From now on, before I even attempt to answer a Main Point question, I'm just gonna go ahead and take a quick look at each important part of the passage

Every. Single. Time.

"What, you didn't know how rare books were in the 1600s? What are you, stupid or something?"

Oof, this one's brutal.

So, the pro-nuclear crowd is asking the anti-nuclear crowd to "live up to their own ideals" and help come up with better ways to dispose of nuclear waste. The author claims this is a dishonest act. How?

According to the author, the anti-nuclear crowd wants to completely get rid of nuclear power. However, finding better ways to dispose of nuclear waste would probably lead to wider acceptance of nuclear power and would thus make it more likely to continue.

C essentially says this:

"If one is asking people to do something that might undermine their goals for the sake of their ideals, then one is being dishonest."

Now, let's compare C to the passage:

Are people being asked to do something? Yes. Might this thing undermine their goals? Yes. Are they being asked to do this thing for the sake of their ideals? Yes.

So, since we have all the sufficient conditions in place, the necessary condition (dishonesty) follows. If this principle holds, then the author's argument is pretty much airtight, or at least damn near airtight. As none of the other ACs lend anywhere near this much support to the argument, C is the correct answer.

Hopefully that made sense!

Just wanted to say that I agree with both writers' perspectives here. Colleges and universities should not just be job training centers. There's more to life than work, ffs.

For those of you who might still be having trouble seeing how ridiculous the analogy in this stimulus is, this is basically what it's saying:

"Modern rockets have combustion engines that make them capable of space travel. The earliest cars also had combustion engines. We can conclude from this that the earliest cars were also capable of space travel."

Like... bro.

Well, we know that Port Tropica can only fit ships that are shorter than 100 meters and that the S. S. Coral is a cargo ship that's docked at Port Tropica. This means that the S. S. Coral can't be from the Blue Star Line (otherwise it'd be too long to fit,) so it must be from the Gold Star Line. We also know that all of the Gold Star Line's cargo ships were built after 1980. Therefore the S. S. Coral must have been built after 1980.

"Most large nurseries sell only plants that are guaranteed to be disease-free."

I just want to make sure I'm completely clear on what this clause means - it's just saying that prior to the sale, this subset of large nurseries always tells the buyer, "hey, these plants are totally disease-free, we promise," right?

Intro: Indigenous peoples are using cameras now.

Weiner: Natives using cameras is bad because it Westernizes their cultures. Anthropologists who say otherwise are naive.

Ginsburg: While using cameras will affect indigenous cultures, it will not Westernize them. It could actually help strengthen them in some ways.

Author: Sides with Ginsburg because of Turner's study of the Kayapo people's use of cameras.

Why are stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals so thick at the bottom? Because of all the squats they've done over the years, duh.

The economist's "proposition" is essentially this:

"Having incentive X is worse than not having incentive X, because having incentive X leads to a scenario where each individual tries to get more for themselves, and everyone gets screwed over as a result."

So now, we have to find an AC that has a similar scenario to which we can apply the economist's criticism.

D doesn't have such a scenario. Who exactly has been screwed over here? Money-wise, it looks like everyone just broke even. Plus, someone on PowerScore made a good point - even if the money-pooling scheme caused people to eat more than they used to (which we don't really know,) isn't everyone still getting more food for the same price?

C, however, does have this scenario. In this case, individual salespeople are undercutting each other's prices to make more sales and win the prizes for themselves, and as a direct result, they end up making less than they did before.

Tip: If you can't find an explanation of a question on 7sage, try copying the question and googling it. Odds are you'll find a PowerScore thread that talks about it, and their explanations are helpful (at least for PTs 1-94.)

Generally, we're supposed to take premises at face value, yes. We're not rejecting a premise here, though; we're just pointing out that said premise does nothing to support the author's conclusion. Why not? Because it's phrased in a way that assumes that the barter system is the "original" economic system, which is exactly what the conclusion is. When an argument assumes what it's trying to prove, that's circular reasoning (aka begging the question.)

