Haha obestity 😊

So we are just supposed to treat the negative of "impair physical health" as "improve health?"

Because that is what B is saying. I'm flabbergasted because in LSATs, there are many flaws that treat something like switching health to physical health as a context flaw. And then, here, even when the psychiatrist is talking, we have to assume physical health = health? What about mental health?

What about my mental health -.-

I felt dyslexic reading this question, though the answer is infuriatingly easy.

The stimulus commits weird grammatical 'errors'.

"The attending physician" - could be better written as "an attending physician". "The" specifies something that usually was explained beforehand. So if the stimulus said, there was a physician from Duke University that visited this study. Then "the attending physician" is correct.

"A leading question of the form" - first, one needs to parse what the hell a leading question means. Is it a reputed question? Or does it mean, like in this case, a question that leads to a specific answer. Like, a reporter asking a politician a leading question on lgbt rights to cause the politician to answer the question in a specific way and in specific light.

"The form" also suffers from the lack of grammatical clarity as "the attending physician."

It's funny because later, this stimulus correctly uses "a" vs "the" by stating "a different attending physician."

It's infuriating because this is a long stimulus, a poorly-worded stimulus, and that the answer is so easily inferred.

Also, just realized that "the form" here in stimulus actually implies "structure." For all this time, It thought it means a physical form, like a paper with a survey.

Anyways, I'm hoping that I get to a point where reading something like this, a stimulus that is long and is weirdly worded, becomes easier and easier. The grammar here is not wrong, but just awkward. Leading question of the form feels very weird to me.

Leg muscles receive no more exercise with toning shoes compared the leg muscles receive with ordinary walking shoes. This means: Toning shoes give no more efficiency in exercise. The inference is that just switching to toning shoes doesn't create a world where walking in these shoes provide more efficiency and productivity in exercise than in ordinary walking shoes.

Consider: Man I did these bench presses. But bench presses give no more exercise in chest than push-ups. But I still experienced strengthening of chest after switching from push-ups to bench-presses.

The bench presses didn't provide a certain increase of effectiveness in strengthening the chest compared to push-ups. But maybe, I did more of these bench presses because it felt cooler than push ups. So I experienced more strengthening of my chest.

C says something exactly analogous.

This question involves a solid understanding between sets and members.

Sets vs Members in Sets

I find that in understanding the explanation of this question, making a hypothetical situation has been quite helpful.

Most NA mammal species (sets) are not rodent species.

Most individual mammals (members) are rodents.

So these two facts infer something. Just need to find what these infer.

Let's say there are 5 species in total, so 5 sets in total.

First premise is saying, for example, there are 2 rodent species, and 3 non-rodent species.

Second premise is saying that the 2 species of rodents have more members in total, than the 3 species of non-rodents.

To make these 2 premises true, I could just assign something like, 2 rodent species add up to 100 members, and 3 non-rodent species add up to 5.

But just doing that will make eliminating AC D very difficult: Of the mammal species in North America, the one with the most individual members is a species of rodent.

AC D is actually a could be false, could be true. In the same context of the above hypothetical example, consider that:

the 3 non-rodent species have members that are: 1, 1, 8

And the 2 rodent species have members that are 7, 7

Non-rodent species members add up to 10 members. Rodent species members add up to 14. So even though those two premises in stimulus is satisfied, this example shows that there still can be a situation where a non-rodent species might have the most members.

The premises say that the addition of members in rodent species have to be larger than the addition of non-rodent species.

AC B is correct: In North America, rodent species tend to have more individual members than other species of mammals have.

Also, this is a MSS question, not a must be true question. AC B is saying that on average, rodent species tend to have more individual members than other species of mammals have.

Looking at the example that eliminated D, there are 14 rodent members, and 10 non-rodent members. The average of these members in the sets for rodents is 7, and for mammals, it is around 3. That supports AC B.

AC D has a situation where the premises give a situation where an elimination is certain. AC B describes a situation where it is well-supported.

Rodents: fewer species, more total animals → rodent species must be larger on average. B.

