Questions. In my blind review I will end up picking the correct answer.
@KayceBassman Unfortunately this is exactly how the LSAT writers want us to feel and they purposely make the questions come down to two seemingly similar answer choices. Ellen Cassidy has a decent chapter about answer choices in her book "The Loophole", that you might find helpful! She specifically mentions how to choose between two answers choices.
I was 36 seconds over and only chose D as a last second gut decision. My reasoning is far from perfect but here it is.
Stimulus: New marketing campaign. No guarantee of success, but there's a chance.
(essentially, there is a possibility of failure, but a possibility of success).
A - Mentions losses, but does not state how those losses would arise. They may arise from the new campaign, maybe not. We don't know - it's too vauge on that note.
B - (I almost chose this). There are many new products that fail, but that implies that some succeed. The stimulus states that there is no gurentee of success, but there is still the possibility.
B implies there is still a possibility of success.
C - Similar to B. The stimulus implies that there is a possibility to fail and to succeed. There was never any gurentee they would fail.
D - Provides reason why it would be a bad idea to undertake this idea, despite the possibility of success. Invoking a 3rd variable that would hinder the argument.
E - We don't care about other products, only this one. If people demand more of other products that's good, but why should we not at least try to promote this one?
I chose D, but this is why I think people are picking B and C
We know that we assume the ACs are true. B and C do not guarantee the outcome if the condition is met
C. The drug company should not undertake a new marketing campaign for its newest product if the campaign has no chance to succeed.
For this to be true all that needs to happen is that if the product has a 0% chance of suceeding, the company should not do another campaign.
But in our heads when we assume truth, we go on to assume that the product does not have a chance of suceeding, so the company should not undertake a new campaign
In other words, when we say an AC is true what we say is that the conditional is right in saying whatever it said, not that what it said has happened.
I chose (D) but I didn't think of the question as a cost/benefit analysis. I just thought (D) as the only answer that really does something to weaken the argument.
Should I get in the habit of trying to identify whether a question is a cost/benifit?
I think there is another flaw with B. Even if you change "many" to "most" I don't see that as impacting the argument. Even if most marketing campaigns fail, what drawback is there to trying it anyway? B doesn't give us any reason NOT to try to marketing campaign, because there is no cost to simply trying, even if you were likely to fail. D on the other hand reveals that there is indeed a cost to attempting the marketing campaign in the first place.
Is it a stretch to say that the overall success is relevant also because the speaker is a person working at the company? Even if the company's position doesn't "matter" in the grand scheme of things, surely it's a reasonable thing to say that it matters to the people that it employs
@MattBav no, if anything it strengthens it because it gives a very strong reason to take a chance to save the product.
A says that the company has invested a lot in this product, so if it fails, it would be very harmful to the company. That is a reason to take the chance on the marketing campaign to save the product. If they don't, the company will be harmed
I was so tripped up by this. I thought D was the trap answer because it explicitly said "endangered". I thought they were trying to trick us with that word :(
This argument looks very similar to a typical weakening argument. How am I supposed to tell the difference between that and a "cost-benefit" argument? Are the answer choices supposed to provide that clarity?
Why is C irrelevant, it says if true then. So we must grant that in the world of c, the market has no chance of success. So the answer contradicts the argument, but we're supposed to believe the answer because it says that's what's true.
As per D. Overall position, what does that mean? In relationship to what?
As for C it is only relevant if the premise meets the sufficient within the conditional statement
the campaign has no chance to suceed→/undertake new marketing campaign
We do not know if the campaign has a chance to succeed or not, so therefore, C is irrelevant.
The "overall position" of a company refers to its general standing or status within its industry, market, or the broader business environment. We can make a reasonable assumption that the company cares about its overall position, not just this individual product's success.
I eliminated B because it said "many", not "All". I don't really know anything if some products fail whether they're supported or not. Maybe the companies does maybe it doesn't. The fact that others failed but some succeeded doesn't really affect the arguments strength IMO.
Stimulus summary - "My company should create a new campaign because it's a good shot at promoting this failing product in the market. Hopefully this will make it succeed." (Inference - but at what cost? would creating this new campaign harm the company in any way? hint hint)
B says: "Many new products fail whether or not they are supported by marketing campaigns."
-> B does not really weaken this particular argument, it just says in general, many products fail. How many is many though? 5 products can be many, or 500. Remember. MANY DOES NOT EQUAL MOST. Many equals SOME It's a plausible answer choice, but when you compare it to "D", it's clearly weaker (explanation below).
