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

#help

I thought the answer was A on timed conditions and BR. If water droplets were falling from the cave ceiling onto the floor in the past, then the sea level must have been higher than the cave's ceiling in the past. Otherwise, where would the water droplets from the ceiling have been coming from? In my mind, the cave must have been submerged in the past.

After watching the video, B makes sense as well. I know I'm supposed to 'shatter my reasoning' when I get a question wrong (according to the BR lesson). But I'm having trouble changing my logic because I do not know what I did wrong with my interpretation of this question. I don't understand how water could have been dropping onto the cave floor if the sea level used to be lower than it is now.

I am interested, thanks for setting this up!

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!

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!

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.

#help

There is another assumption in this argument that the video solution did not address, and answer choice E could potentially weaken the argument. I'm wondering if anyone can help disprove my reasoning.

Argument structure:

Conclusion: govt should subsidize the development costs for new vaccines

Major Premise: marketing of vaccines will be less profitable than marketing for any other pharmaceutical product

Minor Premise: because sales of vaccines will be lower

More minor premise: because it is given to a patient once while other products are given to each patient more than once

Another assumption is between the major premise and minor premise. It argues that marketing of vaccines will be less profitable than other products because sales of vaccines will be lower than other products. But what if the marketing expenses of vaccines will also be lower? Then the marketing of vaccines may be just as profitable as the marketing of other products, potentially even more profitable.

Answer choice E contributes to this assumption. It states that the cost of administering vaccines is rarely borne by the company. The cost of administering a vaccine appears to be a deduction from sales in determining the marketing profits. Therefore, the costs will be lower for vaccines and perhaps their marketing profits will not be lower than the marketing profits of other products.

So why isn't E the correct answer?

Very entertaining explanation by JY, this one really had me laughing. Thank you for making studying fun!