I haven't tested yet but I do know someone who had the following trajectory:

171 first time

165 second time

176 third time

These are amazing scores. And at the same time, when this person saw their 165, they panicked and doubted everything about themselves. Luckily, they kept going and got the 176 at the end. My point here is that someone who can score a 171 can also score a 165 - sometimes, there are just things about one specific test that might play more or less to your strengths. The best thing you can do is to keep pushing yourself to achieve the score you want, and not get lost in the sauce of this one score. It's easy to look at someone going from a 171 to a 165 and say that they started slacking off, etc. But in reality, I think it's hard to know the real reason behind any of these differences when they're as small as a few points. Give yourself the credit you deserve, and if anything, let this 163 power you through to where you want to be next. If you score above a 163 the next time, then you made progress, and I've heard a lot about how much admissions officers love to see some progress.

@ said:

I hope there is no rule against reviving old posts, but I have struggled with reconciling how answer choice D is correct and here is how I addressed it broadly and concisely:

Broad Flaw: The counselor is using their majoritarian view of "Comparing" to justify a majoritarian view of "not Comparing," it also causing a majority response without considering "something else (the non-majority causes in the premises outside of almost invariably being at least 50%+1 but not 100%)" and other variables:

Concise/Generic Flaw: Assuming that if a majority of variable-effects are true, the opposing or opposite variable-effects are also true in the majority; all without considering other causes of the opposing or opposite variable-effects.

Does this make sense or is this the wrong way to approach getting to answer choice D?

Okay, honestly, your wording was a bit tough to understand, but I think your broad flaw sounds like it could be correct. I'm just going to break it down here for my own sake, but hopefully this also helps someone else.

The author says the following:

compare to more successful -> self-disparagement

compare to less successful -> dismissive of others

The correct contrapositive would be:

/self-disparagement -> /compare to more successful

/dismissive of others -> /compare to less successful

However, the author instead concludes that:

/compare to more successful -> /self-disparagement

/compare to less successful -> /dismissive of others

I think this is a sufficiency/necessity error. Refraining from comparing yourself to others does not ensure that you are not going to be self-disparaging or dismissive of others. On most questions, an answer choice will kind of whisper something along those lines by saying something like "confuses a condition that is sufficient with a condition that is necessary" or so on. But in this case, none of the answer choices do that, even though we know in our hearts that the stimulus is drawing an invalid conclusion. What do we do in that instance? Read all the answer choices, see which one speaks to this truth the most.

(A) if A is true, then all we end up with is the reality that someone can be both self-disparaging and dismissive of others. You can actually be both if you compare yourself to people who you believe are less successful and more successful. Is that a flaw here? No, it's just a completely different point. The flaw is rooted in what the author thinks will allow a person to be self-accepting and accepting of others.

(B) There's often one of these answer options. Sure, maybe there are other beneficial effects. We're focused on the negative effects, though, and ways to prevent those negative effects.

(C) C is almost restating the point. It's like "the author didn't explicitly state that if you are dismissive of others, you are not accepting of others." Is that why this whole argument is wrong? Did we need the author to say "if you are dismissive others, you do not accept them?" No, because ultimately, the main issue here is the necessity/sufficiency confusion. At the end of the day, even if the author did tell us that

compare to less successful -> dismissive of others -> /accepting of others

the counselor still went ahead and concluded that

/compare to less successful -> /dismissive of others -> accepting of others

Even if C was implemented in the stimulus, it wouldn't change the fact that the author derives their conclusion from mistaking necessity/sufficiency.

(D) D is tough because it hints at the flaw without stating it as explicitly as a lot of other questions have in the past, which was my understanding of @ explanation above. D is saying "okay, you can be self-disparaging and dismissive of others even if you're not comparing yourself to them." In other words, D is saying that comparing yourself to others is not sufficient to being self-disparaging or dismissive. Sure, maybe comparing yourself to others is a necessary condition, like so:

being self-disparaging -> comparing yourself to others

But we know that the rules of lawgic say that just because you don't have the necessary condition doesn't mean that you don't have the sufficient condition. So just because you're not comparing yourself to others doesn't mean there aren't other conditions that might contribute to you being self-disparaging.

