@dh2303 I felt the same. I think the key here is that the statement leaves open the possibility that Paraguay could be a rare example of such a place. Both answers rely on an association between length of use and likelihood of origination.

We're making a more general claim about all countries, that they, at worst less than half the time, follow this general trend. We do not know where Paraguay falls here, but without a formal definition of 'rare' we need to entertain the idea that it could be slightly stronger than a coin flip. Also we don't get any insight into how Paraguay compares to other countries here.

E is describing a definite correlation between variety and length of use. We know from the premises that Paraguay has the widest variety of Mate, which is why I think the explanation is saying this (A) is irrelevant. A requires you to be very generous to the word 'rare' here, and honestly it is kind of out of scope for the LSAT to ask you to debate something like this.

Got this wrong btw

@Malili

You're right that the most notable flaw is in the first premise, that the only risk in quitting is not finding another job. The premise relies on a lot of unreasonable assumptions, which can all be summarized under 'There are no reasons to stay at a job I am unhappy at'.

But he's not doing what's described in B. His premise builds to his conclusion, but it doesn't presume his conclusion is true. A is a stepping stone to "Yeah but at least they're not unemployed"

@sallysally Your line of thinking isn't wrong. If there was a stronger answer that was explicitly supported by the stimulus I think it would be correct. Usually when a most supported question like this gives a vague answer like "would be reasonable" it's a trap, as there are many more necessary assumptions required about what would or wouldn't fulfill that criteria.

In this case though, the stronger statements (A, C, E) don't receive near enough support from the passage to be fulfilled so rather than being merely weakly supported they are unsupported or antisupported outright.

I incorrectly chose B because I ruled out D without really reading what it said but on review it's obvious D is the winner.

We don't know Hector's thoughts on whether or not artistic merit is a central consideration. We only know that Hector agrees with Monica that the popularity of this sculpture is not indicative of its artistic merit, and that he thinks popular opinion is indicative of what the public feels is to its benefit.

Hector can still believe that both popular opinion and artistic merit should be central considerations in determining if the work should remain. If it said 'the' central consideration it'd be more clear.

I apparently misread the sentence, but arrived at the same answer.

It is not reasonable to assume human food production capacity increasing = agricultural advances. The final sentence clues you into this fact.

@8Swans I straight up miscounted the paragraphs lmao.

Wow. wtf

I presumed the "fact" in D was referring to the actual discrepancy and the theory in question to be "typological theory". I also thought that it was reasonable to presume that mainstream biological theory was a fact because the argument did.

But if you go by that reasoning, he didn't say it was proven false, just that it was unacceptable. You can have a theory that's unacceptable for reasons besides it being false. Figured it was getting too weird and picked C.

Crazy to me that this is Level 3. The reasoning is pretty abstract

Inez is claiming that the effect of her plan would be more willingness to buy antiques.

Is disagreeing with her prediction the same as saying it will have a contrary effect? Anika is basically saying the effect could be any true outcome besides the effect Inez stated.

Has anyone else found it easier to just rename the visual sets to /(variable) and inverting the set order when doing lots of work on contrapositives?

@Kaileavesley Took me a while to get it.

Question: How are the individual home dinners of these two groups so similar despite one group spending more time per week making food.

D. The group with less time makes fewer dinners every week. So their individual home dinners have similar amounts of time per dinner.

Knew I was wrong answering this because the LSAT doesn't make you choose between five subjective values. E is like getting punched in the mouth with how straightforward it is.

"Phenom-Hypothesis"

A's explanation made no sense to me. It was contradicting the definition of sufficiency.

If:

Finding -> Pain

It follows that

/(finding + /pain)

If findings is sufficient for pain, it follows that it is not the case that one can have finding and no pain.

I better be the argumentative equivalent of Neo in the matrix when these lessons are over.

It is not the case that one should /health -> money

/(/health -> money)

For without health, no happiness

/Health -> /happiness

Which means it is not the case that you should sacrifice health, and thus sacrifice happiness, to get money

/(/health -> /happiness -> money)

No clue how I got A from this

@iammichaelscott My trick was to manipulate the paragraph into something way more simple to follow.

If "Able to make lifestyle choices" + "See lifestyle acceptance" -> "Easier to live enjoyably"

Look at the second sentence. Mental note that "Choose friends" can -> "See lifestyle acceptance" to jump into our chain above.

Final sentence. If you are in set "/Choose friends" then it follows you are "Nobody"

Quickly skim the answer choices. Keep it simple in my head grammatically.

1. If you can't choose your friends, then you are nobody. If you're somebody you can choose.

2. I know that one of many possible ways to "Easier to live enjoyably" is "Choices" + "Acceptance"

3. "Choose friends" -> "Acceptance"

A. I do not know what nobody can or can't do. Immediately skip this

B. All I know about anybody is they can choose their friends

C. If assumed, grants us a rule about nobody that connects our conclusion and premises

D. No rules for this conditional.

E. Got no rules about what an action making my life easier potentially allows me to do.

Took a 50 second detour on the assumption train to B before I realized nobody said the guy who got an apology was owed one.

This question brought to you by Big Lightbulb

Hard question. Rare case of outside knowledge being harmful. In this case I knew intuitively that experiments structured like this are prone to errors due to the bias in who performs the activity tending to be people who experience the effect you're looking for, but did not actually understand why the answer I chose was correct.

I've noticed a couple of questions where the writers will prey on the scientific intuition of STEM majors and this one threw me for a loop because it was exactly what I thought.

If you are trying to work on improving your time, these lessons seem like they will be helpful. I can imagine switching between rulesets based on the grammatical structure of the stimulus can save you time on thinking and diagramming.

@timwes21 Harry's muggle life sucked. We know that if you're Harry's friend, then you're probably a wizard. We know that most who are not his friends (most of the world) are muggles.

But all that doesn't mean Draco being a wizard automatically makes it likely that he's Harry's friend. After all, lots of wizards in the world and only so much Harry to go around.

In plain English. Plaintiff's argument hinges on being SC. Judge states "Say you are SC, it is necessarily true that you are contained in the superset (I) of people discriminated against based on an immutable characteristic".

SC -> I

Judge Argues:

"I do not have sufficient proof to say that being gay is an immutable characteristic"

and

Not providing evidence for I = /I

It follows that /I -> /SC