The last example could probably be removed from this page as it isn't really helpful.

Hypothesis 1: A causes B. Cheese consumption causes death by entanglement in bedsheets. How? Um, I have no idea.

You not having any idea doesn't explain anything nor does it help me understand. It's you shrugging your shoulders and walking away. You do the same for the other hypotheses except the right answer.

The sort of lazy explanation that goes "That's wrong, duh. That's wrong, duh. That's wrong, duh. And here's the right answer, obviously. Done."

But just as a point, and maybe you can point out the problem with the explanation:

Cheese consumption causes death by entanglement in bed sheets by increasing the likelihood of brain activity associated with "tossing and turning" which, when consumed near bedtime, results in a higher risk of becoming entangled by your bed sheets. Those who consume cheese but do not sleep or lay in bed might have the same brain activity but there is no risk of dying since they're not in bed.

Almost 59 minutes on this problem only to get it wrong. Some might say I'm thriving.

I've tried breaking this down several different ways, and it's not nearly as clear to me as any of the other ones.

My only real takeaway here is that "good evidence for" is comparable to a conditional statement.

I'm not seeing a rigorous, methodical way of preventing a misunderstanding like this happening in the future. Frustrating.

I see some hand waving going on here. Can someone please clarify?

Biconditional: If A then B, and if B then A.

A -> B = ~A or B

B -> A = ~B or A

A <-> B = (~A or B) and (~B or A)

However, as noted, a biconditional indicator for this is A or B, but not both.

A or B, but not both

(A or B) and ~(A and B) =

(A or B) and (~A or ~B)

(A or B) and (~A or ~B) !=

(~A or B) and (~B or A)

In fact, examining the truth tables it can be seen that they are the negation of each other. That is,

[(A or B) and (~A or ~B)] =

~[(~A or B) and (~B or A)]

So, I'm not sure how "A or B, but not both" can be a biconditional indicator, unless I missed some general assumption or LSAT specific rule. This is formal logic we're talking about, right?

#feedback #help

My mistake in this section was misunderstanding the instructions to ask if a causal relationship could plausibly exist. Which, of course, I can make a plausible causal chain.

But you're asking if the statement itself asserts a causal relationship. The devil is in the details.

My problems are quickly translating them into symbolic logic, and then evaluating them. So pretty much everything.

I feel like these and the examples before this are an exercise in recognizing indicator words. I've only noticed two questions that did not rely on indicator words. One of those is Q2 where the takeaway is that an author can present someone else's premises and conclusions, but not themselves make an argument.

Having returned to this section to improve my ability to identify premises and conclusions, I'd like to see examples less reliant on indicator words and more on identifying the relationships and support.

My struggle is equating rigorous conditionals with quantified statements. In some respects they are treated the same. This is what I've come up with for making the distinction easier:

If the statement is a conditional without quantifiers, use:

🔹 /(A → B) ≡ A and /B

If the statement contains quantifiers (all, some, most), apply:

🔹 Standard quantified negation rules (e.g., "All → Some not", "Some → None")

#feedback The written portion below does not discuss the second portion of the stim like the video does it merely stops after reading the sentence "Many animal species, after all, ..." For those who decided to read everything instead, like me, it would be good if you could update this.