I had a similar experience, and I think it's because the argument just isn't a natural point that we would make. the argument says year round teeth = evidence of year-round hunting = stationary

the correct AC (C) tells us that year-round teeth does not necessarily mean that they were stationary

Here's my biggest takeaway from this question: you shouldn't have to do any mental gymnastics to make an AC choice work. When between two ACs like A and D, A is clearly the better option because it provides us with an alternative explanation (it's actually higher profit companies that are more likely to do the social gatherings). AC D requires us to assume that less time spent working means less profits and that the lost time is outweighed by the potential benefits of increased workplace bonding.

With these questions, getting caught up with whether two ideas are exactly the same can lead to a mind crap. The key word is "correct." If something is correct, that means there is a binary right/wrong, which is the contradiction to subjectivity, where there is no either/or relationship. Once you learn the test more, you will start to realize that NA and SA are about connecting straggling ideas.

Take a step back and re-read this question. You are given a conclusion about objective evaluation that is nowhere in the premises. How do we link that to the rest of the argument? If we know that discussion --> two can agree, then we need objective evaluation to chain up to discussion.

@campbellabigail210 You might be misreading the stim. Daniel says that "an action is not morally good simply because if fulfills a moral obligation." (MO and /MG). He also says that the necessary condition for an action to be morally good is the right motivation. AC E gives us a sufficient condition that Daniel is silent on because he doesn't tell us what is sufficient for an action to be morally good. Without knowing whether this is the "right motivation," Daniel is silent on AC E.

Another way of looking at it is from the bridge to destination perspective. Both Daniel and Carrie give us conditionals that go from MG to what is required for an action to be morally good. (MG --> RM for Daniel and MG <--> MO for Carrie). This AC starts with moral duty (which for the take of this explanation, we can generously interpret as a moral obligation) and then takes us to a conclusion about something being morally good. This is going the in wrong direction. We should have an AC that either tells us an action is not morally good or gives us a direct condition from the stim about what is required for an action to be morally good.

Hope this makes any sense

@hnadgauda243 I also thought this was just a necessary condition

@rohanrama20651 I had a very similar experience when doing this question during a PT. It's all about being willing to re-read a stim when you don't quite understand it the first time around. That's often the majority of the barrier

@avijgoldman12998 I think you are taking the AC too literally. The assumption the journalist makes is that the people had not credible evidence to support their beliefs, but that's not supported by the experiment. All the experiment tells us is that the participants held their beliefs even though they were told the original statements they built them off of were wrong.

AC D addresses that assumption by telling us there was credible evidence (confirmation of a belief is by necessity credible) for them to keep their belief. This is the alternative explanation for why participants refused to give up on their OG beliefs.

@olineali684 I agree. In timed conditions, if you're able to see that AC C is the right one, don't waste time parsing D out.

@stephaniehodges1755 I did the same thing as the rest of you all. To avoid this in the future, I think it helps to identify the gaps in the stim in as broad as possible of terms so that ACs like E don't throw us off.

Even then, with AC D we don't know how close the "similar pattern" in the synthetic web was to the Glomosus web. For all we know, it could have been so similar that it appeared the same to the spiders.

But the bigger problem with this choice is that we only know that "many" spiders were attracted to the Glomosus web. We don't know how many are in "many" spiders. In order to support the causal conclusion, we need to know that the majority of the spiders were attracted to the G web because of its unique UV pattern

I think this question is a perfect cookie-cutter trap. AC E interprets "mechanism" in a general context that we are comfortable with, but it doesn't match the context of the passage. We are told that Curie postulated a mechanism for something; that is not the same as a well-established scientific theory that undergoes years of corroboration. AC A is correct because it matches the context. The "physical process" refers to the ways in which radioactive decay were occurring that she could not postulate because radiation appeared to be spontaneous.

@AccountsPlayable For me, the easiest way to pick AC D and eliminated the rest is the last sentence of the third paragraph:

"counseled member states to use the social-group category to classify women asylum-seekers 'who face harsh or inhuman treatment due to their having transgressed the social mores of the society in which they live."

in other words, women who fight the social standards for women...AC D is exactly that

I think what makes this question difficult is that it baits us into thinking it's just a cost-benefit analysis. That's true, but it's a specific kind of analysis comparing mitigation vs. prevention. AC B is wrong because it doesn't tell us that at least some time reading indoors is better because if prevents some risk altogether even though playing outside offers more immediate protection. AC E is correct because it tells us that while having more fat is better in the event of wasting illness (AKA car crash), exercising is still better because it prevents the likelihood of wasting illness happening in the first place (AKA small cars prevent a car crash).

