S-B says the inscriptions describe villagers' contributions to the temple.

AC B questions that by saying the inscriptions are basically billing statements.

Idk why I couldn't understand what A was saying in timed conditions. All it's saying is that one token represented multiple objects....

B is unsupported because we don't know what temples preferred as contributions. We just know what was contributed.

D has a similar problem, who knows what was most important?

E is also unsupported the tokens had some abstraction, but was it just as abstract as the written language? Not likely

C is the only one left and understanding why it's right takes understanding that "figurative" tokens meant they were more pictographic than abstract to represent the intended object.

We have to adopt this naturalist's wacky mindset to get this question right. It's purely logic and the content is just wrong.

All we know is chimps examined a screwdriver, played with it, then moved on.

Orangutans pretend to ignore then try to use the tool when no one's looking

The attractive ACs are C and E.

C says: some are capable of deception (at least one)

E says: not all (not 100%) understand tool use

E feels instinctually right because that's just likely to be true in the world. But based on these two examples, we cannot necessarily rule this out.

Based on behavior alone we cannot deny that this ability to understand tool use is universal for all non primates. The possibility still exists.

AC C is the only LOGICAL correct answer, but the naturalist is obviously anthropomorphizing this orangutan behavior by assuming they were "pretending to ignore" in the first place. We just have to go along with this absurdity.

E is wrong also because of the inherent conditional for a behavior.

If act --> have the capacity to act

so if we show a lack of action, that doesn't mean the capacity doesn't exist.

C is showing the opposite where the stimulus provides the absurdity of "acting deceptive" which logically leads to the capacity to deceive.

I can sit here and break down the logic of all the ACs and get to the right answer after doing some grammar parsing.

I'm here to offer people a shortcut because I could not understand how tf you're supposed to get this quickly in timed conditions.

Stimulus gives us some facts about the bill:

most people favor

does not violate basic human rights

will not be passed ever nor anything similar

bill would adversely affect very influential people

Therefore:

this is not a functioning democracy

Ok we've got this from the stimulus, now we play a matching game.

A: by the time we read "benefit most people" eliminate, this is not part of our listed facts

B: opposed by influential, eliminate, not part of facts

C: WFD + bill favored by most --> (become law --> not influential)

to make second conditional false, need become law + influential but we know it will not become law, so the NC is not failed to contrapose, eliminate

D: if bill passed + WFD --> favored by most + consistent with human rights

we only reaffirm the NCs with our facts so this is wrong

E: if most favor + WFD --> (if /violate --> will pass)

we have /violate + /will pass so the NC is negated and we get --> either /most favor OR /WFD which is the right target

PLEASE READ MY REPLY BELOW. The video explanations helped a ton with helping me understand what I was missing here. The key to doing this question correctly with FULL understanding (which I certainly did not have in timed conditions; I got this right on pure vibes) is to be able to quickly translate exactly what a false conditional is into shorthand. I'm leaving this here from my notes for those who need to understand this more algebraically rather than conceptually.

Statement 1 is that people say:

if write for pleasure --> /true.

The conclusion is that this is false

In shorthand that means:

if write for pleasure --> true

The support for this argument kind of makes you rely on understanding the tone of the language used. If the original conditional were true, it would lead to something that's obviously wrong as well.

So for the first premise sentence, if the conditional is true, then we could look at sales figures to determine truth. On first read through I have no idea what this sentence is here for. But we're dealing with conditionals, and this is so far not a conditional statement, so I'm just ignoring this for now. Then we have:

If popular --> book gave people pleasure --> /true

This is the absurd statement that the author is implying is false. So by the same translation rules for the conclusion we can say:

if popular --> book gave people pleasure --> true

Original conditional is wrong, and its consequences are wrong. So it must be the negation is right because the negation of the consequences are what makes sense.

Ok great, we can work with these now!

Premise:

if popular --> book gave people pleasure --> true

Conclusion: written for pleasure --> true

P: X --> Y --> Z

C: W--> Z

necessary assumption is: Y--> W

We need "written for pleasure" to be somewhere in that premise conditional chain to be a necessary assumption. Because it leads to "true", it must be:

book gave people pleasure --> written for pleasure

We can also see at this point that the sales figures thing is completely irrelevant. It's farther up the conditional chain from what's relevant in the conclusion.

