Was about to pull the trigger on (E) right away but stopped for a bit to consider (A)'s charge of a "dual" use of the word "rational." After wasting about 30 seconds, I proceeded to stick with (E) lol.

Nevertheless, I think it's important to go with your gut on these. Pretty easy in hindsight to see a parallel argument and how silly it is. Consider:

"Doctors are considered to be smart, like smarter than nuclear physicists. But many of them smoke and drink, so they must really not be smart at all - certainly not smarter than nuclear physicists."

Been stumbling on flaw questions recently but slowing down on this one (3:12 oof) really helped. I started to overanalyze what the stimulus was saying until I saw the shift towards the last sentence. Once I stumbled upon "Yet there are no clear criteria...," my brain noticed that the author sort of tees us up for the flaw.

Their argument is essentially "Due to the fact that there is no way to evaluate art the way I described, we just will never be able to (it's not like there aren't other ways to do this, but whatever dawg). (C) does a good job of pointing this out in presenting an alternative method that the author just doesn't think twice about.

On these flaw questions, I've found it super important to develop my own interpretation of the flaw prior to jumping over to the ACs. You wouldn't believe what a difference this makes (quicker POE, heightened confidence, etc.)

@arieatsoranges yeah I was in a time crunch and rolled with (A) too. Upon BR, I quickly realized that (A) misses the boat in terms of applicability - it's saying that any description of monsters describe violations of the laws of nature (ex. monstrous beast from a romantic novel).

For (A) to be correct, it would have to narrow it down to just horror stories (ex. All descriptions of monsters in horror stories describe violations of the laws of nature.)

10/13 clean take uhhhhhhhh

Went through all of the LR modules over about a 45-day period, and here's what I found:

1) Reinforcement Drills: Before I proceeded to the next question type, I would take 5-Question untimed drills of the LR question I had just covered (assuming I didn't ace the imbedded drill towards the end of each type). If I wasn't able to achieve 100% clean take on a particular question type, I'd BR it and try again. This helps to reinforce your proficiency with the foundations of the questions and feel more confident putting it back on the shelf while you proceed through the lessons.

2) No Shame in Untimed Drills: Early on, I felt pressure to delve into timed work. Obviously not ideal, and it showed. The only benefit I gained was that it gave me the perspective of where I needed to get to vs where I was. You need to dive deep into the foundations of the logic and reasoning in each question type and understand what each type is asking you to do. I found that I didn't have those steps drilled into my head until I really sat with each type and wrestled with it without the clock ticking. People may say this build bad habits, but it's helped me gain confidence in my ability to attack the problem, which in turn builds speed/fluency.

@adzballroom SA vs. NA

SA introduces an assumption that can absolutely propel the argument to the finish line but isn't necessarily required. NA prompts would say something along the lines of "depends" or "requires," - essentially anything that indicates that the argument would fall apart without it.

I like to think about it like this:

In SA, the correct AC satisfies the argument (usually a stand-out, potentially overkill statement). In NA, the correct AC is absolutely necessary for the argument to remain intact, so it could end up being on the weaker end of the spectrum (or not, just depends on the other ACs).

Another round of pure 4-5 stars killllll meeeeeee

Here's the way I synthesized the argument:

1. Given a situation/stance

2. Uncertainty exists

3. Stick with the safe option (the one that allows compliance with the situation/stance)

Committed sufficiency - necessity confusion when I was mapping out B. If you're not careful, you might have made the same error. The first sentence of B doesn't read in the same order as the stim, so you have to make that connection before you map it.

Ex. It's not (right amount of flour > taste good), it's (taste good > right amount of flour). You can help yourself out by rephrasing it like the stim does (If a cake is to taste good, it must contain the right amount of flour).

Yeah holy cow this lesson slaps. Was certainly not dominating 4-5 stars like this a couple lessons ago lol

Why do I always get like 3x 4-5 star questions on these

@TeklaCo the correct answer (D) is just saying that Tom cherrypicked the situation in which to apply his rule. We know from reading the last sentence of the stim that his rule applies to every house in that neighborhood, so (D) is calling him out on it and asking "why would you suddenly forget to apply your rule to this yard?"

