@LaneyWilliams What about the second sentence?

"Only wizards who possess extensive training in the arcane can control such magical energy."

@daniel.shin117 That's fair -- I point out that mistake at about 12:59 in the video. It shouldn't change how we analyze the answers, though.

@AMS1281 To simplify things, people often treat "If A, then B" as the same thing as "All A are B." But if we recognize that "If A, then B" doesn't actually assert that there exist As that are B, then the more accurate negation would be "Even if A, not necessarily B." Or in other words "It's possible that A could exist without B."

So I don't agree with your claim that the negation of D (as described in the written explanation) is wrong. I'm not saying your own negation is wrong (since the negation of All are B is indeed Some A are not B), but I don't see the negation as described in D being substantively different in a way that makes a logical difference.

Have you worked through the Conditional Logic Module? That’s going to help with the difference between B and C.

@ElizabethSacco If ice --> side not open

Doesn't that prove if the sidewalk IS open, then there is NO ice? (This is the contrapositive)

A --> B

means the same thing as

Not B --> Not A

@DarrenHineman Usually it refers to drawing out arrows to track conditionals. But it could also refer to drawing out subsets and supersets. Drawing circles is inherently more unwieldy, so it tends to be less practical.

@nycxchi We don't know whether Nighthawks is on display. We know prints are sold of it, but that doesn't mean it's on display. Print = copy of the work (you can order prints of many famous paintings online or buy them in museum stores). On display = visible at the museum.

You say "But I thought the museum stores do not sell prints of works on loan from private collectors"

Is that because you're reading "Prints of all the latter works are available in the museum store" as if it means the store doesn't sell prints of stuff on loan? That's not what the sentence means. It just means all of the stuff in the permanent collection is available in the store. But we don't know whether stuff on loan is also in the store. It could be.

I totally get the idea that jokes can fall flat, and that this attempt at absurdist humor doesn't land for everyone, but I'm taken aback by the strong reaction, given that this example doesn't come close to what I thought were traditional third rails.

I want to engage with complaints seriously. I'm interested in why, for some of you, there's such strong feeling that this lesson should change.

I've been assuming the objection relates to recent conspiracy theories about cannibalism among a cabal of elites. Am I missing something? If that's not what's driving your reaction, please let me know.

If you learned that J.Y. wrote this lesson before those stories were popularized, does that change your opinion about whether it's OK to use it? In other words, does the intent behind the example matter? If not, why not?

Does it matter whether you think the stories are true or false?

If this lesson is the only one that uses cannibalism as an example, does that address your concern? Perhaps you took this lesson as a sign that there will be similar references later. If so, that's not the case.

If even the inclusion of this single example in one lesson is enough to sour your overall experience, I'd genuinely like to understand why.

@Aletariel "In order to bake a cake, one of things you must have is flour." "Must" is what tells us it's a necessary condition. I just said "one of the things" to emphasize that we don't know it's the only thing you need.

People might mistakenly think that "You'll get a raise only if you meet your sales target" means that meeting your sales target is the one and only thing you need to do to get a raise. But that's not what it means. It means meeting your sales target is necessary. We don't know whether there are other things that are also necessary.

@gc2005 "refute" means "disprove" -- so when the author says Smith "never refuted" the testimony, that's equivalent to Smith "never disproved" the testimony

@LaneyWilliams Yes, it does.

@JMeli It's just been a week! Keep practicing (and reviewing) and you'll naturally get better at doing these questions under time.

@Aletariel What about the "only if" examples don't make sense to you? If it that you keep wanting to read "X only if Y" as "If Y, then X"?

@Sunnieqw22 We don't know what the LSAC will do with that. The demo version of their tester doesn't allow highlighting the answer choices, but they might end up changing it. We'll know more over the summer. Everything that you are not able to do in our beta tester is something that you are not able to do in the LSAC's demo tester.

@Haleh Your analysis looks good up until the end -- how is E a must be true? You seem to recognize it could be true...but this is a must be true. And you describe why it doesn't have to be true...because he might have been incapable.

@Lidiia These are the default settings (which you can change under your preferences):

It's possible to get recommended for BR something you got correct if it's flagged, took a long time, you guessed, or you changed your answer a lot on it.

@Ajohnson1 I'd just skip to the ones you weren't confident about (if any). If you were confident about all of them, then it's OK to move on.

@AlexCaches Right, those examples should not be convincing to you. They should sound like unpersuasive arguments.

@TheaHolmes2026 "If" doesn't mean the thing actually happens though. "If I win the lottery, I'll be rich." That doesn't mean I will win the lottery. It's a hypothetical possibility.

I know it's frustrating now, but it's far more useful to have some chance of getting questions you got correct recommended for BR. If you know going into BR that everything recommended will be something you got wrong, your BR score will end up inflated, because there will be a lot of questions that you will get right in BR not because you really understand it, but only because you know that your first choice was wrong and so you'll just go with your other choice. Imo this kind of BR is actually close to pointless and maybe even counterproductive, although I know a lot of students prefer to just BR stuff they got wrong.

Ultimately I think it's best to reframe what BR is. It's about giving yourself an opportunity to think through the logic of your choice and gauge your confidence. There should be some questions recommended for BR where you think through each step of reasoning and stand behind your choice. And there should be others where you switch your answer not because "BR tells me this is wrong," but because you think you realize your original line of thinking was wrong and you see a better line of reasoning to support a different answer choice.

@ps939 If the author doesn't attribute a claim to another person, then it's the author's view. Basically the default is it's the author's view. If it's someone else's view, the author will say that X believes something or claims something, or "According to X"

I'd say people scoring in the 170s who are trained with diagramming will diagram on average about once or twice on a section. If you got this question right without drawing anything out AND completed it in a time that allowed you to have enough time to work on other questions as much as you wanted, then there's no problem. However, if you completed it in something like 30 seconds or more above the target time, you should consider whether that extra time would have helped you get another question correct. Ultimately diagramming can help you solve certain questions more quickly. But you'll have to figure out yourself whether it would have helped in thise case. Maybe try doing the question again with at least some form of note-taking / visualization on scratch paper and see if that gets you to the correct answer more quickly.

@montalvomaura They’re in person at a test center but still delivered online.

@epayne17 Did you see my video explanation? It goes into much more depth.

@_ It's the author's job to prove their conclusion using their premises. The correct answer to a weaken question doesn't need to prove the author's argument wrong. We just need to point out a reason why their premise doesn't automatically prove their conclusion. If the author wants to respond to our raising of E with the point that you just made, that's fine; we've still weakened the argument.