D says: "Undertaking a new marketing campaign would endanger the drug company's overall position by necessitating cutbacks in existing marketing campaigns."
-> This is specific. Remember, we take the statement of all answer choices to be true. "D" is telling us that creating a new campaign would harm the company's position because they would have to cut back on their other campaigns. There's a risk stated here! This lines up with my inference from earlier... Let's explore further:
--> Compared to answer choice B, this choice directly addresses the drug manager's main argument which is about MARKETING not about the PRODUCT. It lines up a clear path that if the manager markets a new campaign, then this would endanger the company's overall position. That's pretty bad... So, safe to say this choice is really weakening THIS argument, not just a general statement about products in general!
Remember, every answer choice is true, follow the truth to the end to see where it takes you! In this case, the truth of answer choice D would harm the entire company's position!_
I was just thinking that, I'm glad I read this response because every once in a while I forget "many does not equal most". I need to reinforce that in my brain. I was between B and D going back and forth and in the back of my mind I was like B would be a great answer choice BUTTTTT "many" was throwing me off about it, I ignored my gut and went with B anyways. TRUST YOUR GUT GUYS lol
I don't think B talks about the new product, it talks about new products in general, which is a super set of drug companies' new products.
Another way to think about it is this: my newest car 20 years old, does that mean that I should listen to advice given about 'new cars'? We have no idea how old newest is to this company. 'Our newest' is relational to us and what we possess; 'new' is relational to all things whether I possess them or not.
The way that I saw it was that B kind of already goes along with the argument since it states there's still a chance to save the product, even though it's not guaranteed to win. So, B says many products fail, whether or not they use the campaign. Which the argument is already taking that into account in their conclusion. Not sure if this is a great explanation, but this is how I thought of it as I was eliminating the answer choices.
@jjjjffff Even if you change "many" to "most" why would that impact the argument? If most marketing campaigns fail, what drawback is there to trying it anyway? B doesn't give us any reason NOT to try to marketing campaign, because there is no cost to simply trying, even if you were likely to fail. D on the other hand reveals that there is indeed a cost to attempting the marketing campaign.
Wait, but how does it weaken the argument. You can still be successful with the one drug even if other marketing campaigns in the company are hurt. Isn't this kind of irrelevant to the argument?
if its true that doing a campaign would endanger the company, then it weakens the argument that they should launch the campaign. You can be successful with one drug, but you can also not be successful with just one drug. we don't know the situation of the company or potential success of the drug, so its best not to hinge an argument off of that.
I always read the question stem first and tell myself, "Okay, I am looking to strengthen/weaken based off what I read."
My next approach is to read the stimulus. As I read, I'll make mental notes/ask myself questions like, "When the referential phrase, 'that' is being used, what is it referring to?" that way I engage with the stimulus, and ensure I am understanding the stimulus as I should. When I am done reading, I always identify what the author is arguing/trying to persuade the audience to believe because that will be what the answering choices should be weakening/strengthening.
I then go to the answer choices, and ask myself, "how does this lend support to or weaken the author's argument?"
The explanation to the answer made sense... it just tripped me up because I thought the focus would be on the efforts of wanting to save the product. Sometimes I struggle with gauging the bigger picture vs. the small picture
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108 comments
I think this one is really weird. D jumped out to me first as a possible answer, but then I changed my mind because I was like "wait why would we care about the other marketing campaigns" -_-
@GnatTaylor This question hit me, especially after doing a level one before it, like total whiplash ended up choosing D just cause it kinda sounded right.
So, I'm confused about what makes a question easy or difficult. I got that immediately and was expecting it to be easy. Yet I totally missed the easy one, like three questions back. Anyone else?
@MarieChavis My guess is many people got this wrong that would explain the difficulty.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my takeaway from Weaken questions here is that doing so does not always mean we're weakening the strength of the premises. The whole objective of W questions is to undermine the logical framework of the author's argument that their premises --> conclusion. Here's where the issue comes in: the previous lessons say weakening the premises doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusion isn't true, that instead our objective is to just weaken the author's assumption that their premises fully support the conclusion. However, the explanation of D being the correct answer indicates that there ARE some cases where an additional explanation (cost in this situation) does weaken the author's conclusion.
Does anyone know why my timing keeps showing up as zero? I always try to pay attention to my timing in order to help me evaluate where I'm at, but for some reason the last few questions I've done it says I took no time. Is there something I can do to fix this?
@Bree2003 Ive been having the same issue for the past two days, I'm glad its not just me. I tried clearing my cache and that helped for two questions but its already back to showing as zero again.
@Bree2003 I kept having the same problem, but I found that if I refresh the page before I press "start," the timing issue is solved.
