Just want to ask this for the purposes of not confusing opposite with negation:

"Amidala cannot deliver her speech unless the attempt to assassinate her fails."

In the example, the video made the choice to negate, "Amidala cannot deliver her speech." The lawgic we see is:

SAS -> AAF

However, I interpreted "the attempt to assassinate her fails," as already containing a negation (That is, the assassination failing is the negation of the assassination succeeding.) My lawgic looked like this:

SAS -> /A (where A is assassination.)

Does this work? Or have I confused the negation of failure with the opposite of failure?

This will probably be explained in a future lesson I imagine, but I'd like clarification on what happens when the necessary condition is true instead of the sufficient.

I'll use the milk/store example since I think that's the one most of us are confused about. I'll also write it out to specify the premises and conclusion:

Premise 1: If I go to the store, I will buy milk.

Premise 2: I went to the store.

Conclusion: I bought milk.

And here the "Lawgic" version of Premise 1:

Store -> Milk

This might not make sense in our world, but in the world of this argument then if anyone ever goes to the store, they have to buy milk. I think this makes sense.

Now what if I change the argument to something like this:

Premise 1: If I go to the store, I will buy milk.

Premise 2: I bought milk.

Conclusion: I went to the store.

I want to say that this does not make sense/is not valid, because Premise 1 is unchanged that means that the Lawgic is still "Store -> Milk," and not "Milk -> Store." In English, this would mean that I could have gotten milk from anywhere, not just the store.

I don't think this is valid.

The structure in this is that being smart is the superset, and being tall is the subset. In other words, being tall is sufficient for being smart, and being smart is necessary for being tall.

With the premises as is, I don't think we have enough information to conclude that JB is tall. We know that JB is smart, but in drawing out a diagram of the superset and subset, there exists such a condition that someone is smart but not tall.

I'll use an example of the cats/mammal argument:

Premise 1: If one is a cat, one must be a mammal.

Premise 2: Lassie is a mammal.

Conclusion: Lassie is a cat.

The above example is not valid, because there exist such a condition that one is a mammal but not a cat (Lassie could be a dog for instance.)

Could #1 also be interpreted as surplus of corn seeds this year vs surplus of corn seeds last year?

The quality we'd be comparing is which would be smaller, and the winner basically stays the same.

This might be pedantic, but I'd like to ask a question of referential with an example from the text above:

"There are many things we value in our language but two in particular are simplicity of expression and economy of expression."

Is "two" a referential that refers to "things," or am I misunderstanding?

Take this with a grain of salt, as I'm only so confident in my own language ability.

Passive voice is usually structured along the lines of, "the action was performed."

Active voice is "the actor performs the action."

"Cats sing lullabies."

Cats perform the action of singing lullabies.

"Lullabies are sung by cats."

Cats are still performing the action, but the sentence is structured that the action of singing lullabies is being performed by cats. It's also very wordy this way which is a good rule of thumb to analyze.

I agree with you. You can imagine the not-author's point being along the lines of, "We don't need to incorporate other security measures if we just upgrade our system."

The author is acknowledging, then, that even if we upgrade the system (which will help our security), it is still necessary to think of apply other security measures. There is an assumption that upgrading will lead to some security increases.

Just to confirm that I'm following correctly:

"Dogs are not reptiles. Thus, dogs do not lay eggs."

This is an argument, as the indicator word lets us know that the author thinks dogs do not lay eggs solely for the fact that they are not reptiles.

"Dogs are not reptiles. Dogs do not lay eggs."

This, then, would be the author simply stating 2 facts. There is no argument being made here.

Adding on, not all cute things are adorable, therefore the support is only thrown in one direction!

Is Question 2 is an example of a sentence containing both a premise and a conclusion? We discover that Max had, in fact, asked the police to investigate, right before being introduced to the conclusion, "Max is not guilty."

I don't think this addresses the assumption that it was only Mr. Fat Cat that could have knocked over the bin. Even in your updated argument, we are still left assuming that there was nobody else who could have knocked over the bin nearby. Making that assumption false still weakens the argument.

I think if we add something along the lines of:

"Mr. Fat Cat was the only one in the room with the bin"

Then we have even less assumptions.

Even then, this doesn't necessarily address if Mr. Fat Cat was strong enough to topple the can, but given your updated premises I'm uncertain if it is necessary.