Question 17 is a weakening question and it's a really hard weakening question.

I think this one is the curve breaker question.

So don't feel too bad if you got it wrong as long as you didn't spend too much time, right?

Like you read this, you're like, oh, no idea what's going on.

Definitely no idea what's going on.

Whatever. I'll choose E, move on.

That's fine, right?

As long as you don't waste time, that's fine.

But let's take a look at some of the things that make this question particularly hard.

I think just like number one, the length of it, right?

Look how long it is.

Um, the right answer choice is very, very, very subtle because of the way they phrase this bit.

Um, the wrong answer choices kind of like mess with you a lot, uh, as they always do, I guess.

But like B and D in particular, they're conditional statements.

I'm not sure if I've seen conditional statements like this in weakening questions before.

If I have, then I don't remember.

Uh, so I guess that says that either it's rare or this is an innovation.

Uh, anyway, it doesn't stray far from...

It does, it still uses all the core foundational logic concepts that we've been honing.

So that's, that's a good thing, right?

Um, so we read this as a positive correlation.

Like that's the framework we're going to use.

They're going to give us a set of phenomenon, observe empirical data.

And then from that, uh, from those premises, quote unquote, we're going to have to,

a hypothesis is going to be put forth, right?

That's called a conclusion.

So that's, that's the framework we're going to use.

A positive correlation found between the amount of soot in,

soot in the atmosphere of cities and frequency of certain ailments in those city populations.

So let's just jot that down real quick.

Soot correlated, positively correlated with a frequency of certain ailments in the city populations.

Okay, so however, right, however, the soot itself probably doesn't cause this ailment.

So wait, what?

What?

This is sort of, you know, I read this, like, wait a second.

Generally, you always go like U as in the LSAT.

A correlated with B, therefore A causes B, right?

Here, they're, they're pulling this like, oh, but A doesn't cause B, right?

A doesn't cause B. So that's, that's new, right?

Okay, but they're not done giving us premises yet, right?

Since, so the rest of this is premise, right?

Or additional observed empirical phenomenon, whatever, whatever, right?

In cities where there are large amounts of soot in the air,

there are usually also high concentrations of any other air pollutants.

Okay, so here's another correlation, right?

Soot is not just correlated with the number of ailments.

Soot is also correlated, I'm just going to call this others, right?

Other types of, what is this, air pollutants, right?

So in the same class, in the same category of things.

Now, okay, so now they didn't say this, but you got to realize if this is correlated with this

and this is correlated with this, that means this is also correlated, right?

These two things are also correlated.

So now really just look at what you have here.

You have A is correlated with B and then you have like A prime is also correlated with B.

Why do I call it A prime and not like C or X or whatever?

Because they're the same category of things, right?

At least, I mean, presented to us, it was the same category, other air pollutants.

When they say other air pollutants, that means soot is an air pollutant, right?

So now if you think about this, the structure, the form of this argument,

what you get is you get A is correlated with B and A prime and double prime, triple prime,

depending on how many others there are, are correlated with B.

Then what, I mean, you better not make any sort of conclusions, right?

If this is, if these are all the, this is all the evidence you have, you know,

unless you have some special knowledge about soot and what it does to your lungs

and what type of these elements, right?

I mean, those would be presumptions because it's not present in the argument.

But just on the form of it, it'd be really weird to say, oh, it's A that causes B

or it's definitely A prime that causes B.

It could be A that causes B. It could be A prime that causes B.

It could be both of them together that cause B.

It could be some other thing, C, out there that's causing each, all of these things, right?

There's so many different, but look at what they do.

They presume that this is the thing that causes B, right?

That's got to be their presumption.

That's got to be their presumption because that's got to be why they're taking the blame off of soot.

That's why they're saying, oh, it's not soot that causes the elements, right?

Because you just told me that there's a correlation here.

So, so you are assuming that it's A prime that causes B, right?

That's why it's not A that causes B.

So, okay.

So there's your, there's your sort of causal framework.

They're still making the same mistake that they always make, right?

Remember, in the beginning I said, oh, A correlated with B.

I'm so surprised they didn't just say A causes B.

It's because they said, they went for A prime correlated with B,

and they presume A prime causes B, therefore A doesn't cause B, right?