I think the other reason that this answer works is because we know that the argument in the stimulus is not valid. Answer choice D is like one step ahead of the game. The first step would be to acknowledge the flawed conclusion. The second step would be to acknowledge the other contributing factors to actually being self-accepting and accepting of others. D does step 2.

(E) not true. The stimulus does not assume that all people who compare themselves end up in a spiral of badness. The stimulus is saying that if you are actively comparing yourself to believe who you already believe are better/worse than you, then you're self-disparaging or dismissive of others. But if you're comparing yourself to someone who you have no pre-conceived ideas about, or are neutral about, the author doesn't saying anything about what happens then.

Even though E makes sense to me, I really struggled with D for a while because I felt like it was bringing up a decent point. Anyway, here's how I'm thinking about why D is wrong:

The stimulus says: this tax reform is being criticized. people on the right are saying its too specific, people on the left are saying it's too vague. But because one sentence can't be both too specific and too vague, the tax reform is just as it should be (aka fine)!

So just to be clear, the reasoning here is:

tax reform is fine → one sentence can't be both too specific/vague

Initially, I thought D worked because I was stuck on the part of the conclusion where it says the reform is just as it should be. Negated, D says: the proposed legislation as it is framed WAS meant to satisfy one of these political groups. But take this thinking one step further: the legislation was meant to satisfy the left. Now, plug it back into the stimulus:

this tax reform is being criticized. people on the right are saying its too specific, people on the left are saying it's too vague. It was meant to satisfy the left. But because one sentence can't be both too specific and too vague, the tax reform is just as it should be (aka fine)!

Do you see how the negated version of D doesn't make the argument fall apart? D doesn't quite fall in the space between our premise and conclusion (italicized above). It doesn't address the actual reasoning that is being used to conclude that the tax reform is just as it should be, which is the fact that one statement can't be both specific/vague.

Try this same thing with the negated version of E:

this tax reform is being criticized. people on the right are saying its too specific, people on the left are saying it's too vague. the legislation is made up of a bunch of statements, some of which are too specific, some of which are too vague. But because one sentence can't be both too specific and too vague, the tax reform is just as it should be (aka fine)!

Including negated-E makes the conclusion seem absurd because we clearly point out that the issue is not that one STATEMENT/SENTENCE is being accused of being too vague/specific. We clearly state that the issue is that there's a bunch of statements in this legislation, and there are groups of statements which are being called too specific, and other groups which are too vague. So the argument that "one sentence can't be both" is irrelevant, because we just acknowledged that the problem is not about one statement, it's about a variety of them. And that's how negated-E makes the argument fall apart.

Not like I'm stating something new, but just wanted to reiterate: this is an advanced question!! When I answered this, my instincts told me to not even consider A because "harm" was mentioned and I was like omg nope we never talked about harm here. And while the attention to detail in my reasoning is a good thing, I took it too far because it allowed me to cross out the only viable answer choice.

(B) and (C) are just way too absolute. Of course an immoral act could be a violation of etiquette, since morals exist in social and asocial contexts, and the social contexts are the ones that involve etiquette. Similarly, the rules of morality apply everywhere! We find out that morals apply to social and asocial contexts, so certainly there are instances of morals existing when you're around other people.

(D) a value judgement about importance that has no support in the stimulus. the stimulus never gives us anything to base an "importance" claim from.

(E) I chose this answer originally, even though I was so uncertain about it. E is saying that if something is social, there's no way morals could be involved. Again, that's just not true - we find out that morals are not necessarily social, but all that means is they could be social, or they could be asocial. So there is a world in which social + morals exist together, which is why E is wrong.

Even though A uses the word "harm," it still makes sense. All that A is saying is that a person could be immoral without impacting any other person. A doesn't put a whole lot of stock into "harm," it's just trying to say that there is a world in which a person is immoral and no one else experiences that immorality. And even if we are to take "harm" very seriously, yes, there is a world in which a person is immoral and doesn't harm anyone. That would be the case if someone is immoral when no one else is around. For example: not returning a library book is kinda immoral, but there's a world in which that library book is one of 10 copies at the local library, so keeping the book isn't actually harming anyone.