A and B -> C

A -> B and C = possible A -> B; A ->C

A or B -> C = possible A -> C; B -> C

A -> B or C = A and /B -> C; A and /C -> B

goated

A or B

/A -> B

/B -> A

Possible combinations: A and B, /A and B, A and /B. Forbidden: /A and /B

A or B but not both

Possible combinations: /A and B, A and /B. Forbidden: A and B; /A and /B

In conditionals:

Few = most are not

A few = some

Many = some

Only introduces necessary

The only introduces sufficient

C actually is an easy way out of this complex conditional problem. C only requires turning the last sentence of the stimulus into a conditional (very easy one), and just understanding the function of OR and applying facts.

This is also the reasoning I used to pick A, rather than a correlation=/=causation error reasoning, although the latter also stands true.

Kevin's explanation of this question is beyond fantastic

Strengthen = need to strengthen the link between the premise and the conclusion. That means I need to strengthen the logical reasoning. E doesn't do that. Even if AC E's prehistoric homo sapiens are considered "precursors of homo sapiens," that would not strengthen the logical reasoning of this argument.

The only (and stupid) reason why I didn't pick AC A was because I read it as "these tools are not used for self-defense (which I falsely assumed might arise from hunting scenarios), or to cut carcasses (I just entirely skipped over the word "scavenged.") This choice strengthens the logical reasoning by eliminating an alternative hypothesis of the usage of these tools (not for hunting but for self-defense; not for hunting but for cutting/transporting scavenged carcasses).

First time seeing the word 'insure" used this way in my life

This took me 3 minutes when I should've gotten this much quicker. I was really looking for an answer choice that says: learning about other cultures probably will not satisfy longing for emotional connection.

So when I read D, I thought, huh weird, this does seem like the main conclusion, but it has so many more parts to it. It has "for people desiring connection to a global human community," "through the internet," "to those cultures."

But all in all, that is still the expression of the main conclusion. It's just "expressing it."

E is tricky because it seems "rarely produces genuine emotional connection" is the same as "will not satisfy their longing for emotional connection." But the biggest difference is, it does NOT state "satisfy." In the stimulus, the MC is about not SATISFYING. E doesn't have anything about the satisfaction, or the un-satisfaction of that longing.

I was torn between B and D and picked D. But I now see why B is right, or more right than D.

I read words like "sustain, cannot afford reduction" and thought the country needs to keep the investments at the status quo level, and not allow any reduction.

But the necessary condition to sustaining economy isn't actually keeping at status quo, but "needs much capital as possible."

Then, the conclusion reads as: To sustain our economy, we need as much capital as possible, and thus, we should pass laws making it much more difficult for overseas investors to remove their capital.

AC B says: Laws that make it difficult for investors to remove their capital discourage them from investing ANY additional capital.

This means, the laws that the conclusion says the country should impose would discourage them from investing ANY additional capital. In this scenario, what would happen? This law would effectively make it impossible for the country to fulfill its necessary condition of sustaining economy, which is "get as much capital as possible from investors."

AC D is very tempting if one reads (like me) into the words like "cannot afford any reduction, or sustain" which infer keeping the status quo. D is saying, these laws actually don't prevent investors from removing their capital. But the funny thing is, the conclusion doesn't say: "Let's create a law that makes it impossible to take out money! It merely states, let's make it much more difficult." So, investors (who are not entirely prevented by the laws) taking out money doesn't at all go against what's stated as a prediction of passing the law.

Easier way to just capture this is seeing that the necessary condition to sustain our economy (which appears both in the premise and in the conclusion), is to see the country needs to get as much capital as possible. B says those laws discourage the investors from investing any more.

Why even put "overlooked" as the description in a correct answer choice when nothing supports "overlooked" in the passage? At the very least, it's not the author's PRIMARY purpose to explain some often overlooked aspects. I'm fuming and fumigating

A great case where "all" is correct

Thank goodness I had to read Kant's critique in class and make a presentation on it

terrible question. Is D really the 'principle' purpose of both passages? To compare sports evaluations against arts'?

In BR, I got this right, but that BR took 20 minutes. In my BR notes, I only wrote down "I'm tired."

This is almost like a discrepancy question. Also I need to note that when a question stem talks about "principle", that doesn't make it automatically a principle-justify, principle-conform question or psa question. It can be a question also about MSS. The way to distinguish that this here is a MSS question is "most clearly illustrated".

