I'm just confused what Answer (C) means when it says "the first thing's having caused the second". If anything, wouldn't it be natural to assume the "first thing" = owning a laptop, since that was the first event mentioned, followed by the higher paying job as the "second"? Or does the author just mean one thing causing the other? In which case that also feels wrong because the answer choice would then read "It concludes taht one thing was caused by another although one thing was caused by another." Please help! #feedback

I'm just confused what Answer (C) means when it says "the first thing's having caused the second". If anything, wouldn't it be natural to assume the "first thing" = owning a laptop, since that was the first event mentioned, followed by the higher paying job as the "second"? Or does the author just mean one thing causes the other? In which case that also feels wrong because the answer choice would then read "It concludes that one thing was caused by another although the evidence given is consistent with one thing caused by another." Please help! #feedback

Answer (D) feels synonymous to Answer (A). If the author fails to consider there are other characteristics that lessened Australopithecus' chances of survival, AKA other factors/conditions that impact the ability to survive prehistoric times, that seems to essentially imply that coping with diverse natural environments -- a necessary condition for prehistoric human survival -- is NOT sufficient for Australopithecus' survival. In other words, failing to consider there are other characteristics means failing to understand coping with diverse natural environments is just a necessary rather than sufficient condition for survival... there are other considerations that should be made!

Please help me understand why (A) and (D) aren't synonymous!!#feedback

How do we know when to read a EXPLICITLY STATED sentence as an assumption vs a premise? In this case, I was hesitant to choose (E) because I thought the author was telling us -- as a premise -- that the 90% of the unused brain contain tremendous sources of creativity and innovation.

Is it an assumption in this case because the sentence is phrased in REFERENCE to the terms "creativity and innovation" that haven't previously been brought up? I.e. if the author separated the sentence into 1) this unused part of the brain is filled with creativity and innovation, and 2) with this creativity and innovation, we can solve many problems, would answer (E) be incorrect?

Like many others in the comments section, I'm unsure why D is wrong. I understand the video explanation, but if we interpret D a wholly different way -- that the majority of the heat of the global atmosphere derives from the Sun's sunlight passing through it -- then we can confirm that the ice-snow v. water-land ratio is even significant to begin in. In other words, if the sunlight is NOT where most of the heat comes from, then reflecting 100% of the sunlight via the advocated snow and ice seems to be negligible when the heat is actually coming from, say, the core of the Earth (or any other source of heat). #feedback

For Question 22, why is B correct in saying it's resolvable ONLY if the two sides can find common ground? Doesn't the first sentence of the last paragraph ("What would be required to resolve the debate between the philosophers of mind, then, is an investigation into the authority of their differing perspectives.") suggest that an alternative way to resolve the impasse is to investigate each perspective's authority? In a world where the two sides CANNOT find a common ground, they can still resolve their impasse through this alternative method. My first though is maybe this line of thinking is wrong because investigating authority is only a necessary condition and not an actual alternative... but reaching common ground as stated in (B) is also a necessary condition according to the passage.

Please help!! #feedback

Why are we able to conclude the author's attitude is positive towards Turner and Ginsburg, and negative towards Weiner just from the statement "lends credence"? Isn't it more accurate to say that the author simply believes Turner's position supports Ginsburg, but nevertheless remains neutral in which side they (the author) believe is correct? #feedback

When doing MP questions like this, should we circle A and move on before reading the rest of the choices? It's a pretty accurate description of our prediction, but like you said it could be improved if it were a little more general/inclusive of other points mentioned. Should we go through each answer choice and confirm there's no better alternative? #feedback

I'm wondering what we should do in this particular question, and what our general approach should be in all future MP (and RC) questions. For LR, for many questions like MBT or necessary assumption it was easy to know that an answer was correct before reading the other choices. What about in RC?

What makes this passage single position, given that there are different scientists/researchers disagreeing about the truth of this relict hypothesis? I thought it'd be a critique/debate passage.