This question gottttttt me. I chose B originally but then switched to C, and looking back, I probably could've also mistakenly chosen A. Here's my reasoning for those three choices:

(A) there are general surgeons who are incompetent. This is a common answer choice that is literally always tempting but rarely the correct option. With any argument that a person makes, there are often exceptions. An analagous situation would be me saying something like "if you want a chance at a good LSAT score, you should study" and then someone being like "there are people who study and fail." Like..... okay. As Kevin points out in the video, the stimulus is just saying that if you want a shot at not having a risky surgery, you should have a general surgeon do it. We're not guaranteeing that things go perfectly here, but because general surgeons have this special training, choosing them to perform your surgery increases the odds that you end up okay afterwards. The fact that there are bad general surgeons out there is nonsense - this statement would be better if maybe it said something like "90% of general surgeons are incompetent" because at least then it's a staggering amount of bad GSs. But the simple fact that there are incompetent general surgeons out there can mean something like "out of 1 million surgeons, there's 2 that are incompetent," and that is a super irrelevant fact here. Another way to look at this: we find out in the second sentence that if you are a general surgeon, you are extremely competent. general surgeon → highly competent doctor. So in another sense, A is just not possible, according to our facts.

(C) the competence of the doctor performing surgery does not guarantee a successful outcome. For this answer choice, I think the best way to understand why it's wrong is to map out the conclusion, which would be: /general surgeon performs surgery → exposed to highly undesirable risks. The contrapositive to that would be: /exposed to highly undesirable risks → general surgeon performs surgery. In other words, if your surgery isn't highly risky, then it was performed by a general surgeon. But just because your surgery wasn't highly risky has nothing to do with whether or not it was successful. More importantly, a surgery that isn't highly risky could still be risky. It could be: medium risky, a little bit risky, or not risky at all. My point is that the conclusion isn't actually saying that much - it's only making a comment about highly risky surgeries, but beyond that, it never claims that general surgeons always have successful outcomes, etc.

(B) general surgeons are not the only doctors competent to perform surgery. Let's just reiterate our conditionals here:

agree to risk surgery → surgery performed by highly competent doctor

general surgeon → highly competent doctor

----------------------------------------

/general surgeon performs surgery → exposed to highly undesirable risks

Seeing this mapped out was enough to help me realize the discrepancy: just because it's not a general surgeon who is performing the surgery doesn't mean it can't be someone who is highly competent. Sure, we learned that general surgeons are highly competent, but we never learned that they are THE ONLY ONES who are highly competent. So the conclusion is throwing the baby out with the bathwater: the simple fact that it's not a general surgeon doesn't mean that you're not getting someone competent.

If you're still confused: the second conditional is what's being messed with here. The conclusion is mistakenly assuming that /general surgeon → /highly competent doctor. But that's not the right way to understand the second conditional. The contrapositive of the second conditional would only be: /highly competent doctor → /general surgeon. Again, these statements are just reiterating the fact that general surgeons are awesome, but it doesn't help us reach the conclusion that ONLY general surgeons are awesome.

Lastly, the thing that I originally didn't like about this answer choice was the word "competent." Throughout the stimulus, we read things like "highly competent" or "extremely competent," which made me feel like B wasn't a good answer choice because we don't care about competent doctors, we need highly competent or extremely competent doctors. However, I think the reason this doesn't matter here is because there is a hierarchy of the flaws that LSAT writers care about. Kevin has a video about this on youtube (link below) but in short: mistaking sufficiency/necessity is one of the most important flaws out there. The passage does equivocate regarding highly competent/extremely competent, but that inconsistency is not nearly as important as the fact that the argument messes up the contrapositive of the second conditional statement. If you have to choose between the two, sufficiency/necessity is the way to go. For this stimulus, the equivocation is not the thing that's making it wrong, so when we choose an answer choice, lean towards something that also equivocates about competency over missing the answer choice that acknowledges the bigger mistake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGkfDkVr9I&t=1s

Seeing the stimulus mapped out in this video was a game changer for me. For some reason when I answered this question, I just couldn't believe how many rules were coming up at once, which made me feel like I was doing something wrong or not connecting the puzzle pieces in front of me. Thanks Kevin!