This is a good exercise on understanding sufficient/necessary reversal and actually explaining how that error flaws an argument by identifying a possibility not considered that stems from that error!

For a psych class, I had the opportunity to work with kids and research intentionality and kids' understanding of it. From what age does "intentionality" become a prescient/cogent/conscious idea and possibly, when does that idea of intentionality exactly emerge?

Before the research, I saw kids being able to attribute a sort of intentionality to actions. Like kids being able to discern whether an adult is trying to help or not at an early age. An adult would extend a hand to an infant who fell down, and the kid would extend its arm to grab that hand. The kids assumed at the helping intentions of the adult and behaved a certain way.

So after seeing that "phenomenon," I wanted to delve further. So I made a hypothesis, that kids may be able to discern intentionality in aggression. I also hypothesized that they might do it at a very early age, like in infancy.

And I had the opportunity to test out that hypothesis. Kids were able to come to my 'experiment,' and in that experiment, I had this play-theatre where I used puppets.

In one scenario, I had 2 puppets approaching each other, and a cute rabbit puppet pushed a sloth puppet off stage, "intentionally". The sloth puppet fell of the stage, brutally.

In another scenario, I had the 2 puppets approaching each other, and this time, the cute rabbit puppet tripped over an obstacle (this time, it was a pencil case), fell over, and unintentionally pushed the sloth puppet off stage, also brutally.

And I did this same puppet-theatre to around 15 kids, from age 3 to age 12.

Then, I asked the kids about how they felt about the first scenario and how they felt about the second scenario. I asked the kids what scenario felt "worse" or aggressive. Of course, there was some nuance to this because it was hard to convey this question to 3 year-olds (their mothers were there for these experiments; and these kids sometimes didn't care about the theatre lol).

The very interesting result, was that most of the kids from age 3, to as late as age 8, did not see the difference between the two scenarios. They couldn't discern the different level of 'aggressiveness' between the two scenarios. They thought that those two scenarios were equally bad.

The thing that surprised me the most was the kids who passed certain development thresholds (many phases coined in developmental psychology according to age groups) couldn't discern the differences of these two scenarios.

Out of the 15 kids, only the 3 larger kids from 8~12 year-olds, were able to cogently describe to me why they felt the "intentional" scenario was "worse" and why that felt more aggressive. They didn't use the word "intentional," but they used words like, on purpose, or the puppet tripped over, or accident.

So from these results, I formed my conclusion that refined my earlier hypothesis.

In writing this, I wanted to understand the phenomenon-hypothesis model in my own example, in my own words. I am having a bit of trouble with this though as I write this. In the lesson, the phenomenon were a group of facts, a group of premises. And the hypothesis, was the conclusion. When taken as a whole, it forms an argument of causal relationship, and that relationship is hypothesized by the hypothesis. X did this. That is the conclusion of the argument.

So in my experiment, in the form of LSAT phenomenon-hypothesis, the phenomenon was the whole theatre experiment and the kids answering questions about them. And my hypothesis is both the hypothesis I made before conducting the experiment, and the refined conclusion after the experiment.

My hypothesis before conducting the experiment didn't have many causal mechanisms. I didn't really have ideas to explain the "how" in the causal mechanisms. So my hypothesis had potential alternative hypotheses, and de facto, was weak. I didn't have causal mechanisms like "Mr. Fat Cat has a strong left paw." But after conducting the experiment, my refined conclusion (which is also, in terms of LSAT a hypothesis), had causal mechanisms. I could explain my hypothesis better with causal mechanisms, like, the kids noticed the puppet's action was accidental/intentional. Those casual mechanisms strengthened my conclusion/hypothesis.

So the experiment itself was phenomenon, a set of facts, and my hypothesis after the experiment attributed a causal relationship by putting causal mechanisms. Maybe, my hypothesis before the experiment would be, in a LSAT stimulus, something like "previous observation thought blah," and it would be a part of the stimulus rather. And my conclusion after the experiment is more like what 7sage labels it the hypothesis, the conclusion.

I still have the sloth puppet in my backpack. I think of those adorable kids often.

not sure. I may be lacking understanding of this, but 7Sage says "although" can be described as a conjunction, "and." So I rather regarded the conclusion as, "Our products are the most expensive and they are the best."