I really dislike these weakening questions, I need to work on them more :/
Does anyone else have to refresh the page every time before running the practice questions? It happens on my phone, my laptop, and my ipad. Just wondering if anyone else has this issue!?
@LawyeRell Occasionally. I recommend checking if your browser needs an update. This will happen on other sites if chrome or something is out of date.
@DNAlex Gotcha. Thanks!
I knew it was D from the very beginning and I thought about how the company's overall position was irrelevant to the argument. I keep seconding guessing myself way too much.. I keep getting it wrong initially and right in my BR. Idk how to stop second guessing myself..
I am feeling fustrated as I am always between the right answer and a wrong answer (usually the most picked wrong answer) and always choose the wrong answer in WSE Questions. In my blind review I will end up picking the correct answer.
Can someone please help me on how to fix this?
@KayceBassman This happens to me to 99% of the time, and I think we just have to continue practicing.
@KayceBassman Unfortunately this is exactly how the LSAT writers want us to feel and they purposely make the questions come down to two seemingly similar answer choices. Ellen Cassidy has a decent chapter about answer choices in her book "The Loophole", that you might find helpful! She specifically mentions how to choose between two answers choices.
I was 36 seconds over and only chose D as a last second gut decision. My reasoning is far from perfect but here it is.
Stimulus: New marketing campaign. No guarantee of success, but there's a chance.
(essentially, there is a possibility of failure, but a possibility of success).
A - Mentions losses, but does not state how those losses would arise. They may arise from the new campaign, maybe not. We don't know - it's too vauge on that note.
B - (I almost chose this). There are many new products that fail, but that implies that some succeed. The stimulus states that there is no gurentee of success, but there is still the possibility.
B implies there is still a possibility of success.
C - Similar to B. The stimulus implies that there is a possibility to fail and to succeed. There was never any gurentee they would fail.
D - Provides reason why it would be a bad idea to undertake this idea, despite the possibility of success. Invoking a 3rd variable that would hinder the argument.
E - We don't care about other products, only this one. If people demand more of other products that's good, but why should we not at least try to promote this one?
I chose D, but this is why I think people are picking B and C
We know that we assume the ACs are true. B and C do not guarantee the outcome if the condition is met
C. The drug company should not undertake a new marketing campaign for its newest product if the campaign has no chance to succeed.
For this to be true all that needs to happen is that if the product has a 0% chance of suceeding, the company should not do another campaign.
But in our heads when we assume truth, we go on to assume that the product does not have a chance of suceeding, so the company should not undertake a new campaign
In other words, when we say an AC is true what we say is that the conditional is right in saying whatever it said, not that what it said has happened.
This same principle applies to AC B
I chose (D) but I didn't think of the question as a cost/benefit analysis. I just thought (D) as the only answer that really does something to weaken the argument.
Should I get in the habit of trying to identify whether a question is a cost/benifit?
I think there is another flaw with B. Even if you change "many" to "most" I don't see that as impacting the argument. Even if most marketing campaigns fail, what drawback is there to trying it anyway? B doesn't give us any reason NOT to try to marketing campaign, because there is no cost to simply trying, even if you were likely to fail. D on the other hand reveals that there is indeed a cost to attempting the marketing campaign in the first place.
Is it a stretch to say that the overall success is relevant also because the speaker is a person working at the company? Even if the company's position doesn't "matter" in the grand scheme of things, surely it's a reasonable thing to say that it matters to the people that it employs
I am a little bit confused about of A is not weakened because it is an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy? #help
@MattBav no, if anything it strengthens it because it gives a very strong reason to take a chance to save the product.
A says that the company has invested a lot in this product, so if it fails, it would be very harmful to the company. That is a reason to take the chance on the marketing campaign to save the product. If they don't, the company will be harmed
I was so tripped up by this. I thought D was the trap answer because it explicitly said "endangered". I thought they were trying to trick us with that word :(
This argument looks very similar to a typical weakening argument. How am I supposed to tell the difference between that and a "cost-benefit" argument? Are the answer choices supposed to provide that clarity?
I knew B was a trap answer and still chose it lol... BR was right.
Why is C irrelevant, it says if true then. So we must grant that in the world of c, the market has no chance of success. So the answer contradicts the argument, but we're supposed to believe the answer because it says that's what's true.
As per D. Overall position, what does that mean? In relationship to what?
As for C it is only relevant if the premise meets the sufficient within the conditional statement
the campaign has no chance to suceed→/undertake new marketing campaign
We do not know if the campaign has a chance to succeed or not, so therefore, C is irrelevant.