OMG Kevin Lin!!!! I was so happy to turn on this explanation video and hear his voice - I watch his videos on youtube and was happy to hear that he moved to 7Sage :) Yay Kevin

I got 12 and 13 wrong, here's my thinking;

For 12, I chose C rather than B. Once I heard the explanation for why C is wrong though, it immediately made sense. The fact that C says "more KINDS of punishments" is what makes it wrong. Originally, I thought C could be right because the fact that the second rationale doesn't have this internal turmoil about unfairness made me think that it would have an easier time dolling out punishments. The first rationale is worried about justice, whereas the second rationale is like "you committed a crime, so you get punished." So I thought okay, with the second rationale, it might be easier to punish people because it's a yes/no situation - did you commit a crime or not? If yes, then punished. But the video makes a good point: the second rationale may have an easier time saying yes/no to punishment, but we never learn that because of this, more KINDS of punishments would be enacted. If the kinds of punishments include jail time, probation, paying a fine, or community service, there's no reason to think that the second rationale would justify more of those options than the first rationale. In fact, the first rationale is all about public benefit of a punishment, so I imagine that it would certainly be open to giving someone a fine rather than throwing them in jail. The reason I didn't like B is because I didn't take note of the fact that the second rationale bases punishments on "the severity of the crime." Taking that into account, B makes a lot more sense.

For 13, I chose D rather than E - I find the author's attitude questions to be challenging. The reason I chose D is because the author does acknowledge the idea that "if a shoplifter faced 20 years in jail, shoplifting may be deterred." This part really stuck out in my mind because it felt like the author was acknowledging that, if we operate under the first rationale, something like a 20 year sentence for shoplifting could be justified - since the author doesn't seem to outright dislike the first rationale, then I thought that he must be neutral towards its consequences. I see why D is wrong: in the very first sentence of the third paragraph, the author acknowledges that the 20 year sentence situation is a problem, even though it may confer some social benefit. The part that Kevin pointed out was a little less obvious to me because I felt like the author wasn't inserting their opinion into those sentences. I felt like they were saying "people think this is unjust" but they weren't saying "I think so too." However, the first sentence of that paragraph makes it a lot more clear to me that the author thinks this is a problem, which allows me to see why E is right.

If you can afford it, 100% yes.

Score preview is just an insurance policy in case you end up doing worse than you're okay with reporting to schools. If you look around at different law schools' websites, many explicitly state that if they see a cancelled score (aka. they don't see any score, they just see a cancelled test take), they don't factor that cancellation into your admissions decision. Way better to have a canceled score, in my opinion, than a one-off bad test that a law school may factor into their admissions decision for you because they can easily see it on your record.

Just a lil bit frustrated with JY's dismissal of answer choice A here. For anyone that also chose A, here's how I'm thinking about why it's ultimately wrong and C is right:

A says "within the next few years, Country X will impose a system of fines for illegal waste disposal by its industrial companies." The reason this answer seemed tempting to me is because we learn that increased industrial development + over time = resources to tackle pollution. So in my mind, these fines are the resources that are going to diminish the pollution. That's why the argument is fair to assume that these problems are about to start diminishing in the next few years.

However, the reason this is wrong is because we skipped a step. From the stimulus, we learned the following:

(1) poor country = no industrial development = not causing too many pollution issues

(2) mid-tier poor country = 4k-5k economic output = some industrial development = causes worst pollution

(3) mid-tier poor country = 4k-5k economic output = increased industrial development = resources to tackle pollution, making it less bad

When the stimulus ends by telling us that Country X is currently at the point where their economic output is 5k, we have no clue if they are at (2) or (3). The only way that the conclusion follows is if we assume that Country X is at (3), where their economic output is 5k, but they've gotten to a much farther point in their industrial development. This is what C is saying, and why C is the correct answer.

A doesn't help us reach the argument's conclusion. Since the conclusion never specifies to us if Country X has been industrially developing for a while or not, we need our answer choice to state that fact. A jumps the gun and brings up resources to combat pollution, but for all we know, Country X could be at stage (2) and just rolling out random initiatives while still being a top polluter.

Hope this helps!

Had the same thing happen to me a few times.

For me, I think it was anxiety about doing poorly on the test. I usually don't struggle with things like this but I think that most people who are on your study regimen have put pressure on themselves to do well. And so that pressure ultimately does take a toll.