So that's, it's still the same, you know, it's still the LSAT.

All right.

So let's take a look at that.

I'll go over the right answer first, just so we have a clear understanding of what's going on here,

and then we'll take a look at the wrong answers.

but little other pollution, right?

Large amounts of soot and little other pollution.

Now, what do you want?

And forget, forget this, right?

Think about, this is perfect, right?

This is exactly the kind of situation, the data that we need.

Why?

Because over here, our view of the causal framework is all foggy from the pollute,

from the, we have too many correlations, right?

They're too, it's not clear.

Like, if you didn't, like, if we could just isolate soot in a set of cities, right?

Like cities where we just isolate soot, or the other one,

or just isolate the other things, right?

And then see in those cities where we can just isolate soot,

and you are not present, right?

This bit doesn't exist.

And see if these ailments still occur.

Then we have a good idea, because now we get something to compare it against, right?

We get a cities where there are soot's present,

and other things are present, and these ailments occur.

So I'm not really sure which one's causing it.

But now, now we have a city where soot occurs, and these other things don't occur, right?

Now we get to see if it really is soot, because if it really is soot, what would you expect?

You expect this thing to be present, right?

Like, oh, soot's present, these other things are not present.

If it is soot, you'd expect these ailments to be present.

So that's what we want, right?

Because we're trying to weaken the argument.

Argument is trying to say, oh, it's not soot.

We're trying to weaken it.

So we want the ailments to be present.

We want this bit that I scratched out to say the ailments are present, right?

Now, what does it actually say?

Look at how subtle, that's exactly what it says.

But look how subtly they say it.

The frequency of the ailment is, just say high, just say, like, ridiculously high,

just say, like, deadly high, but they don't, right?

But, but they don't.

They say it in this subtle, sort of, hidden kind of way.

At least as high as it is anywhere else, right?

I read that, it's like anywhere else.

You really mean anywhere else?

Yeah, they really mean anywhere else, like anywhere else in the world, right?

So what does that mean?

The frequency is at least as high, right?

It's either tied for being the highest with anywhere else in the world,

or it stands alone as the highest.

So that's how high it is.

It's ridiculously high.

Well, that's great then, right?

Because if we control for the other thing, we, we zero out the other stuff.

And we'll look at the city, oh, there's soot present, and what's the frequency of the ailments?

Ridiculously high.

Great.

Then we've weakened our argument, right?

This, this additional data is crippling for our argument, right?

So that's why C works really well.

Now, the others kind of just do, like, different things.

Here, let's look at them in turn.

So this is a city where there's, the other stuff is present, right?

And the soot is not present.

Versus, forget this bit for a second, right?

Forget this bit in a second.

Let's just go, there are the large amounts of soot in there.

So versus cities where there are soot in the air, right?

And we actually don't know if these other cities have the other pollutants in the air, right?

So they've set it up like this.

So, you know, they're, they're toggling soot, right?

They're, they're controlling for, oh, soot's not present.

Let's see what happens.

Soot is present.

Let's see what happens.

So what do you want to happen here?

Well, you want, when soot is absent, for the ailments to be absent.

And when soot is present, for the ailments to be present.

Because we're trying to say, to weaken this, we're trying to say that soot is the cause, right?

So when it's not here, the ailments had better not be here, right?

When it is here, the ailments had better be here, right?

But look what they say.

It's about the same.

The frequency is just as high on average, right?

So it's like, there's no discernible difference.

Well, then if you toggled soot on and off, right?

And there's no discernible difference, then it's probably not the soot, right?

Do you see that?

If you, if you're toggling soot on and off, no soot, soot, no soot, soot.

And then the ailment frequency doesn't pay attention to this toggling,

then it's probably not the soot that causes it, right?

Do you see, you sort of just strengthen the argument, not weaken.

All right, so let's take a look at E now.

He says, in cities in which there are high concentration of many air pollutants,

there are generally also high concentrations of other forms of pollution, right?

Look at this.

High concentrations of other air pollutants.

So that's like, this, this city, like, that's our city, right?

So they're saying this is now additional correlation established, right?

Additional, this is correlated with this additional thing.

This is correlated with this additional thing.

And this additional thing is correlated with ailments.

Not just correlated, actually.

In fact, likely they are the cause.

Like, what kind of pollution?

