This used to be one of my biggest issues as well. I still experience issues with skimming over important parts of the stimulus from time to time. But I have improved in this area and the biggest contributor to this improvement was certainly the 'Introduction to Arguments' and 'Grammar' lessons in the core curriculum. I'd recommend reviewing them if you have the time.

Be sure to study key words, including premise indicators, conclusion indicators, words used to transition from context to arguments (but, although, however), etc. Once you get the hang of this, you will recognize the structure of an argument faster and this will help you to focus in on the important parts of each stimulus.

Another recommendation I have heard people provide is to slow down when reading the stimulus, especially on harder questions. The time to speed up is when you're skimming through the answer choices, not when you read the stimulus. Once you finish the stimulus, if you have an idea of what the answer will be, that is when you should read the answer choices quickly to identify the correct one.

The 7sage core curriculum is very useful, I'd recommend doing those lessons if you haven't already!

Thank you for this excellent explanation!

C is not a good explanation because if many depressed people are middle-aged then how can we assume that they are more afraid of dying? Maybe being depressed makes them less afraid of dying. It is a big assumption to presume that depressed people are very afraid of dying. That's why C is correct.

B is a good explanation because if many people depend on you, you will be more nervous of dying since your dependants (such as children) will no longer have anyone providing for them. That is a pretty good reason to be afraid of dying.

This is correct. The original statement is:

None of the mercury introduced into the body can be eliminated.

In Lawgic: Mercury in body → /Eliminated

To negate this, you negate the necessary condition and change the arrow to "and" or "some."

Negation: Some of the mercury introduced into the body can be eliminated.

In Lawgic: Mercury in body "and/some" Eliminated

Even if the people with common mountain sickness don't usually take the treatment, some of them still might take it (which is likely). So if someone with cerebral edema goes to the hospital in high altitude, a doctor might just treat them for the common mountain sickness. The doctor assumes the person has a mild sickness when in reality, they have CE. Therefore, this patient will die as they have been given the wrong treatment (that for ordinary mountain sickness rather than for CE).

Nice job The Batman. I'm excited to see your new movie.

Completely agree with this. But usually, strengthening questions will not provide very much support and they rarely make the argument valid. So I believe the chart above is fair since most of the time, strengthening answer choices do far less work than a PSA or SA.

E is definitely flawed. It is the whole to part flaw. You cannot attribute a trait of society to every member of society.

I'd be very curious to see that as well. I actually selected A as my answer. I now realize a major reason A is wrong - it attacks the premises rather than the support structure. Once A is out it becomes clear that C is the only viable answer choice.

The return of the "some cats like to drink milk" example. Been waiting for JY to say that again haha

Yeah that sounds fine to me.

Another example I could think of is saying I was tired for a few minutes this morning but I was also hungry at the same time. So my being tired must have caused me to be hungry.

It's just a temporary correlation that may not have a causal relationship at all but yet the author claims there is a causal relationship.

The phrase containing "probably" is a major premise/sub conclusion while the phrase containing "definitely"is the main conclusion. So the sub-conclusion is supporting the main conclusion. Since the support (sub-conclusion) says "probably" and the main conclusion says "definitely," that is a flaw. You cannot say "definitely" when the support only gives evidence that something is probable.

I had a similar confusion when I began doing these practice sets. I realized that the Principle explanation videos prior to the problem sets only explain one type of principle question - the type that asks "which of the following most closely conforms to the principle above?"

However, it seems as though most principle questions ask "which principle underlies the argument above?" I think of these questions as SA or PSA questions because we are basically just trying to strengthen the argument.

I am interested, thanks for setting this up!

The trap got me too. I only had 20 seconds left on the clock when I got to this question so I immediately picked A and thought wow I actually got this in less than 20 seconds. Of course it was just a trap though as I realized during BR haha.

I agree, that would work well.

Or it could even say "a strong opening statement and a refined condition of direct testimony are useless if the client is found guilty."

The only similarity is that E says something is irrational. But we need it to say that it is irrational to ignore what someone says/argues just because they don't act in accordance with their own argument. Basically, we need it to say something like 'it is irrational to ignore someone's argument simply because they do not act in accordance with that argument." (E) does not do this. (E) says it is irrational to condemn someone for committing an action that you have committed yourself.

All the stimulus tells us is that the total amount of coal available at the end of 1991 is less than the end of 1990. It also tells us that no coal is imported or exported. This means the total amount of coal is what we have mined, minus what we have consumed.