The "overall position" of a company refers to its general standing or status within its industry, market, or the broader business environment. We can make a reasonable assumption that the company cares about its overall position, not just this individual product's success.
one thing about B is that it is actually related to the new product; whereas D is about the company......how do we know which is more important?
Not sure if this helps but,
I eliminated B because it said "many", not "All". I don't really know anything if some products fail whether they're supported or not. Maybe the companies does maybe it doesn't. The fact that others failed but some succeeded doesn't really affect the arguments strength IMO.
Stimulus summary - "My company should create a new campaign because it's a good shot at promoting this failing product in the market. Hopefully this will make it succeed." (Inference - but at what cost? would creating this new campaign harm the company in any way? hint hint)
B says: "Many new products fail whether or not they are supported by marketing campaigns."
-> B does not really weaken this particular argument, it just says in general, many products fail. How many is many though? 5 products can be many, or 500. Remember. MANY DOES NOT EQUAL MOST. Many equals SOME It's a plausible answer choice, but when you compare it to "D", it's clearly weaker (explanation below).
D says: "Undertaking a new marketing campaign would endanger the drug company's overall position by necessitating cutbacks in existing marketing campaigns."
-> This is specific. Remember, we take the statement of all answer choices to be true. "D" is telling us that creating a new campaign would harm the company's position because they would have to cut back on their other campaigns. There's a risk stated here! This lines up with my inference from earlier... Let's explore further:
--> Compared to answer choice B, this choice directly addresses the drug manager's main argument which is about MARKETING not about the PRODUCT. It lines up a clear path that if the manager markets a new campaign, then this would endanger the company's overall position. That's pretty bad... So, safe to say this choice is really weakening THIS argument, not just a general statement about products in general!
Remember, every answer choice is true, follow the truth to the end to see where it takes you! In this case, the truth of answer choice D would harm the entire company's position!_
I was just thinking that, I'm glad I read this response because every once in a while I forget "many does not equal most". I need to reinforce that in my brain. I was between B and D going back and forth and in the back of my mind I was like B would be a great answer choice BUTTTTT "many" was throwing me off about it, I ignored my gut and went with B anyways. TRUST YOUR GUT GUYS lol
I don't think B talks about the new product, it talks about new products in general, which is a super set of drug companies' new products.
Another way to think about it is this: my newest car 20 years old, does that mean that I should listen to advice given about 'new cars'? We have no idea how old newest is to this company. 'Our newest' is relational to us and what we possess; 'new' is relational to all things whether I possess them or not.
The way that I saw it was that B kind of already goes along with the argument since it states there's still a chance to save the product, even though it's not guaranteed to win. So, B says many products fail, whether or not they use the campaign. Which the argument is already taking that into account in their conclusion. Not sure if this is a great explanation, but this is how I thought of it as I was eliminating the answer choices.
@jjjjffff Even if you change "many" to "most" why would that impact the argument? If most marketing campaigns fail, what drawback is there to trying it anyway? B doesn't give us any reason NOT to try to marketing campaign, because there is no cost to simply trying, even if you were likely to fail. D on the other hand reveals that there is indeed a cost to attempting the marketing campaign.
these are just sofucking difficult i feel like imlearning a whole new version of literature and im a native russian speaker or somesht
Wait, but how does it weaken the argument. You can still be successful with the one drug even if other marketing campaigns in the company are hurt. Isn't this kind of irrelevant to the argument?
if its true that doing a campaign would endanger the company, then it weakens the argument that they should launch the campaign. You can be successful with one drug, but you can also not be successful with just one drug. we don't know the situation of the company or potential success of the drug, so its best not to hinge an argument off of that.
Just got 5/5 right, LFG
these questions will be the death of me i just cant wrap my head around them... anyone have any tips when approaching?
I always read the question stem first and tell myself, "Okay, I am looking to strengthen/weaken based off what I read."
My next approach is to read the stimulus. As I read, I'll make mental notes/ask myself questions like, "When the referential phrase, 'that' is being used, what is it referring to?" that way I engage with the stimulus, and ensure I am understanding the stimulus as I should. When I am done reading, I always identify what the author is arguing/trying to persuade the audience to believe because that will be what the answering choices should be weakening/strengthening.
I then go to the answer choices, and ask myself, "how does this lend support to or weaken the author's argument?"
Hope this helps!
The explanation to the answer made sense... it just tripped me up because I thought the focus would be on the efforts of wanting to save the product. Sometimes I struggle with gauging the bigger picture vs. the small picture
I got B...