went through the exact same process lol

getting this right after getting so many of the past like 20 exercises wrong felt like getting whooped by the same dark souls boss over and over and finally just sliding in and perfecting it with my eyes closed

need to have a boxing match with whoever wrote these last few PSAr questions

I’m glad that im getting good at cutting out what’s clearly wrong very quickly, like A, B, and E in this question

but im always getting my ass whooped by these trap answers :’^(

thank you for your candor and commiseration in a mistake i make often, bigchungus69420

I was almost tripped up by the fact that the answer choice refers to people being insincere rather than the criticism itself. But, while the text does say that confusing messaging is ineffective, it doesn’t conclude that that is a reason for not engaging in it. It is specifically making a conclusion about the sincerity of that criticism. Thus C can’t be correct. Now for why D is correct: criticisms aren’t just things that float around in the aether, they’re claims made by people. If a criticism is insincere, then the one who made the criticism is being insincere.

The test writers are gonna continually throw confusing stuff like that at us, so we need to build up the ability to recognize and make certain concessions. Not too many, lest we end up just making big logical leaps that leave holes in our reasoning to be easily exploited, but just enough so that we don’t convince ourselves of a wrong answer. Especially if we’ve understood the text and all the answer choices fully, an important skill to build going forward (and I know this is definitely true for myself) is the ability keep oneself from overthinking and thus changing to the wrong answer in spite of our better judgement.

Best of luck!

great point, I feel like this is one of those moments that reminds us we need to shirk common sense when looking specifically for argument structure. cause while it’s definitely likely (and as someone that played instruments, definitely true) that NY philharmonic musicians tune their instruments daily, that isn’t a valid conclusion that can be drawn from the premises.

While the example of the philharmonic painted a really good picture, I think the scoop analogy that was previously used really helped me understand this at a formal level.

If you put a big ol’ scoop of A into B and then a scoop of B into C, there will be some A in C. However, if you have a bucket of A then a bucket of B, and scoop from the B bucket into C, none of A will make it into C. Thinking of it like this really helped me understand the chain.