😐

"Controlled studies" doesn't have to mean taking a study in an actual trial though, that's why I picked answer choice D. Is controlled studies considered "empirical research? Maybe my misunderstanding of this lead me to choose choice D.

🥲

let's gooooooo

Anyone else started diagraming conditionals for this one? (seems to be my default habit for all parallel reasoning questions).

Here's what I did and then went with answer choice A:

P: Only A

C: /B -> C

KEVIN IS THE GOAT.

@AlexHaro yeah I initially picked choice A but then second guessed myself to pick choice E.

@Bayside one of the most goated analogies ever.

@DannyH28 This.

Ummm I have never heard of the steel man logical fallacy before....I've always known about straw man though.

@Oleynik Not gonna lie I had to google it. But looking back on it, it can be figured out it means "deny" or "reject". The author's conclusion says, "But clearly this conclusion is false". So, already we know that the author is not "accepting" the claim. But what if maybe, "repudiates" means somewhere along the lines of "indifference" or "ambivalence? But that also can't be true because 1) we already know that the author is opposing Arnot and 2) the premise afterwards uses a judgy word like "dubious", which sounds negative. So, at best, I could guess/assume that "repudiates" could mean something like "against", which could mean somewhere along the lines of "reject", "deny", etc. I too am struggling to get used to understanding the contextual definition of words, I'm just so used to learning what words mean from using the dictionary. I think it also just feels sketchy to "guess" a word's definition by a) relying on clues in the stimulus and b) assuming that the reader understands the stimulus enough to guarantee the accuracy of those clues. Because what if my interpretation or understanding of the stimulus (or part of the stimulus) are wrong, which could point me to the wrong understanding of what "repudiate" could mean? Anyways, sorry for writing a book, but this is just my thoughts about understanding the meaning of the word based on context alone without knowing the definitional term.

I am memorizing the phrase of answer choice A just in case I am arguing against someone who is strawman-ing my ass. E.g., "No no, you are trying to disprove a claim that I did not make". And from here, I can foresee the conversation eventually leading me to say, "Sorry, but your premise presupposes the conclusion you're trying to prove" (circular reasoning).🤣

This one makes me sad.

googling "tantamount"...

What makes a conclusion "undesirable"? Does this mean that the premise doesn't support the conclusion, making it undesirable?

@kkole44474 isn't, "People tend to make certain cognitive errors when they predict how a given event would affect their future happiness." a generalization?

The key here is RELOCATION and REGION. The stimulus is assuming that because there is a shortage of qualified teachers, WITHIN THE REGION, unqualified teachers are left and that would hurt education. The stimulus doesn't say that only teachers within the REGION can be hired. This is what choice E says, "Qualified teachers could not be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the educator's region to take teaching jobs." This is the assumption that the author depends and so if qualified teachers COULD be relocated from other regions, then that destroys the author's conclusion of reducing class sizes (which is a different way of saying the hiring of more teachers) would "probably not improve overall student achievement" and instead, the negation of choice E would change this to that "would probably improve overall student achievement".

Choice D is wrong because I fell for the obvious assumption, got distracted by it and didn't think of the hidden assumption, aka, "in the region". Also, the word "any" also helps makes this answer choice too strong.

Darn, I just realized, even though choice D says that some films do exist and even though the conclusion says some films do not exist, they are saying the same thing because of the word "some". I thought choice D at first was disagreeing with the conclusion so i didnt bother with it because negating it would (at the time I thought) agree with the conclusion. Knowing that, now if I had negated choice D for it to say, "No films from the earliest years of Hollywood currently exist solely in their original material", which means all films that currently exist are not original and have been transferred to acetate, which destroys the conclusion and is why choice D is correct.

@LowOriginalConnection I 100000% empathize my friend. Big same.

@ksh9665264 I didn't pick choice B because I thought it was reversing cause and effect. The farmers made the cows more comfortable, therefore they have better profits, but choice B reverses this...

@LawyerLawyer I second this. I initially picked choice D. I think we have to assume that technology, in itself, is just perpetually changing in lsat terms...even though in real life tech can seem stagnant (like phone 17 yesterday is still the iphone 17 today). However, I think the keywords here is, "...have continued to improve...", which describes technology is changing because it's improving, e.g., going from rotary telephones to smartphones.

@jessebden Thank you!! Note to self: just because an offer is made, doesn't mean a sale is made (because the offer can just be denied).

@ksh9665264 "...a weak answer choice is better than a flawed AC." I am keeping this in my brain. Thank you. Darn choice D trap lol

@jonathanagustin526 Well shit, I got to watch that show again lol

@8633 Adding this to my notes. THANK YOU THANK YOU