The only ACs that talk about these two concepts are B and D

AC B says: if write for pleasure --> may not give pleasure; this doesn't match the identified NA - it goes the wrong direction and has "may not necessarily" which is wrong.

AC D says: if gives pleasure --> intended to give pleasure

Perfect!

I somehow blundered into the right AC during timed, but I figured it out in BR.

if purpose --> legal protection

if email suggests illegal --> /legal protection

Therefore, disclaimer does not have purpose

How is this not already valid??

Who knows, let's look at the answers

A: if /suggest illegal --> /need legal protection

ok cool, we're just adding new info in an AC but let's see

if need protection --> suggest illegal things --> disclaimer gives no protection --> disclaimer has no purpose.

I still don't get why this is a sufficient assumption, but it works with our existing chain to get to the right endpoint (the conclusion that says the disclaimer serves no purpose). It doesn't work with our existing premises and conclusion. It just seems to add language that extends the conditional chain on the left. Great I guess.

Adding a separate note: C through E are irrelevant because we don't care about clients' actions. The argument is about whether the disclaimer serves its purpose in providing legal protection to the tax agency. AC B also just adds some new info about substantial penalties, but this branches off from the original statement about suggesting illegal things in the email to lead to a separate consequence that's not about purpose of the disclaimer.

This comments section is restoring my hope for this exam after this section

To add onto why A is wrong, the argument doesn't say "because they're union leaders, their argument should be rejected" this is an ad hominem attack that's not what's going on in the argument.

What they actually say is that as a consequence of them being union leaders they'll have this conflict and THAT is what should make them reject the argument. The grounds for rejection is the consequence of their position (conflict of interest or bias, however you want to phrase it). But it's not the inherent nature of their position that's being unreasonably vilified.

Got so lucky getting this right. But maybe instead of attributing it to luck, I'll just say I had a really good method for cutting down to the structure quickly to pick out the right answer quickly before time ran out.

The stimulus is basically:

A --> B

/A --> C

therefore,

C --> B

don't bother trying to understand the words, checking whether that's valid or not, whatever, it doesn't matter. Got the structure? move on to ACs

A is out because it starts with if climate changes --> narrow --> difficult we already have a chained conditional that's not parallel.

B says if /empathy --> /candidate, if empathy --> manipulate; so far so good, we have two conditionals with A and /A.

was running super low on time at this point so I just looked for the words "candidate" and "manipulate" in the last sentence, found it, picked it, done.

Lol at the wording of AC A. I POEd my way to that mostly because I identified the gap in the stimulus before reading the ACs and the rest of the ACs didn't seem relevant.

The stimulus says: scientists believe species X is dying from industrial pollution. It's impossible to be sure that this is true because some species have varying populations because of weather.

The underlying assumption is species X is part of that weather variation group of species.

A had the right words in questionable places so I picked it. But it basically says, species X (which scientists say are dying from pollution) are known to be among those species whose populations vary because of the weather. I took out both NOTs because why are they there....

Maybe this is a wrong interpretation, but I disagree with the written explanation under the AC E as to why it's wrong. The way I read it is that there were major decreases happening before this period between 1996 and 2004. So the decrease by 10% during that period is less than what came before. So it makes it less likely that the party mismanaged the economy, it implies that the opposite is more likely, that something they did mitigated the harm of previous policies.

In any case, A was the more obvious non-weakener. It either doesn't do anything or maybe even slightly strengthens the conclusion about a mismanaged economy.

If there was a rise in 1996, but the overall period still had a decline, that supports the idea the the party mismanaged the economy. Despite an increase in the first year, they ended with a 10% decline overall.

A good paraphrase of AC E is: if an action has an effect then it intended to have the effect. Even thought the premises say that the manufacturers only want put warnings on toys to cover themselves from being sued for injuries from their products, that doesn't negate the fact that that selfish motive still leads to reduced injuries.

Effect and intention are separate things.

From my notes, but maybe it'll help someone:

Beware of blanket solution conclusions. We know small is effective for low alt. and large is effective for high alt. Based on that, the conclusion states that we should install both small and large on all rockets. That must require the assumption that all rockets will go through the high alt.

Solution needs to be relevant. Just because we discuss phenomena in the argument, that doesn't mean they are immediately relevant to the solution mentioned.

Small solves low alt problems, large solves high alt problems. We should have both small and large on all rockets.

The assumption is that the problem even exists for the solution to apply. That's what B does.

