7Sage's reason for A being wrong makes total sense. I have to start really matching the stimulus to the answer rather than the answer to the stimulus I guess. There was no evidence saying that they changed the curriculum because of low performance at all!

C seems to have a small jump equating quality of the student performance with the curriculum, but that's a reasonable jump.

@Ardaschir Arguelles this was a great response.

A confused me but it makes sense. If we are told to focus on the consequences rather than morality because we don't know whether someone's actions are moral (ulterior motive or not), then that implies the intention (motives ulterior or not ulterior) must be connected to morality.

@Kevin Lin Can you take a look at my most recent comment. I believe it's by far the best explanation. I don't even understand the weakening in the description. Why are we talking about U.S. origin? The stimulus says we don't use it. We just send it away. But we do BUY it back. So C is just saying if there's more countries that are just sending it away, it lowers the likelihood that we are importing products with the pesticides.

The "agricultural products" here is not more pesticides. Not sure why 7sages thinks that. Agricultural products are grains. It's food.

Wow this clicked in the BR! Super hard question.

Basically it's saying that if other countries also just manufacture and and export, then it lowers the changes that we are importing products from countries that actually use it.

This objectively rules out and lowers the possibility of risk. Again this is proven, so it's the correct answer.

Wow I had a great write up about C vs. B and E. To make it shorter, C is a great answer but it's not as clean cut.

7Sage loves to make us think that every wrong answer is 100% wrong, but that's just not the case, especially with Weakens. It just has to be the best out of the options.

E is definitely wrong though.

@Abby Davis Hey, can you read my comment above and let me know what you think? Thanks!

A is not wrong because of a "reverse causation". A is wrong because how one "perceives reports..." does not tell us anything about their willingness to spend money.

CAUSATION IS NOT EXCLUSIVE! That's the reason why you can weaken a causation by reversing it.

If A said, "if one's level of confidence in one's own economic situation decreases, than can negatively affect how one perceives reports about the overall economy which in turn adversely affects their willingness to spend", then it would be a great answer because it still shows that the media critics are not mistaken, which means the author's conclusion is flawed.

Remember, the flaw is that the media critics are mistaken. Which means that author doesn't think that negative news reports can harm the economy. So if people's own economic situation is negative, and they interpret news reports negatively, which can adversely affect spending, that is still saying that the media critics are not mistaken, which would be a correct AC.

@Wishmeluckokay Yeah I don't think this is reverse causation at all.

I don't see how this is reverse causation. I think B is correct because it's saying that the people that had the traumatic event and no PTSD had a higher cortisol level prior to new stress. They didn't have PTSD because they had higher cortisol levels. So it's not that the traumatic event affects how much cortisol one produces, it's that the cortisol was already higher in the first group which allowed them to not develop PTSD.

Maybe what I'm saying is the reverse causation but I don't see it. Wouldn't reverse causation be that cortisol affects how someone is traumatized from the event? Or maybe that they are in the no PTSD group because they had higher cortisol levels than average?

#help !

I picked A but it is a bigger jump than C. A requires us to assume that if they now pay less rent, they will use more energy. But we don't know that. Maybe that will want to keep their energy lower.

C clearly states that now the incentive is gone and an energy efficient appliance won't be chosen. It's an easy assumption that if the appliance isn't energy efficient, less energy will be conserved.

Opposite effect is better than a two-way assumption! If that makes sense.

Would A be also correct if it was about repressors? Not about nonrepressors. I think yes.

"as one gets old one gets wiser" is just a general trend correlation BUT the stimulus is looking for a rule / conditional. If the altitude increases, then the air thins. AC A isn't strong enough to make that rule.

This is a question that if you get it right, you can easily just think "Yeah of course makes sense", but you need to be able to really understand why A is wrong.

A is one because it's not a strict rule so because it's not a strict rule you can't strictly compare to other people.

Yeah this is a tough one. I got it right in the BR.

Robert Carlson explains it well but basically, P, O, and I are examples of necessary conditions.

The student then says wait just make it up! But what if the statement itself is a necessary condition as well.

For anyone who takes this - the reason is that if the trees still decompose later, than they actually didn't remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

C is wrong because this is actually a strengthener. This affirms that old trees hold a lot of carbon dioxide. "contains" does not mean they absorb and even if it did, this is already known information from the stimulus.

@Mac Selesnick In a weakener, of course you can attack the premise. Especially when it's a research question. Why wouldn't we be allowed to say "your data is wrong". That of course would cause the scientist's argument to be weak.

This one is interesting because the flaw doesn't change the conclusion at all right?

Oh nevermind - I thought the flaw was that it was either of those two options that melted it. The flaw is actually that maybe it didn't melt.

The wrong answer percentages are pretty accurate.

C > A > E > B > D

C is basically a MBT. If A > B and C > A, then C > B.

If new is stronger than older finish, and mitters protects new, than mitters protect older. Idk bad analogy but you know what I mean.

I chose E because I saw "easier on most car's finishes than brushes are". But this is wrong because Mitters are still easy on older finishes too. If they were just easy on clear-coat, then yes, E would be correct.

A is honestly decent but this assumes that we waited for everything to get scratched before we changed it to mitters. Huge assumption.

B is honestly decent but again just a big assumption nothing in the stimulus talked about this. Definitely is true in the real world but not supported at all. Be careful.

C has to be true. If it does produce scratches on the new ones and the new ones are weaker than the old ones, it must not produce scratches on the older ones. The most is helpful but not even necessary to choose C.

D this doesn't talk about effectiveness at all. worst option.

E is what I said above.

What does "not entirely" mean? lol

I didn't choose D because I thought it said a poll that was done 5 years ago...

@Wishmeluckokay To make this even easier, "If no reporter knows any more about the accident than any other reporter, then no reporter can scoop all of the other reporters.", this sentence is telling us how no reporter can scoop. And this sufficient condition is answer choice E.

Aseman has the best response. I didn't read the Student Question at all but the response is good.

Basically, this is a conditional.

Bad Real Estate Market AND Bad Car Sales -> Bad Economy

The "Of course..." is stating the contrapositive.

/ Bad Economy -> / Bad Car Sales OR / Bad Real Estate Market

D is the only one that gives us this.

"Consistent with" means that those are conditions that happens when the economy is healthy.

Eating chicken is consistent with KFC.

KFC -> eating chicken

It's not saying when you eat chicken you are at KFC.

If the economy is healthy, then consistently we see that either one of the other conditions failed to occur.

If you force yourself too hard to look at conditionals then you aren't reading and understanding the real language.

@Wishmeluckokay Being alive is the event that is likely on the hypothesis of colonization.

I chose A btw.

I'll translate answer choice D:

"Inferring that since us being alive during colonization is likely on the hypothesis that the galaxy will be eventually be colonized by trillions of humans, then the hypothesis that the galaxy will be eventually colonized by trillions of humans is probably false."