A quote for those of you who are tilted:

"Patience is the foundation of eternal peace. Make anger your enemy. Harm comes to those who know only victory and do not know defeat. Find fault with yourself and not with others. It is in falling short of your own goals that you will surpass those who exceed theirs."

- Tokugawa Ieyasu

Group 1: One big boom, because big craters.

Group 2: Many small booms, later booms covered up earlier booms.

Group 3: One mid-size boom, because boom was too short and localized to be super-big.

Yeah, I think A is incorrect for the exact reason you stated. The author isn't trying to refute the journalists' claim that they're doing what they're doing to improve society. If the author's objective was to refute that claim, they would have said something like this:

"Journalists say they're doing Tactic X to improve society, but that's actually not the case; in reality, they're doing Tactic X for a different reason."

This isn't the author's main point at all. The author's not saying anything about why journalists are resorting to this tactic; they're just saying that the tactic itself is bad. So, to pick A would be to misunderstand the author's main point, in my opinion.

To avoid this pitfall in the future, pay close attention to what the author says, obviously. But take note of what the author doesn't say, too. This should make it easier to sniff out answer choices that are out-of-scope or descriptively inaccurate.

Marty and Luis each had a pizza for lunch. Marty ate half of his pizza. Luis ate all of his pizza. Thus, more pizza was eaten by Marty and Luis than was left uneaten.

If Marty and Luis' pizzas were the same size, then this would make complete sense, right?

...And that's why B is the right answer.

If A-most-B > C > D, then A-most-D is a perfectly valid conclusion to make, as is A-most-C.

Whoever said/voted otherwise needs to review this lesson: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/most-before-all-formal-argument-5/

Lydia: "Red squirrels are known to do this particular thing. There are two possible explanations for this. The first explanation doesn't make any sense, so the second explanation is probably the correct one."

Lydia is definitely ruling out a possible explanation for something here, so the correct answer is E.

For me, kicking up the "if" part of conditional conclusions into the premises was a huge help in figuring this one out.

Just thought I'd add that all of this also holds true when we're dealing with two "all" statements.

For example:

All pizzas have tomato sauce.

A → B

All pizzas have cheese.

A → C

Therefore, some things that have tomato sauce also have cheese.

B←s→C

rip bozo

I'm glad that even the people who teach the LSAT for a living admit that its creators are demons.

L logic here from the organicists!

"If an entity has a relationship with another entity, it has some property as a consequence."

R → P

That doesn't mean that without this relationship, the entity won't have the property!

/R → /P

Classic sufficiency/necessity confusion.

Yep, you got it! So, there are two different ways you can translate this into logic:

1. Negate sufficient

"There can be no rule of law without individual freedom"

IF --> ROL

ROL --> IF

2. Negate necessary

"There can be no rule of law without individual freedom"

IF --> ROL

ROL --> IF

In either case, these translate back to:

"If there is no individual freedom, then there is no rule of law."

"If there is rule of law, then there is individual freedom."

Premise: This promise, when interpreted in this particular way, makes no sense.

Conclusion: Therefore, we should not interpret this promise in this particular way.

P: /Sense

------------------

C: /Interpret

So, how do we bridge this gap? /Sense → /Interpret. In English, this means:

"If an interpretation of a promise makes no sense, then we should not interpret said promise in this way."

And hey, look at that - that's exactly what D says.

Premise 1: New product lines need good managers to succeed.

Premise 2: However, companies tend to assign good managers only to established product lines that are already successful, and most new ones fail because of this.

Conclusion: Therefore, companies should assign their best managers to new product lines instead of already-successful ones.

D strengthens by blocking this possible counterargument: "Well, what if this huge shift in personnel causes the already-successful product lines to fail?" D says, "Don't worry, an already-successful product line can still be successful even if the company's best managers are in charge of other things."

So, while "plugging the gap" between the existing premises and the conclusion is certainly one way to strengthen an argument, there are multiple ways to strengthen arguments. For example, you can also add new premises that independently make the conclusion more believable, like we just did here. So, while you're sifting through the answer choices, try to avoid getting tunnel vision and looking only for answer choices that strengthen the argument in one particular way, if that makes sense.