(C)’s logic involves “assuming” that great writers are better than bad writers, which you might think runs afoul of the “no assumptions of any kind in MBT questions” principle.

If that’s you, take this as a data point on what kinds of jumps are allowed even in MBT/Inf questions. In this case, the lesson is we’re allowed to assume that words mean what they mean.

@DeeTee Haha yeah the “don’t trust some highlights” bit is just a trojan horse for Kevin to sneak in “plz trust our other highlights 😭”

@DavidSalgado a more detailed explanation is forthcoming, but for now...

I like "catch per unit effort" as an explainer here. The CPUE measures how many sharks you catch per 1 unit of trying. The researchers logic is that if it's easy to catch sharks there's probably a lot of them, and if it's hard to catch sharks there's probably fewer.

(E) gives us a version of the world where catching a shark takes about the same amount of effort as it used to even though there are way fewer sharks. Instead of trawling around randomly all over the place, boats are just perching themselves right on top of sharks and casting their nets from there.

@Stas1973 <3

@monmon Maybe this

@Stas1973 The specific conceptual jump (C) needs us to make is "justice and fairness are key elements of professional competence for judges". That's pretty reasonable.

Some question types (like MBT) don't allow for any conceptual jumps, no matter how reasonable. But many others (like Flaw questions, and also Str/Weak questions) allow for common-sense jumps like this one.

Honestly I'm more miffed at the "makes a general claim" part of (C), because the idea that Mosston is a fair judge is implied, not explicated. That's a lot sketchier IMO. I chalk that one up to this being an old test.

Troubles like yours are very, very common among students. So much so that plenty of psychologists focus solely on test anxiety.

It's a nuanced subject -- really what you want is a lot of conscious, iterative mindset work guided by someone who knows what they're doing. BUT here are a few general guidelines off the top of the dome:

• Make your practice as realistic as possible, including the elements that make testing stressful. Your practice tests should happen at the same time of day, in the same room, and (sometimes) with an artificially inflated sense of high stakes.

• Stay carefully attuned to the things you're experiencing during officials and during your practice, and find specific interventions to address those factors. For anxiety, for example, you can do a 5-minute progressive muscle relaxation exercise before each section, and you can even do 30sec resets if you notice adrenaline spikes during a section.

• Separate content/theory practice from performance practice. If you want to get better managing time across a section under stressful conditions, do some timed sections where your success is solely measured by how well you manage your time and your level of activation (instead of caring how many Qs you miss along the way).

  Those principles are just the tip of the iceberg, tbh. Really what's important is that you take these mental / execution factors just as seriously as you take the content, and address them directly with the same targeted attention you'd give if you realized you were missing a ton of Flaw questions and needed focused drilling there.

Here are circular-reasoningified versions of all the wrong answers, just for funsies:

(A) Greeting one's coworkers must be a polite thing to do, because people who are considered polite always greet their coworkers. The proof that these people really are polite is that they [greet their coworkers].

(C) When coffee is being chosen, Brand Z is the coffee chosen by people with highly developed taste in coffee. These people showed their highly developed taste in coffee by [choosing Brand Z].

(D) That jacket must have been made for a very short person, because only very short people were able to fit into it. We know that they were very short because [they fit into this jacket made for very short people].

(E) This painting is a poor imitation, because only people with poor eyesight mistook it for the original. That these people have poor eyesight is demonstrated by the fact that [they mistook this poor imitation for the original].

@hannahhuynh Yep this diagram is dope and spot on.

@missmads Not quite, because there's a key difference between not believing [something is true] and actively believing [something is false].

@missmads Fantastic question, btw.

@missmads Your thought process is mostly right. BUT it's overthinky for the test. I can't recall any LSAT questions that have turned on the very fine distinction you've pointed out.

In this question, for example, the difference-makers between right and wrong answers are just much lower resolution. The test is hard, but it's not actually that hard.

Your take on the hypothetical matching stimulus is slightly off because "sometimes" means the same thing as "occasionally". Your core point stands, but the difference lies in the "some", which selects a subset of joggers. It's the difference between:

All joggers occasionally run in sneakers.

and

Some joggers occasionally run in sneakers.

In the stimulus there's just Jack, so there's really nowhere for the "some" to go. Forcing a match, it'd be something like:

A train occasionally goes by while [some Jacks??] wash their dogs.

Or no actually I think it's:

[Some trains??] occasionally go by while Jack washes his dog.

The point is neither one makes any sense, lol. So you're 100% right that (E) and the stimulus are structurally different in this way.

Still, from a test-strategy perspective, take this as a metagame data point for the LSAT's upper bound on complexity. Spending extra time on distinctions this fine is unstrategic in a timed setting, because questions of this kind are designed to test low-res quantifier mismatches (like (E)'s all conclusion) and invalid argument structures. That boundary is really only discernible through conscious practice.

