There is a gap between "making a profit" in the sub-conclusion and "prosperity" in the main conclusion. The argument is treating "making a profit" as "having prosperity".

AC (C) points the distinction out that "making a profit" (aka paying family member lower wage) might actually reduce "prosperity".

Maria: You don't need formal schooling to make crucial contributions to tech advancement. Edison is an example.

Frank: not true anymore (= formal schooling is necessary to make crucial contibutions). More extensive tech knowledge is needed to make crucial contibutions.

Frank: conclusion: CC→FS; premise: CC→METK; assuming: METK→FS (formal schooling is necessary to gain more extensive tech knowledge)

A) Exactly, Frank assumes a neceesary relationship between METK and FS. He ignores the possibility of obtaining METK without FS.

B) Irrelevant

C) No, but I was trapped here. I thought Frank was saying that "since many new techs have been created, it's more difficult to qualify for a crucial contibution" thereby having a different definition of "crucial" contribution...lol... Need to better identify conclusion/premise. He's saying that FS is necessary to make CC because FS is necessary to gain METK.

D) Nope. Other's productivity...irrelevant

E) Wrong, not the flaw here

#help

SA needed: universal loss of belief in exist → /money exist

Contrapositive: money exist → /universal loss of belief in exist (which means at least some still believe)

AC (A) how is this translated? How do you translate "even if"? How does (A) fill the gap?

So far I can only pick A by eliminating the other choices.

Conclusion: # of 65+ ppl increases.

Premise: the average age went up from 52 to 57.

Consider all 57+ ppl as the "old" group and all 52- ppl as the "young" group. In order to increase an average, either we get more "larger ones", or we get fewere "smaller ones". Translated to this question: to increase the average age, either we have more "old" people, or have fewer "young" people.

Since we are arguing that there are more "old" people, we need to get rid of the other possibility to strengthen this argument. Thus, we cannot have fewer "young" people. We should either have the same number of "young" people, or more.

A) yep, exactly what we need. More young ppl, woohoo.

B) Nope... but this is what I initially picked because I was confused by my own shorthand... so I was looking for something that says there are fewer "young" people. Phhhh. Still, lowered birth rate does not necessarily indicate that the # of "young" people decreased or increased.

C) & D) are about the total number, regardless of which age group they fall into. This doesn't help the argument.

E) Phhhh, so? We don't care about how it compares to other places.

When there is a causal relationship:

i) If cause exists, then effect exists.

ii) If cause doesn't exist, then effect doesn't exist.

The argument has stated that "when cause is there, effect is there" (when dioxin is in river [factory running], fish abnormal).

And now a premise says that "fish abnormality is gone" (effect doesn't exist).

Now adding AC (C), which says dioxin (the cause) is not there, to the pool. This is saying the cause also doesn't exist. With the premise and this AC (C), we now have "when dioxin is gone, fish abnormality is gone" which is exactly "when cause doesn't exist, then effect doesn't exist" -- the second part of the above defined causal relationship. Thus, this is making the causal relationship, that the argument argued against, more likely. Therefore, the argument is weakened.

Conclusion: safety decreases when speed limits (SL) increases

Premises: (1) those who now violate SL might obey the new SL

(2) those who do not violate now would increase their speed

Weakens: "these consequences would not necessarily decrease safety" → note to self: when multiple premises and argument has many turns, make sure to focus on what we are trying to find here, i.e. what the correct AC should be about →here we try to attack the argument that "given these premises, safety goes down when SL increases"

B) "uniformity" ← premise (2) says those who didn't violate SL will increase speed, and (1) says whose who violated SL will be within new limits. Therefore the speed difference of the two is decreasing, or "converging," closing the difference gap. This AC then says, hey, uniformity is better than lower average speed in terms of highway safety. Bingo then, these consequences of SL increases would not necessarily decrease safety. Argument attacked:)

Same issue...