@RyanConnor I agree with your point about AC C, but even given its poor wording, I think the fact that D is completely irrelevant to the argument is the bigger takeaway. In these kinds of questions on older PTs, I think the best way to learn from it is to improve on choosing between two ACs that both seem right. Which one is more closely tied to the argument?

@jwhacke670 I did the same thing, and I think that's rooted in not properly understanding the flaw in the stim. Based on the fact that two things are mutually exclusive, the stim assumes that one must be wrong. But this overlooks the possibility that both could be wrong. In AC E, Maria plays the same role as the experiment --> it's an additional measure that the author thinks will determine which theory is right

@NikiLakestani This is exactly what the LSAT was trying to do. The explanation said that you needed to know what prudent means for this question, but I don't know that that's necessary. Here's how:

P1: context for P2

P2: people resent others who are perceived to size people up

C: it's the opposite of X to appear X

what's the gap? well, we can infer that P2 and X are the same thing (in this case "cautiously gathering and weighing the evidence..." is the same thing as "appearing prudent"

• therefore, we can close the gap

• why is it imprudent to appear prudent? because people resent you

Hope this helps!

@raqszomstein290 Just because the critics say that The Wanderers had too many autobiographical elements, that does not mean that they think it should have been categorized as an autobiography. How many is too many? Four elements? Forty? We don't know.

What we do know is what the critics cite: "contains an autobiographical framework and is populated with real-world characters."

I think the explanation for AC E is inaccurate. The passage doesn't require the practice to know why a practice is "common now." All we need to see is that the practice was once common, but it was forced to stop because of an external force. What makes E incorrect is very similar to A: we don't know whether the practice was forced to stop or not.

@aakash2003ch457 If you think about this question from a top-down view, the whole logic relies on subtypes and causal relationships.

In the first premise, we are told that the interstitial nucleus is a subset of the hypothalamus.

AC E tells us that the hypothalamus has no known causal relationship with Y, and disease X is a subtype of disease Y.

AC D is wrong because it does not contradict the premises. We are told that 0.05% of male cats had disease X because their nucleus was as large as the female cats. But AC D only tells us that the 5 cats had larger than average male cat brains. We don't know how their size compares to female cat brains, so it doesn't do anything to the argument.

I hope this helps!

@ga580 I get what you mean by this, but I think general rules are sometimes risky with these higher difficulty level questions. I think the core of the reason that AC B is wrong is because it does not connect GE crops to being less harmful than the insecticides. We are told that they still release toxins, and we need an answer that's going to address the assumption that the toxins are less harmful than any dangers that the insecticides pose. Also, AC B is too extreme. The farmer is arguing for a reduction in excessive insecticide use; that's not the same thing as even a little reduction having a benefit. We have to get below the threshold of excessive spraying.

@ga580 this is great advice, thank you!

@KimberlyL26 Yes, I think the main place AC B goes wrong is with the word "solely," but even then, the AC is still wrong. We still don't know why an action motivated by a desire for praise is not worthy of praise

@RickyN I think you are falling into the trap that the LSAT writers are baiting us to take. P2 tells us that merit requires a desire to help others. The conclusion then says that actions motivated by praise do not merit praise.

What is the gap? The argument assumes that a desire to get praise fails the necessary condition for merit (i.e., desire to help others). This tells us that the two are mutually exclusive.

I also chose AC E on BR, but the problem with this choice is that it doesn't tell us about what motives warrant merit and which don't. With AC E, we're still left wondering how the premises got us to the conclusion.

if this were a kind of principle question, I think AC E would be right

hope this helps!

@BenjaminOwen I was struggling with the "primarily" and AC A as well, but the reason AC A is correct is because of the assumption gap between P2 and the conclusion. The argument concludes that actions motivated primarily from a desire for praise does not deserve praise based on the fact that a desire to help others is required to actually merit praise.

what's the gap? it must be that acting out of a desire for praise fails the necessary condition that it must be motivated by a desire to help others

I hope this helps

For me, the strongest difference is that /A does not imply /B

• another strong reason that AC is better is because it cites an extensive survey rather than one rock

• a final reason is that AC A follows what the passage tells us to do ("to locate many more such rocks...") while AC D focuses on the very evidence that the author cautions we do not rely on too heavily

@ethanrauf617 This is a good point, but even if you grant the hypothesis, the AC is still descriptively inaccurate. The argument does not indicate any falsehoods about the implications of the claim that predicting an invention is impossible. The argument reasons that the two ideas are mutually exclusive because of their definition.

here's a general example of an argument that AC C might be correct for: Some scientists hypothesize event X. But if this were the case, then we would see phenomenon Y. Since phenomenon Y is not happening, the scientists' prediction is not accurate.