If choice (C) didn't include the first half of the sentence and only said "Beginning readers relied solely on context to guess at difficult words" would that still have been a sufficient answer? The question stem seems to only ask about why the order didn't matter for beginners. Does this mean we don't need to explain why it DID matter for the more experienced readers?

For choice (D), how does being land-dwellers for many generations explain why modern-day tree-dwelling kangaroos don't have prehensile tails and opposable thumbs? To me, just because they were without these appendages when they existed as land-dwelling, doesn't mean they still don't have them as tree-dwelling. It feels reasonable to assume that they became tree dwelling at least partly because they were ABLE to aka had these specific tails and thumbs. Perhaps not enough time passed by for them to re-develop and they were just living in trees for an alternative reason, but the direction is moving towards gaining these appendages again (if not now, then inevitably). It feels more reasonable to conclude they would've regained these appendages in their current form as tree-dwellers rather than assuming not enough time has passed thus explaining why they don't have these appendages.

To analogize this logic: fish 'X' may have been ancestors of the land-living fish 'Y' with lungs and legs for many generations, but now that fish X lives exclusively in the ocean, we'd reasonably assume that fish X has gills and fins fit for ocean survival. Similarly, shouldn't we assume current tree-dwelling kangaroos WOULD have prehensile tails and opposable thumbs fit for survival in trees? This, then, would provide no explanation for / would contradict the stimulus's statement that tree-dwellers don't have these appendages.

I picked choice (A) because it said opposable thumbs were used to climb quickly down trees, head first. But now that kangaroos climb in a completely different way, it feels reasonable to assume that they no longer needed these thumbs. Of course, this doesn't explain the missing prehensile tails in these modern tree-dwelling kangaroos, but choice (A) at least provides some sort of explicit explanation. Does the correct answer choice have to reconcile EVERY part of the phenomenon (aka explain both missing thumbs and tails)?

pls help! #feedback

For A, why is it that there's no competing argument? I get that an argument requires a premise to conclusion structure, but isn't the premise that male moose evolved giant antlers as a way of fighting over other males, from which we can conclude that evolution does always optimize survival? Granted, it's a horrible premise support but we see tons of flaw in the reasoning arguments with this kind of unrepresentative flaw. But they're nonetheless arguments (just with bad reasoning), right?

For 10 -- if young males not being culled is evidence that riding occurred (end of p2), then how come bones primarily of young males (aka young males were not culled) is evidence that the Botai did not ride them (choice C)?

The explanation says if the Botai did ride horses, there would be a lot of fully grown males. Does "young males not being culled" = existence of fully grown adult males? I get the logic of how that could be true, but idk if i should interpret young males not being culled as having a lot of young males or having a lot of adult males...

If something "anticipates" another, can we take this to mean that the former had an influence on the latter in some way, or does it only mean that one chronologically came before the other?

Why is E wrong? the stimulus doesn't seem to establish that equally and widely distributed political power = referendum, which makes me think E is necessary. If there could be other ways to distribute political power equally and widely, that means it might not be a referendum but instead another form of government that we should be drawing a conclusion about. E states that the only way is by referendum, allowing us to properly draw the conclusion from premises. #feedback pls!

For an answer choice like A, JY explains it's wrong by saying it's not related to the group at issue in the stimulus. Although that makes sense, EVEN IF somehow it was talking about the relevant group, my instinct is to eliminate it solely on the basis that answer choice A can only hurt the argument made in the stimulus. The conclusion talks about how columnists CANNOT persuade. Choice A mentions how persuasion does occur.

Is this the right way to think about it? I feel like every time there's an answer choice that moves in the opposite direction of the conclusion (contradicts conclusion), it also happened that the answer choice is not referring to the relevant group, so that's how JY has been eliminating it. Can't we just eliminate it based off the fact that the answer choice is in the opposite direction?? If we're trying to find a necessary assumption an argument makes in concluding it's conclusion, it cannot possibly be a weaken-esq answer choice, right? In other words, it doesn't matter how we "fix" the answer choice to make it relevant, even when we fix it, it's weakening the argument. So it can't possibly be the right answer.

