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

We do not need to assume that the temperature stopped increasing. Rather, we need to assume that the beetle's temperature tolerance has not changed. This is because the basis for these ancient beetles' temperature tolerances were obtained from modern day beetles.

What if modern beetles have a temperature tolerance of 30 degrees but the ancient beetles had a temperature tolerance of -10 degrees? Those ancient beetles could have been living in an ice age for all we know. So we would set the maximum temperature for the ancient time to be 30 degrees when in reality, the maximum temperature was -10 degrees. The study would be very inaccurate.

In order for the study to be accurate, the temperature tolerance of the beetles must not have changed significantly from the ancient period until today.

We simply can't assume the tolerances were the same, yet that is exactly what the argument presumes.

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).

#help

Why isn't C or D correct? I just haven't wrapped my head around why they aren't necessary. My thought process for each answer is included below.

C) What if the vitamin pills that are of a higher quality or include more natural ingredients were not synthesized vitamins? Perhaps they are of a higher quality than the ones found in food. And perhaps they are of a higher quality than other synthesized vitamin brands. Then shouldn't these vitamins be worth more? The negation of C destroys the argument in my mind.

D) If this is negated, then the advertisers are not lying. Their vitamins are indeed of a higher quality or use more natural ingredients. Isn't that a valid reason to pay more?

E) This seemed like a sufficient but not necessary condition to me. I don't know why but it just doesn't seem right. It doesn't relate the conclusion back to the premise ie) it makes no link between vitamin pills and synthesized vitamins.

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.

Another flaw could have been that the argument assumes the source documents are accurate.

If the source documents being referenced by the independent archeologists are also inaccurate (perhaps they were falsified by the museum), then the documents may match the report yet neither the report nor the documents would be accurate.

If important information is excluded then the reports would not be accurate. Yes, it may be the case that all the information on the reports are accurate but the report as a whole will still be inaccurate if there are omitted entries.

I'll give an extreme example to simplify this.

Say there were two sales during the year - first sale was for $100 and second sale was for $10 million. Only the first sale was recorded on the museum's report. That means the revenues show a mere $100. Therefore, $10 million of revenue is excluded and the report is definitely inaccurate.

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 viewed this as valid argument form #3, A → B → C therefore A → C.

This made it way more difficult to find the correct answer. I was scrambling through the answer choices to find a similar argument and none of them were similar. It was only after a ton of time during BR that I realized the question was going for this argument form.

A→ B

/B

Therefore /A

I guess when I could not find a similar argument, I should have returned to the stimulus to reevaluate the argument form.

Did anyone else make the same error?

#help (Added by Admin)

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.

That is more of an appeal to popular opinion among meteorologists than a generalization. A generalization is making a broad statement from particular instances. For instance, one might say all houses are red because I have only seen red houses in my life. Or you can apply a generalization to a specific case. For example, one might say the next house I see will certainly be red because all houses are red.

That is what our question does. It applies a generalization to a specific case. In a complicated system, no significant aspect can be controlled by a single variable. That is the generalization used by the meteorologist. It is a generalization because the meteorologist doesn't say anything about our example (the sun controlling land temperatures). Perhaps his generalization is inconsistent with this particular situation. But the meteorologist doesn't even entertain that possibility.

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.