Let's say we had 10 units of coal at the end of 1990 and 5 units at the end of 1991. (The stimulus tells us we have less in 1991 so we could select any number less than 10, but let's stick with 5). What can we conclude from this? We must have consumed more coal than we had mined. If we started 1991 with 10 units and ended with 5, we consumed 5 more units than we mined. If we mined 500 units in 1991, then we must have consumed 505 units during the year. If we mined 20 units in 1991, then we must have consumed 25 units. You can plug any numbers into this but we will always have consumed 5 more units than we mined.

No, you won't be deducted points for getting a question wrong. So it is always better to guess than to leave it blank.

I am also going through the core curriculum and have experienced the same thing as you. It definitely gets harder to get the questions right as you get further into the problem sets!

I actually have a question too. It usually takes me 2-3 full days to get through the problem sets for each lesson due to blind review and watching all of JY's explanation videos. Does it take you this long as well? And do you watch the explanation videos for every question or only those that you got wrong?

Thanks!

C is a trick so it's tough to eliminate it. But it says the production of other fish will not replace the lost production of halibut. But that doesn't actually mean anything on its own. Let's say they did increase production of other fish to replace halibut. Does that mean the market's demand for halibut will decrease? No. Perhaps the market doesn't like other fish and they only want halibut. Then the price of halibut will still rise. So the fact that (C) won't replace production of halibut with other fish isn't actually useful information. On the other hand, (A) is very useful because if the demand for halibut doesn't decrease substantially, it is very likely that price will rise.

Tough question. Here's my thought process and reasoning for why D is right.

The argument makes two assumptions if you ask me.

1. Traditions that improve memory are preferred to traditions that do not.

2. If a tradition allows you to remember only the important information and forget the unimportant information, then that tradition is preferred to a tradition with long (and confusing) forms of communication.

(A) This answer requires us to assume that oral traditions are more accurate than written ones. This is a slight stretch. We are only told that written traditions are long, meaning they are not accurate. Were we ever told that oral traditions are accurate? Not really. We were told that the unimportant details will be forgotten, which actually implies oral traditions aren't accurate. Oral traditions simply make it easier for people to remember the key details. Okay, so (A) doesn't look great anymore. But let's say you assume oral traditions are more accurate than written ones. Then answer choice (A) links back to the premise that oral traditions are better because they improve memory. So if we make the assumption that oral traditions are more accurate, then it explains why oral traditions improve memory. And once you get to this point, you'll realize for a second time that answer (A) is useless. We aren't looking for an explanation of how oral traditions improve memory. If option (A) had instead stated "traditions that improve your memory are preferable to traditions that do not" then I believe (A) would have been a great answer. But that would have made the question far easier and clearly the LSAT writers are attempting to make a very tough question here.

(B) is tricky too but not to the extent of (A). It says literate populations need to communicate more efficiently. We already know written traditions sometimes communicate inefficiently. But could it be possible that written traditions are preferred to oral traditions, despite the fact that written traditions need to communicate more efficiently? Yes. Perhaps oral traditions need to communicate more efficiently as well. As I mentioned earlier, the stimulus does imply that oral traditions are not efficient either. Or perhaps written traditions have other benefits that outweigh those of oral traditions. Also, (B) relates more to literate populations rather than written traditions themselves. So it’s not directly relevant to the argument. Due to all of this, B doesn't do much for us.

(C) is easy to eliminate as both written and oral traditions are traditions. This does nothing to prove that oral traditions are better.

(D) just intentionally uses complex language to confuse us. Pretty common in the last few questions it seems. Add on top of this that D requires an assumption and it becomes even harder to select this one. But (D) does actually help the argument. It says conciseness (economy of expression) is preferred over long and confusing communication (verbosity). Now we need to assume that oral traditions are more concise (use better economy of expression). If you recall, this is the exact same assumption we needed to make with (A). We're assuming that oral traditions are more accurate than written ones. It sucks that we have to make this assumption because I do think it’s a bit of a stretch. But once you do make this assumption, we see that oral traditions are better in this aspect. Oral is more accurate while written traditions are more verbose (stimulus says that written traditions are long and confusing). This makes D the best answer. Yes, it requires an assumption just like (A) does. But even after making this assumption, (A) does nothing to show that oral traditions are preferred to written ones. On the other hand, after making this assumption, (D) is actually the only answer that leads one to believe oral traditions are better than written ones.

(E) is useless for the argument and does nothing to show that oral traditions are preferred over written ones.

Completely agree with this

I think everyone sometimes struggles to understand the argument structure. Just remember to identify the conclusion and premise indicators if they are present!

Here we have the word "since" in the last sentence, which always introduces a premise followed by a conclusion in the same sentence. Alternatively, "since" may be immediately preceded by a conclusion with a premise appearing after. In this case, we have the premise first and the conclusion immediately after.