I don't get why B is correct given that the conclusion is disjunctive. I'll explain my thinking:

According to B "it is not much easier today to domesticate wild large mammal species [WLMS] than it was in the past." Okay. Let's negate this: "it is much easier today to domesticate WLMS that it was in the past."

If B is the right answer then this negated statement should be incompatible with the argument. But it's not.

Here's the conclusion: "most WLMS in existence today would either be [1] difficult to domesticate or [2] would not be worth domesticating." This is a disjunction. A disjunction is false when and only when both disjuncts are false. So our conclusion is true so long as [1] is true, or [2] is true, or [1] and [2] are both true.

the negated-B tells us that [1] is false. It states that it's not difficult to domesticate the WLMS in existence today after all, or it at least tells us that domesticating these animals is much easier than it was before.

So [1] is false. WLMS aren't that difficult to domesticate. But this doesn't "wreck" the conclusion! For—as a disjunction—the conclusion can still be true, provided that the other disjunct, [2], is true. In other words, the conclusion can still be true provided that the WLMS in existence today are not worth domesticating.

Negated-B doesn't seem to wreck anything else about the argument either. I do think it's the least-bad answer choice. But I don't see how it's a necessary assumption. Can someone please explain!?

I keep doing the questions with "than to," differently from JY but I think it's equivalent. For example, "scientists have found that giant pandas are more similar genetically to bears than to raccoons." Here is JY's answer:

Bears vs. Raccoons

Which is a giant panda genetically more similar to?

Winner: Bears

But I did it this way:

Pandas vs. Racoons

Which more similar to bears

Pandas

I think these are equivalent, because they both say Pandas are more similar to bears than Raccoons.

For question 5, analyzing the object clause:

"it [the bakery] can't continue to bake its traditional bread and switches to a recipe that uses cornmeal."

Yields

1. The bakery can't continue to bake its traditional bread.

2. The bakery switches to a recipe that uses cornmeal.

The two sentences are linked by "and," which in this context suggests that (1) causes (2). But isn't this a somewhat misleading analysis? Look at the whole sentence:

"A bakery in a region facing wheat shortage realizes that it can't continue to bake its traditional bread and switches to a recipe that uses cornmeal."

The fact that the bakery can't continue to bake its traditional bread isn't per se what causes it to switch up the recipe. Rather, it's the bakery realizing this fact.

Maybe the solution is that this fact and the bakery realizing so are related, and both play a causal role in bringing about (2). But my takeaway from this is that it's a reminder not to ignore the rest of the sentence when faced with a complex object clause.

Similar questions to others:

In question 3, "Mary Simms ... declared, 'Billboards are the basis of our business,'" the phrase "'Billboards are the basis of our business'" is identified as the object of "declared."

But in question 4, a "study ... concluded that there is a definite relationship between X and Y," the phrase "there is a definite relationship between X and Y" is identified as a modifier of "concluded."

Why? Surely it's not because the word "that" appears in 4 but not 3. Of course, we learned that "that" signals a modifier, but the word "that" could easily be included in 3, e.g., "Mary Simms ... declared [that] 'Billboards are the basis of our business.'"

My college logic class defined arguments differently from JY, a set of premises and a conclusion. For example, even something like [premise: it's raining or not raining] + [conclusion: Massachusetts is in the USA] counts as an argument under the definition of my logic class.

The above wouldn't count as an argument for JY, because "it's raining or not raining" doesn't support (increase the likelihood of the truth of) "Massachusetts is in the USA." So, JY has a more restrictive definition of arguments than my logic class did. Just thought that was interesting.

In the end I chose D but doesn't C seem like a potential explanation too? Maybe the news station aired more interviews with people against the new freeway because those people gave more emotional interviews, which made for better TV. So C does weaken the argument. However, D is right because it weakens the argument more.

Hi Teresa, one piece of advice is that I personally found The Loophole's basic translation drill (which later gets built into the CLIR drill) really helpful. It significantly improved my timing and comprehension of the stimulus in LR. You can start doing this drill as soon as you're familiar with the grammar, logic, and argument structures that you learn either in 7Sage's foundations curriculum or in the earlier chapters of The Loophole's curriculum. For what it's worth, I think 7Sage's foundations curriculum is more thorough than The Loophole's is, and so better if you're a beginner.

You'll find that 7Sage and The Loophole's approaches to LR differ beyond that. 7Sage has a detailed taxonomy of different question types (SA, NA, PSA, WSE, flaw, pattern, etc.) whereas The Loophole teaches that there are 4 different stimulus types and emphasizes reading the stim and predicting the answer. It depends which one you like more! I personally found The Loophole's version more intuitive, but I also wasn't a total beginner when I started the LSAT. By the way, 7Sage also has a fantastic analytics feature which is extremely helpful once you start practicing.

Can we really infer from ~[ALL X-WINGS HAVE HYPERDRIVES] to [SOME X-WINGS DON'T HAVE HYPERDRIVES]? The former statement says having a hyperdrive isn't a necessary condition for something to be an x-wing. But the latter statement says there exists some x-wing without a hyperdrive. In other words, we're inferring the existence of hyperdrive-less x-wings from a statement which is silent on whether or not they exist.