I haven't completely gotten rid of my anxiety while test taking (I think a small amount is good), but something that has helped has been taking timed sections. Before, I would drill maybe like 10-15 questions at a time. Maybe even 25, occasionally. But actually sitting down and just completing one LR section from the June 2015 test, for example, has made things feel better because I'm able to simulate aspects of the test without worrying that at the end of all of this, I'm going to have another PT score. PTs are good, but they're snapshots. And only taking snapshots of your progress is eventually going to give you a bunch of the same thing, because there's more to LSAT practice than the fact that it's 4 sections, 35 min each, one after another.

The timed sections have also been helpful because I feel less concerned about how many mistakes I'm making while I complete them. When I take PTs, I inevitably end up trying to mentally keep tracking of how many mistakes I think I've already made, and that adds to my anxiety about already failing before I'm even done the whole thing. By taking timed sections, I'm trying to do my best, but learning is more at the forefront of my mind than it is with a PT. And then when I do take a PT, I can assure myself that I have the stamina for this, I've practiced whole sections already, and I can remember what my strategies are a little better.

Made the same mistake as lots of other people did here by choosing B over E for Q18. I was down to both of them and obviously didn't think of it quite right. Here's my reasoning now:

B: discomfort at its negative characterization of cultural borrowing by native Americans

breaking this up into its component parts

- discomfort? yes, sure

- was there a negative characterization? yes, sure. Pan Indianism is characterizing all communal Native American events as inevitably leading to the destruction of individual tribes.

- was the negative characterization regarding the cultural borrowing by native Americans? Not quite. This part threw me off because the author does say that cultural borrowing is nothing new, so I remember reading that term and that made this answer very attractive to me. However, when I looked back at the passage, I saw that the author's actual issue with the specific theory of Pan Indianism is that, "the Pan-Indian view is predicated upon an a priori assumption about the nature of cultural contact: that upon contact minority societies immediately begin to succumb in every respect - biologically, linguistically, and culturally - to the majority society." So even though I agree that the author is uncomfortable with the negativity suggested by Pan Indianism, that negativity is not about cultural borrowing, it's about any intertribal events that Native Americans have. When the author does mention cultural borrowing, it's to drive home the point that communal events are nothing new - whenever these events happen, tribes borrow from one another.

At the end of the day, this is still a really hard question no matter how much I explain it to myself. Hope this helps!! Explanation for E is below

E: skeptical that it is a complete explanation of recent changes in Native American society.

- skeptical? sure, okay

- skeptical about Pan Indianism being a complete explanation for recent changes? Ahhh, okay yes. Pan Indianism is trying to explain away all recent changes in Native American society. It's trying to say that all of the changes we're seeing is actually to fulfill one objective: erasure of distinct Native American communities. Does the author agree with this explanation? Nope. The author thinks that the recent changes in Native American society are due to cultural borrowing and just regular old intertribal communities. He's skeptical that all of these tribes have shared dances because they are losing a grasp on their individuality. To the author, a few shared dances and rituals is common practice, and it can't be explained by Pan Indianism because the author disagrees that any of these tribes are actually losing their distinct qualities.

Just wanted to clarify D here. When I answered this question, I was stuck between A and D, and ultimately went with A. So here's my reasoning for why that was wrong:

A: I was a little skeptical about this one, not even for the reason JY stated. JY points out the lawgic/mapping version of why A is wrong, which is fair. In my head, I was unsure about A because the author never said that ONLY highly educated people make informed lifestyle choices. The author draws a parallel between education and informed lifestyle choices, but the end result is that "good health is LARGELY the result of making informed..." So even in the stimulus, the author never made a 100% certain statement. And to this point: if the author did think that only highly educated people made informed lifestyle choices, I think they would have just written that good health is the result of education. The broadening of education -> informed lifestyle choices also suggests that the author used education as an example of informed lifestyle choices, but did not try to say that only highly educated people could make an informed decision.

D: even though I'm familiar with the wording of D, it still stumped me. When I read D, I thought to myself "who cares what contributes to education?? we're only looking at good health here." But it was important to recognize the wording here and remember what this wording is actually referring to: the idea that if two things are correlated (like good health and high educational levels), A causes B, B causes A, or a third thing that we didn't even think about is actually responsible for both A and B. My point here is that the wording of D might lead you to think "this is irrelevant, I only care about good health," but D is not trying to pivot the topic of the conversation. D is suggesting that good health is not caused by the thing it correlates with (high educational levels). It is caused by a third thing altogether, which also happens to potentially cause high educational levels as well. This is a perfect point because even as I read the stimulus, I thought, "how comes the author jumps straight to saying what the likely cause of good health is, just based on that one statement about something that correlates with good health." My takeaway here is just to remember that with the third explanation for a correlation between two things (a third thing that we didn't even think about is actually responsible for both A and B) it's okay if you only care about the cause of A or the cause of B. This answer can still work for you because what it's really trying to say is that correlation does not equal causation.