I could even see a world where a correct answer choice glosses over the distinction you've identified.

@Rayaabdulrahman We, the audience, don't have to agree with the author's assumption. You've identified a gap in the author's argument.

But this is a Method of Reasoning question, and the author does assume that the outcome in their hypothetical is counterintuitive. The supposed counterintuitive...ity(?) of the definition's consequences is core to how the argument functions.

@Rena12345 You’re totally right. People can have all the ingredients for a valid inference in their heads and still fail to make the inference, either because they're irrational or because they simply haven't thought about those claims very hard.

Like let's say a teacher announces to the class that the person who gets the highest grade on Friday's test gets a free pizza. Over the weekend, the teacher grades the tests and learns Lugbert got the highest grade. It's totally possible for the teacher to just not put those two pieces together because it's the weekend and they're distracted by other things.

That’s not the facts vs. beliefs distinction, though. It’s a slightly different distinction that philosophers refer to as "fragmentation of belief" or a failure of deductive closure.

While facts vs. beliefs comes up all the time on this test, I have yet to see an LSAT question that turns on the fragmentation of belief. If you find one, though, I'll be super excited.

@Daisy228 Click the little light bulb next to (B) for a short explanation. If you're still confused, hit me up :D

@TayRafferty As for common sense, distrusting common sense in favor of strict, literalist readings is a MBT and MSS thing — questions where validity (or something very close to it) is the standard. STR, W, Eval, and other questions where you’re adding in new info rely heavily on common sense.

@TayRafferty Lol yeah I didn’t put this in my comment or the revised snippet, but I was imagining the businessperson looking at the sinkhole and being like “ugh if they had just delayed maintenance until tomorrow I’d have been on time 😤”.

@TayRafferty Your line of reasoning (and @kikki3939's) is strong and deserves to be addressed in the explanation itself. I'm gonna go back and incorporate it into (A)'s snippet.

I think your common-sense reading of the maintenance / repairs distinction is the most direct response -- the stimulus' wording suggests a routine-upkeep style closure (maintenance vs. repairs) that is the sole reason for the closure (closed for maintenance) and only takes one day (closed today; done on a different day).

Notice that I said "suggests" rather than something stronger like "establishes". I don't think the sinkhole reading is completely invalid, just implausible given the stimulus' wording and the situation it describes.

In non-MBT questions, the LSAT often relies on readers picking the right common-sense interpretation of the language, even if there's a technically-allowable alternative interpretation.

@annashrest02 That's an awesome and creative line of reasoning. It had me thinking hard until I looked back and remembered this is a strengthen question. Your lens points to an alternative cause for the accidents, which, if plausible, would weaken the argument.

Then I looked back at my own explanation for (A) and realized I made the same mistake there -- as it stands now, the (A) explanation describes why it doesn't weaken. I'm gonna go back and fix that ASAP, so thanks for revealing it!

@HudaHussaini The "consequence" we're talking about here is having to call an obviously* intelligent being unintelligent. Like if you buy into the Cog Psych's definition, you have to look at the author's hypothetical being and say "that being isn't intelligent".

*we would certainly not deny...

@JonathanHipkiss You can think of "counterintuitive" in two parts -- start with a core intuition, and then counter that intuition.

So like a light switch. Up is ON, right? And down is OFF. When a light switch works that way, we can call it "intuitive" design. It matches our intuition about how light switches work.

A counterintuitive light switch would work the other way -- up is OFF, down is ON.

In this question, the intuition we all (supposedly) share is that this hypothetical being has intelligence. Like hey imagine this hypothetical being -- seems intelligent, right? And then the author expects us all to nod and be like "yes definitely feels intelligent to me".

That makes the Cog Psych's definition counterintuitive because it gives a result that doesn't match our intuitions.

Imagine I tried to define "dog" to you as "four-legged creature with a tail". You might respond by pointing to a cat and saying "so that's a dog then, right Mikey?" That would be you revealing that my definition has counterintuitive consequences.

@JonathanHipkiss If you click the little light bulb next to (B) and you're still confused, I'd be happy to answer any follow-up questions you've got.

@AngelDaniels (E) refers to the crabs' most dangerous *predators. The hunters have become the hunted.

@GabbyBayness You can click the little💡next to (C), but here’s another layer of detail:

For (C) to be right, you need to find a specific premise that establishes “the products are expensive because of [something]”. Then you need to find another specific claim that says “the products are expensive, and therefore [that same thing]”.

That’s two causal claims you need to pin down in the stimulus.

As the snippet mentions, we don’t have any causal claims here — all we have are correlative statements. The cleanest one to explain is the first sentence, which just lays out “expensive” and “best”, with “although” implying a relationship like “you might not think these two things could go together, but they actually do”.

“Although my shirt is hilarious, it is also ugly.” That statement isn’t saying the shirt is ugly because it’s hilarious, or hilarious because ugly — it just presents two features of the shirt.