I am having a really tough time seeing how we can equate the determination of consensus with the "interpretation of that law." The passage indicates the legal positivists search for the social convention, and in fact do not try to unpack/interpret the logic of the law.
This is why AC (D) feels weak to me. Any thoughts?
Like others in this discussion, I am really struggling with how "Many local businesses depend on our region's natural beauty" is support for "heavy industrial activity of coal mining would force most of them to close." Just because many rely on natural beauty does not make it more or less likely that coal mining will cause most of them to close. Even if few businesses depended on the region's natural beauty, coal mining could still cause "most of them" to close.
Would appreciate any thoughts here!
Did anyone else struggle to translate "severity of the crime" here? I was able to go straight to the sentence in the text "The second rationale is that a punishment is justified by the severity of the crime, independent of any benefit to society," but I had a tough time determining whether "severity" translated best to "inherent fairness" or "what society deems correct."
Any thoughts here?
Is anyone else caught up on the use of the term "why" in the correct answer choice? I agree that the introduction of the phrase "all other atmospheric gases" lends itself to the discussion of how molecules undergo transformations described subsequently, but how does "all other atmospheric gases" explain why this needs to happen?
@HopeMorefield One thing that has really helped me on difficult conditional reasoning questions like this one is to compartmentalize the "guaranteed" premises versus the "ambiguous" premises. Here, the first sentence is "guaranteed" -- we know for sure that the ability to fully concentrate guarantees above-average intelligence. This means this premise is more likely to be the one that informs the right answer (which it does, because AC A contradicts this relationship by suggesting there are people who can fully concentrate but are of below-average intelligence). The second premise is less likely to be important to the correct answer because it is more "ambiguous" -- usually successful training in speed-reading is accompanied by increased concentration abilities. What does usually mean? It's hard to say, so it's less likely that an MBF question will exploit this statement.
@CMas I think the fact that the author doesn't specify who the 10 workers are is what makes (D) wrong. It's possible that the 10 workers fired are the 10 least productive, and the author's argument would still hold: you've fired 10 workers while not sacrificing any production. This means we can't claim the author has overlooked this possibility.
I agree that AC B is the best answer here because it uses the flawed logic that just because some outcome has many causes, it cannot have the cause in question.
However, I also want to point out the potential AC A has. The stimulus explicitly tells us that "irradiation spawns unique radiolytic products." This means unique radiolytic products are indeed a product of irradiation; no AC can deny this. AC A tells us that unique radiolytic products have rarely been found in irradiated food. Just because they have not been found does not mean they don't exist. On other LSAT questions, this type of reasoning would rule out/give support for an answer. So I'm just wondering why the "not found does not mean non-existent" logic is not applying here.
@ConnerKline I would add also that while A seems tempting, E is, relatively speaking, the better answer choice in that it has more explicit textual support. For A, we only get the author's statement that there is a burden and its results have been unfavorable at the end of P1. For E, we get that the court's interpretation was "so minimal," and "excessively conservative" and that the outcome is "regrettable." This is much stronger negative language for the author.
It has really helped me to identify from the question stem whether or not the question is the type that will ask you to weigh answer choices in a relative way like this -- here, we are asked for the choice for which the passage provides the most evidence.
I find AC A to be poorly worded. We are told that narrative literature "need not" lead to the pitfalls of situational ethics. I find it hard to understand how this is the same as saying it "tends to avoid" those pitfalls.
This seems to be an important distinction to me as well - the author is suggesting how the narrative literature approach be implemented such that it avoids this pitfall, which is very different from saying that it indeed tends to avoid it.
Does any one else struggle with seeing how the sentence cited for the correct answer ("...the seller of a piece of land...") is attributed to what proponents of tangible-object theory believe? I read all of P2 as written as a matter of fact, while P1 is attributed to the beliefs of proponents of tangible-object theory.
Any thoughts here?
@dh2303 Just bumping up this great summary/explanation for folks like myself who were confused why negating another potential cause of mosquito attraction would be necessary for the conclusion to hold. It's for the "reasoning in the argument" to hold!
@maximus.parra The issue with the voluntary/involuntary framework that the author points out is not its comprehensiveness (in fact, if you think about it, voluntary and involuntary are mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive categories). In other words, the author is not suggesting that there is some third category in which certain actions should fall.
Rather, it is that the framework is not consistent. The author isn't saying that people who believe flying on a plan is involuntary are wrong, but just that they may be inconsistent, because there is a decision involved in getting on a plane.
I am struggling with this one because I feel that the author does not ignore the possibility that there was more negative news worthy reporting concerning the challenger than the incumbent. If anything, the author ignores the possibility that there was a greater share of negative news worthy of reporting about the challenger than the incumbent. Does anyone else see this difference? I feel like it is similar to the reason why (A) is wrong.
Is it that B requires us to make a further inference? That If there was a greater absolute quantity of negative news worthy of reporting about the challenger than the incumbent, then news reporters would reasonably (and unmotivated by bias) report a larger share of negative news about the challenger than the incumbent?
Hi all! I'm consistently getting 179-180 on BR but in the mid/high 160s on AT. Any advice on closing the gap? I understand speed is likely a big part of this, but I'm curious what has worked for others in closing this gap? Is it doing drills where you gradually give yourself less and less time? I particularly feel that the timing on RC is really tough.
When I read C, I interpreted it as the kind of trap answer choice that attempts to reject a premise rather than weaken it as a "bridge" to the conclusion. We are told that there is an inverse correlation between depression and left frontal lobe activity. Doesn't that imply that they are subject to the same type of variation?
@dedolence Same here. C felt "weaker" and thus more appropriate for a necessary assumption question, but C is actually more broad -- it tells us we would need to assume a "likely decrease," which is much broader than the absence of a "significant increase" that would replace the departure of day-care workers to better-paying jobs in other fields.
@PhoebeHopp For the student response, I do not think AC B is saying that the "increase can't be big enough to account for all the new demand." In fact, as you point out, all AC B gives us is that the number of new day-care workers will not be "significant" -- we know nothing about how this number relates to the number of new parents demanding day-care.
I actually think the more specific language of AC B makes it more necessary to assume than AC C. If we negate the idea that there is not a "significant" replacement for the day-care workers who have left, the argument falls apart much more than it does if we negate the idea that there is a "likely" decrease in the number of day-care workers.
@7SageTutor You acknowledge here that (C) is a sufficient assumption. But the question prompt asks for an assumption on which the argument "depends." Please explain how we should approach such questions that ask for a necessary assumption but the correct answer is sufficient and not strictly necessary.
I'm not convinced that (C) is necessary. In fact, I see it as more of a sufficient assumption. If no one incompetent makes it through the evaluation program, this guarantees that any one who has passed the evaluation program (and is a recognized medical specialist) is competent.
I also think the language in C makes it more like a sufficient, rather than a necessary assumption. It discusses a "particular specialty" and "the evaluation program for that specialty." This is not like the stimulus' conclusion, which discusses "recognized medical specialists." It's not necessary that all types of specialists be competent for all recognized medical specialists to be competent.
I struggle with this question because can't an outcome have multiple necessary conditions? Ie, can't it be true that multiple genes are required for UV vision?