I'll add that one of the reasons B is tricky, which isn't addressed in the video, is that B says that there were coins that had less than 92% purity. Technically the stimulus doesn't say anything about that. However, we can infer that that's true because we know that 92% was the purest gold content that existed without refinement ("the gold minted in this region was the purest known"). So later in the stimulus, when it said that other coins had higher purity, it was only after they had been refined ("the mints could refine gold and and produced other kinds of coins that had much higher gold content, but the Senegalese gold was never refined").

Love reading through this thread!! I wouldn't characterize myself as an older applicant, but reading this thread has been inspiring nonetheless. I think it's cool that people come into this journey at different points in their lives, and based on experience, it's fun to work with people of all different ages and backgrounds. You ultimately end up being able to forge connections with people who come from very different experiences, but ultimately share some core values. Anyway, good luck to you all! Maybe we'll work together someday in the future

thanks @ !! I was thinking about this more last night and feel like the most motivational thing I came up with was the fact that the practice tests are limited. Even though it may not feel like it in the moment, every time you answer one of these questions, you're losing the opportunity to experience it for the first time again. This isn't to say that re-doing questions is useless, but certainly it is better to try to maximize what you get from each set of practice questions not only by reviewing them, but by making sure that when you answer them, you're truly trying to zone in.

Anyway, would love to hear what others think on this.

this was so helpful for me!! I like your tips for LR - the fact that they're all really short and succinct is exactly what I needed but didn't even know I needed. Thanks for this!

I think it's back up!

@ A I feel like it's been happening more recently lately, but hard to say for a fact if it's gotten worse. Would love it if admin could explain why these errors keep happening and what they're doing to prevent them in the future, because right now it seems like a system-wide thing that just gets repaired every time it goes down.

In a similar boat as lots of other people with #23 - I chose A over E. While I see why E is right, I don't think it's fair to just say that A is completely unsupported - there is wording in the passage that makes A feel tempting.

The part in the passage that made me think A was right was the following: "Studying two freon gases - types of CFCs - they observed that, when released into the lower atmosphere (troposphere), these gases slowly diffuse upward into the stratosphere..."

When I read that part, I assumed that Molina and Rowland could only have studied these gases through lab experiments. But I think that's the precise assumption that makes A wrong. That is, Molina and Rowland could just as easily have studied existing freon gases that were being released into the atmosphere without having created any experimental set up, controlling for variables, etc. The issue of CFC release into the air wasn't some rare occurrence - the passage explains how this phenomenon was extremely common because of different aerosol products + refrigerant chemicals. So that means that Molina and Rowland could have just studied the air, say, in a large manufacturing company. Or maybe scientific tools that measured diffusion of CFCs in certain regions were already set up for other purposes, like space exploration projects, etc., and Molina and Rowland just used that data for a new purpose. Regardless, my point is that "studying" the gases is not specific enough to assume that Molina and Rowland set up a whole experiment.

Also, A says "lab experiments." So in theory, if A had been answered, the passage would have said something like "Molina and Rowland ran Western Blots using the proteins captured in..." Something that literally states the precise lab experiment they ran.

I didn't have as hard of a time seeing why E is correct - it was just hard to eliminate A, which felt like the stronger answer to me when I took this originally.

I felt a little corny for struggling with #8, going back and forth between D and C. Here's my reasoning for anyone that might have had a similar issue:

When a question asks you "what did the author mean when they used this word/term/phrase?" one of the best things you can do is to read the sentences around that quote and rely on those for clues/implications. On its own, when the author said "engage a well known artist to produce something for display" I didn't think much of it. They probably meant something nice or something cool. But when it came time to choose between the answer choices, none of them felt like they really addressed that point precisely the way that I prephrased it. Which is why at first I chose D, and then C.