Note: choice (C) is translated a bit wrong, the conclusion is that some painters are dancers, but JY reads some musicians are dancers as the conclusion. All love JY just clarifying.

I'm having trouble understanding why choice (C) is incorrect. If i translated "new regs will be successful only if most of the students adhere" as the contrapositive of how JY wrote it (S --> MSA as a contrapositive written as /MSA -> /S), and then we're given MSA as a premise and S as a conclusion, that seems to logically operate the same way as the stimulus we're trying to parallel:

A --> B

/A

/B

feels the same as

/MSA --> /S

MSA

-----

S

Is it wrong because we NEED to start with a positive sufficient term?? That doesn't feel right since the logic should nevertheless be the same. Choice (C) is just a mistaken reversal of S/N, and Choice (D) is a mistaken negation of S/N. But both mistakes are contrapositives of each other anyways. Please help!!

This may be a grammatical misinterpretation, but for A i understood “little evidence for an increase in intensity of projectiles… during the period from three billion to five billion years ago” as there was no increase starting from the point of 3 billion to the point of 5 billion, just within that 2 billion yr range. Under this interpretation, choice A allows for a world where, say, the intensity of strikes is decreasing over time, but Mars is nevertheless included in the scope of LHB (aka hypo 2).

Instead, it seems like we interpreted it as not having a heightened/increased intensity in that time period (3 to 5) compared to the rest of the celestial timeline outside that range.

Is there any wording in A that hints i should interpret the latter way?

For C, the LR voice in my head doesn't love the Cause -- > Effect, thus No Cause --> No Effect reasoning because I start to think "what about other factors and meteor showers we don't know about and other celestial conditions etc etc that can have an even bigger degree of influence than LHB on craters. But i guess since none of these other factors were mentioned in the passage, I'm not allowed to assume other factors are at play/ I should at least err in favor of the one cause that IS mentioned.

Is that the right idea?

For question 18, how are we supposed to know that gravitational force cannot be induced without having background science knowledge? Where in the passage does it suggest this?

For D, how do we know these discoverERS all have been able to manufacture a variation on a theme? Because they're great, so we're assuming they all made a discovery?

If we ignore the author's sub-conclusion, that "then there would be no way at all to achieve understanding," is the conclusion now valid?: The psychologists claim that deep empathy is the best way; the author claims deep empathy is impossible; thus, the psychologists are wrong in that deep empathy is the best because [i think we can safety assume that] the best way cannot possibly be a method that's impossible to achieve.

I get that both the sub-conclusion "then there would be no way at all to achieve understanding" and the latter premise "but obviously one can understand other people" both strongly hint at the flaw pointed out by choice (C), but independent of those it feels like the author can STILL conclude that the psychologists are wrong. The author seems to nevertheless have premises (deep empathy is impossible) that support the conclusion (psychologists are wrong), with the small assumption that impossible methods are not the best method.

Additionally premises/irrelevant sentences are ignored all the time, so I don't see why we can't do that here as well.

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this!! Thanks. #feedback

Would Answer (A) be better if it said "nonrepresentation art is a category in which we do have clear criteria for determination."? I'm asking because the prediction I made prior to reading the answer choices was that just because we don't have criteria for representational art, doesn't mean we don't have for non-representational art (stimulus's sentence 1 confirming that some non-representational art does exist). In this manner, the world of "art" is interpreted as representational vs non-representational, almost a binary matter (although it is true that the stimulus did say 'some' representational and 'some' non-representational exist, allowing for the existence of 'some' other types of art making it non binary). But in any case, C seems to exploit this latter world of art where there are multiple categories (non binary) of art besides representation vs nonrepresentation that are ALSO aesthetically relevant properties (like representation), that DO indeed have clear criteria - thus making the conclusion invalid and the answer correct. I guess I got stuck on this question fixated/searching for the prediction I made.

Why is it that for Hendry we write “most strikes should be legal” as a premise (so we can deduce Hendry’s conclusion) but for Menkin we write “most strikes shouldn’t be legal” as a conclusion (so we can deduce the premise/assumption)? #help!