I read this as a distribution error flaw rather than a part to whole flaw.

The issue is concentrated in one region, and if we spread the issue out over a wider area, the whole will have a decrease in the issue.

So D is the best because first of all the conclusion parallels (that some greater whole will have a decrease) but it also shows that because all the calories are in a few meals, spreading out the same calories over more meals will somehow decrease the amount of calories consumed.

If anyone's encountered a "free" offer IRL, you'd realize when reading D that they're offering the product itself for free, but the shipping and handling is a separate thing.

The argument is assuming that because the product is free, it must be effective (and so those who get the free product will likely buy it for its cost in the future). If it weren't effective, and as a result, people weren't likely to actually buy the product after the free offer, then that would be against the company's interest.

To weaken, we need to show that this "free" offer is in the company's interest (and not the alternate reason that the product is effective). That's what D does. It shows that there is a cost associated with this offer that's provides a financial benefit to the company, so it's less likely to be about effectiveness.

I redid this question in review and now I'm kinda mad I got this wrong. (I picked D). Rule #1 for a weaken/strengthen is you can't point to some people doing something to break a conclusion. Outliers for a general trend/recommendation doesn't break the support.

E is the obvious answer.

All this argument is saying is:

we don't have a definition, so we should just build a definition based on expert beliefs.

E is saying, well there may not even be any experts. This absolutely weakens because how can you recommend something that may not even exist?

I too got caught up with C. But it's obvious on review that the new concept in the conclusion is "healing". If I just use the search function to find the word "heal" in an AC, I only get B and D. B is making the wrong connection (heal --> /focusing on relationships). So D is what matches.

Oh the misery

I'll be completely honest, I had no clue what this stimulus was saying and what it was comparing. I just tried to find the shape of the argument

demand is increasing for PCs, so you'd think profits would also be high for PCs (I just disregarded whatever "relative to total retail sales of personal computers" meant)

But the profits for PCs are very low compared to other high tech items.

A - points out something about why PCs would be lower, so helps

B - brand loyalty? this doesn't feel relevant

C - points out what makes PCs potentially more difficult vs other high tech - helps

D - explains why low prices for PCs, the PCs are the incentive not the source of profit for the retailer - helps

E - more difficult competition so PCs are difficult to sell - helps

gov -c-> prevention of injury

if reason approach, low need for gov

this must be because

reasoned approach -c-> prevention of injury. It's another way to get to the desired effect. C is great because it's mildly written as a correlation

Split passage method made some of these questions so much more straightforward than the sequential method would have. After combing through the questions and eliminating even one or two ACs that definitively weren't relevant to Passage A, I could narrow down to the right AC so much more easily.

A - UCH is not mentioned in Passage A

B - international conventions also not mentioned

C - archeological value vs commercial value (which is incidentally what's mentioned in Passage B too)

D - doesn't talk about private ownership, just contracting with a private company to restore government property (in Passage A)

E - there's nothing about in situ preservation in A: it just talks about recovery.

I literally drew myself a picture of this passage as I was reading. It made it so much easier to keep concepts straight.

The 12 on a clock must be the starting point of the circle. As time passes, the clock hand always returns to this origin point. So the 12 is the origin.

You can't just pick a point in a cycle, decide it's the origin and support that claim by saying, see? It always goes back to this point, so it's the origin.

D is a little tempting when it talks about order of events having some impact, but the argument never makes a causal statement. It just identifies an origin.

Conclusion says:

This conditional statement is false: appearance --> work of art

so if two things have the same appearance, they would both have the same outcome of being a work of art.

But we have an example of same appearance, different outcome. So it must be that the conditional is not true.

E says: if the conditional were true, the example given would be impossible, so the conditional must be false.

The way I chose E over everything else is by focusing on the language of the conclusion. It very clearly says: this general conditional is false. And the preceding sentences of the stimulus are obviously an example or a specific case. D is wrong because it's not questioning any assumptions, it's using an example to state that a conditional is false.

A is also wrong because the speaker doesn't highlight differences between what's believed and what is true. They highlight that two things have the same property, but are determined to be two different things.

This one was straightforward for me because I just mapped out the conclusion

+snow -c-> cooler atmosphere

how do we strengthen? cause and effect rules.

C shows /cause, (-) effect

put another way, if we claim: studying causes someone to pass an exam

showing that no studying causes failure strengthens that conclusion.