TL/DR: Like with the previous question, sometimes the on-paper logic presented in flaw questions actually check out (this is when your Spidey senses should be going off). It should signal a shift from your diagram to the actual verbiage used in the stimulus. In this case, homie is making a claim about what social theorists believe. This is the epicenter of the flaw; you can state facts about a certain subject all day long, but attempting to forcefully merge a fact with what people (social theorists) should believe is faulty.

It's easier to think about it like this - Everyone knows that apples are fruit (not a state secret). So naturally, everyone that knows this information should also know that fruits are the healthiest food type....right? Wrong. Your knowledge of a fact or the "logic chain" that follows doesn't impact what other people believe (someone simply may not believe/know that "fruits are the healthiest food type").

Ngl this was one of the first questions where I actually had to pay attention to who the speaker was

TL/DR, these scientists are not in agreement towards the reliability of test, but that still doesn't tell us anything about how reliable the test is / what the starting point for accuracy is - are they disagreeing over the last 2% (aka, it's 98% accurate)?

@TeklaCo this was one of those questions that I went straight off intuition. After reading the stim, I immediately noticed the issue once I read the last sentence of the stim - even if Tom's "fun fact" is true, all of the houses they've seen have been in the same neighborhood. That means that once Tom's "tax" on yard length is applied, there's still going to be a house with the biggest yard in the neighborhood.

I thought of it like this - if I'm jumping around yelling about how excited I am to cash the biggest paycheck I've ever received, and someone says "well you know they take out 20% of your paycheck, so taper your expectations...." It's still the biggest paycheck I've ever received (probably not to scale with the argument, but nonetheless helpful way to look at it)

Ngl, saw an analogy presented in the stimulus. Saw the word "analogous" in (C) and sent it lol

For those of you wondering how to best interpret what (A) is saying...after reading it 2,000 times in my head:

(A) Indicating the state of affairs on which the economist's prediction was conditioned did not obtain

Breakdown:

1) "State of Affairs" = circumstances (eventual recession)

2) "On which the economist's prediction was conditioned" = indicates that the circumstances (eventual recession) were conditional on a trigger/sequence of events (inaction by politicians)

3) "Did not Obtain" = didn't occur

Watch what happens when we water it down:

The circumstances described by the author required a trigger/sequence of events, and that trigger/sequence didn't occur.

The fact that though his prediction was ultimately wrong in the end, the economist was only wrong because politicians noticed the potential consequences and intervened. He probably maintains that without this intervention, his prediction would have prevailed.

@TeklaCo You can frontload "it's not the case that some films..." or simply say "some films...DO NOT exist solely..."

Found out that I actually verbally say the correct gap in the argument after reading the stimulus, but then I forget what I said after reading 1-2 ACs. Strongly suggest developing the gap in your mind and keeping it at the forefront as you skim ACs. At the very least, it'll make POE much easier.

Dawg every time I finish reading the stimulus and have the gap in the argument prepped in my head, it just ain't there when I look over at the AC's

The zoologist is essentially just taking a concept from thousands of years ago and trying to apply it to today's world (i.e. people tried doing this thing back then and it was hard, so people trying to do the thing today would have a hard time too).

My eyes darted immediately to the AC that described this gap, so all I had to do to check myself by negating it.

I think for this question, writing out the premises and conclusion is especially helpful. When you stack them up, you'll notice this yuuuuge gap between them - like the argument jumps immediately from "if we (the council) don't do this thing, then the citizens will get to do this thing" to "so we should definitely do this thing." Intuitively, the only thing left for you to mentally bridge is that the council dudes definitely don't want the citizens to do the thing.

@OmarAlmi goated tactic

Epic 5-star pull (Just took a 20 Q mixed drill and this was one of 5 max difficulty Qs smh)