Water pollution, smell pollution, noise pollution, whatever, right?

Whatever type of other forms of non-air pollution, right?

Then, then you're, you're also helping this argument out, right?

They're like, told you it wasn't soot, it's water pollution, right?

That are very likely causally contributing to the ailment.

So E also goes backwards, right?

Okay, so now let's take a look at B and D.

are correlated with high frequency ailments among that city's population.

So notice that the sufficiency condition here,

if this thing is true, then this thing is true, right?

Like, in order for D to actually weaken the argument,

we have to meet the sufficiency condition, right?

Our premises, right?

Our premises has to meet the sufficiency conditions.

And then this has to deny either the conclusion or one of the premises, right?

One of the other premises, because that, that'll certainly, you know, if you just knock out,

you know, like we said, that's the thing that never happens on LSAT, right?

Like just a direct contradiction of a premise,

or, or the direct contradiction of a conclusion almost, that never happens.

But let's see if the sufficiency condition is met.

Now, I'm going to presume that you know how to do logic games, right?

Because in logic games, we say this a lot, right?

Like conditional statements, X implies Y.

If X is triggered, if our sufficiency is triggered, then Y gets to be triggered, right?

So let's see if X is triggered.

High concentration of many different pollutants in the air correlated high frequency elements.

Yeah, that's this.

That's this.

That's true.

This statement is true.

The sufficiency condition is triggered.

So therefore, this is relevant.

D is in fact relevant.

It has the potential to weaken our argument.

We just need to examine what the necessary condition says.

Necessary condition says, it's possible that two or more of these pollutants each

causally contribute to the element.

But that's, that's not helpful.

You got at least two things wrong with it, right?

Like forget this possible bit for a second.

Let's just, let's just strengthen, help this answer choice out.

Then it is, but you know what?

Let's, let's help it all the way.

What should it say, right?

It should say, then suit is the cause.

If it said that, then great, then D greatly weakens it because D just directly contradicts

the conclusion.

Conclusion says suit's not the cause.

D says, oh, if this is, if this is true, which it is true in the premises, then suit is the

cause.

Great, we're done.

We choose D, we move on, right?

That's helping D all the way out.

Okay, now let's remove one step.

Look at what this says.

Then it is two or more of those, of those pollutants that each causally contribute to

elements.

Okay, how many pollutants do we have?

Right, five, right?

I mean, you're just saying two or more, so is it two or three?

And, and how do we know those two or three, one of them is suit, right?

Why couldn't it be the, you know, non-suit pollutant number one, non-suit pollutant number

two, non-suit pollutant number three, that that's the two or more that you're talking

about.

Do you see how useless this is for us, right?

You really should just say it's suit that's doing it.

Now, now on top of that, they add this, it's, they add that it's possible, right?

Like this was useless enough by itself.

Now they're saying, oh, let me make it even more useless.

It's just possible that this is the case.

This useless thing might happen.

Wow, so useless.

Okay, so these were all.

B is also a conditional statement.

If, right, then, um, look at the necessary here for B. B's, the necessary here is pretty

good. Suit is probably the cause, right?

This is great.

This actually straight up weak.

This would just contradict the conclusion and this would, would weaken our argument,

but the sufficiency, but the sufficiency condition here does not trigger.

Remember what happens in logic games when we have like an A implies B and then you can't

trigger the sufficient condition.

The rule just is irrelevant.

It just falls away.

The rule doesn't exist, right?

That's exactly what's about to happen here.

B effectively just doesn't even exist, right?

Because look at what it's saying.

The ailment, right, the ailment rarely occurs except in cities in which there are large

amounts of soot in the air.

We don't know that, right?

All we know is that soot is positively correlated with the ailments.

Look at how much more stringent B is being.

B is saying that this ailment rare, rarely occurs, only except in cities, only in cities

where there are large amounts of soot in the air.

That's just straight up not what we, that's not what we're saying in the, in the premises.

We're saying there's a positive correlation between soot and the ailments.

This is saying only in those cities where you find large amounts of soot.

You'll find ailments.

All those other cities, no, don't, no race, very, very rarely, right?

That's not what a core, that's not what a correlation establishes, right?

So you're failing this efficiency condition here, which means this answer choice just

doesn't even exist.