@strawberryicecream omg that's awesome!! i'm inspired, gonna practice sections like crazy lol

didn't read the stem/AC D close enough and thought it was trying to refute the premise that closely related species don't exist anywhere else :(

@salva.dali this is an old comment, but it strengthens the argument because it adds more support to the premise that the "style is indistinguishable [from Larocque's style]"

@armondmnats402 i know your comment is old, but for others: always negate the ACs of a NA question to find the correct one. the negation of E is "there are SOME pricing practices that DO result in unreasonable prices being acceptable" which destroys our conclusion.

our conclusion is that this pricing practice is acceptable because prices won't rise in the end. however, if it's sometimes acceptable for prices, how can we confidently back up our argument?

lol, i had a filter on to drill 5 star questions only, but for some reason this question came up. i immediately thought B was the AC but i was like... "there' must be something i'm missing bc this is a 5 star" i sat here for like 5 min trying to figure it out. nope, just a sneaky 1 star

it's questions like these where POE is your friend. i chose D and here is my understanding of why it is wrong: if we used to D to attack the argument, the conclusion could still stand. who cares if competition is the only thing that keeps them from raising prices? in the end, prices are still not rising to unreasonable levels and the conclusion holds strong

"Although some shrimp farms have proved unsustainable and have been quickly abandoned..." so because Jolene says some farms are quickly abandoned, couldn't we assume that most do not get quickly abandoned? That's why I chose A

this problem is def in my top 10 most hated lsat questions but kevin's explanation talked me off the ledge at least

@LSATanna the passage doesn't make it apparent. i think you are probably viewing this as a MSS or MBT question, when it is actually a SA question. so, you need to find the AC that bridges the gap between premises and conclusion. the conclusion states that supertasters experience sharp cheddar as more bitter; we know from the premises that supertasters don't prefer sharp cheddar as much as mild cheddar. if bitterness is the only factor that impacts the kids' preferences (AC D), then the conclusion makes a lot more sense and is much stronger. AC D adds the missing piece of information that is needed

@EthanLucas this is exactly why I didn't choose AC B, ugh

i'm still confused. the conclusion is that the boulder was likely moved by a south-moving glacier.

i chose AC A because, to me, that attacks the conclusion by bringing up the possibility that maybe it wasn't a glacier that moved the rock at all and it was actually some other unknown force.

i did consider AC D, but the more i read it, and the other ACs that were similar, it seemed like they were more trying to attack if the boulder was actually volcanic in origin or not (which we obviously could not do because it is stated as a premise).

do AC A and AC D have a similar attack, but is AC A less powerful because of the word "most?"

@PatrickBadere no fr, i'm a native english speaker and have never heard someone say "watershed event" in my life. i'm a geologist and know what a literal watershed is but could not use that as a context clue to even infer what a watershed event could mean lmao

@Max For certain question types, "weak" wording is often preferred. I recommend looking up the difference between "powerful" and "provable" question types on the LSAT. I read it about it in the "Loophole" written by Ellen Cassidy. She discusses it as a way to help you narrow down your answer choices and it has been very helpful for me

@JoyelleBaek No, "there is little plausibility.." is a subsidiary conclusion/concession, not a main conclusion.

I think conclusion 2 adds additional context/details to conclusion 1, so maybe that's why you view it as supporting.

When you have two sentences that could both be a main conclusion, I think it's important to ask yourself "what is the author actually trying to convince me?" The author is not trying to convince you that it's okay to criticize others for being critical.

If you take time to understand the stem, you will see that the author is trying to convince you that the injunction against being judgement is wise. Sometimes when I get too caught up in trying to figure out what supports what, I lose view of the bigger picture. When parsing out what is the main conclusion, what are the premises, what is the subsidiary, etc., you can confuse yourself pretty fast. Simplifying the process by asking yourself "if I had to summarize the author's point, what would it be?" is helpful for me for MC questions.

@MayaShiloni yeah, I was actually confused about E too when I was diagramming. but it is because E is not negated properly.

we conclude that "most wednesdays = 1/2 priced coffee is offered"... however, when you negate it, it should be "on some days when free coffee is NOT offered = it is NOT wednesday" or "on some days when free coffee is not offered <-s-> it is NOT wednesday" (just to show that "some" is a bidirectional arrow and regardless of how you read the expression, it does not match AC E)

@Sanaaetienne I think the big issue with D is that the wording is too strong. It said that some cooperation IS beneficial (which = always beneficial), and there's no support for that in the stem. Also, MSS questions tend to like softer more provable answer choices. If you haven't already, I recommend reading "The Loophole" by Ellen Cassidy. She writes entire chapters over which question types tend to have more powerful and strong answer choices and which types prefer softer and general language... which can be really helpful for questions like these when you're in a bind and can't choose between 2 ACs.