D says "was representative of the artist's broader body of work at the time." One of the reasons this answer is wrong, besides the fact that the context for it is not provided, is that it says "at the time." So imagine someone commissions Van Gogh for a painting - do you think they care if it is representative of Van Gogh's style at that time? Sure, they're paying for it, so they care that Van Gogh does it. But do you think this patron is like "Van Gogh, dawg, I love you but you need to paint Starry Night part 2 for me." No.... no. The passage never suggests that patrons cared about supporting artists only insofar as every one of their works was very similar to their last one.

And then the second reason D is wrong is because of what I said earlier: the sentence right after the one we're looking at says FOR INSTANCE, which is like striking gold. The author is literally clarifying what they meant. And what do they say in that clarification? "For instance, if one commissions a famous architect to design one's house, that may reflect great credit on one's taste, even if one finds the house impossible to live in." So "something for display" doesn't care about coziness, and it doesn't even care about fitting in with the style of the artists work at the time. It just cares about making a positive impact on perceptions of the patron's taste. And that's exactly what C says.

I was between B and C and ended up going with C because of the part in paragraph 3 where it describes how the Popular Front de-emphasized involvement in local African American issue-oriented politics.

I think the thing is though: C is a pretty broad statement, and it's not exactly indicating less involvement. In other words, organizers in the Popular Front definitely could have said C in the context of something like: "African Americans should strive to overcome racism in the highest levels of government! That is their duty! We support them from afar!" Do you see what I mean? C has this energy of ambiguity that allows it to exist in both contexts (TP and PF) because it doesn't exactly specify who is going to join African Americans in this fight, so it could theoretically exist in the Third Period (in which case, the organizers will likely ask everyone to join in the fight) or in the Popular Front (where organizers offer their thoughts of support, but don't actually prioritize involvement in these fights). The lack of clarity makes C one of those maybbbeee answers, where one possible version is the version you want, but there also exists a second version that would make the answer wrong.

Anyway, I don't feel too bad about my mistake because it seems like C was a pretty popular answer, but I figured it's still worth thinking about and trying to learn something from.

Chose E over B here -

I think the reason this question got me is because I read the first sentence and immediately mapped it out, not recognizing that it doesn't play a role in the conditional logic. The fact that "the consequences and the motives of human actions have a bearing on the moral worth of those actions" doesn't actually tell us much. A bearing? Okay, so they contribute to the moral worth. But that doesn't tell us anything. We can't read the first sentence and write down

moral worth → consequences + motives of human action

because this ^^ statement is implying that if something is morally worthy, it has consequences and it has motives behind it. And that's so vague and not at all what the author was trying to say. If the author wanted to make that first sentence a conditional, he might've said something like "positive consequences and good-natured motives ensure that an action is morally worthy." But the actual phrasing of "have a bearing" is so vague and is not strong/certain enough to be conditional logic. What condition ensures what result? Based on the first sentence, we have no clue. So the key thing here, for me, was to ignore the first sentence.

Once I got to the second line, things became easier. We find out that to be a moral agent, one must have free will. So:

(1) moral agent → free will

and we know this ^ because:

(2) moral agent → desire to conform

This part was very easy to decipher as soon as I realized that the first sentence is not a conditional. If (1) is true because of (2), then (2) must be saying that a desire to conform requires free will

moral agent → desire to conform → free will

because this ^^ is the only way that we can get from (2) to (1).

Chose E for 26 instead of D, but I now see why E is wrong:

I think the tricky part about this question is the use of the word "moreover." In line 44, the sentence begins with "moreover," which made me implicitly think the author's point had to just be building off what they said in the earlier sentence. The earlier sentences of that last paragraph talked about having duties not to harm people, etc. So when I saw "moreover," I thought "ah, this is connected." And sure, the sentences are connected, but not in the way I thought.

In lines 44-49, the author actually adds nuance to what philosophical anarchists believe. Not only do they believe that people have a duty not to harm others, but they also believe that people have "positive moral obligations." What does that look like? Caring for other people, helping those in need, etc.

When I was choosing between D and E, the part in D that said "substantial moral obligations" really made me feel like the answer was wrong. Substantial? I was iffy on that because I couldn't see why we would characterize these obligations as substantial. I felt like they existed, but I didn't see them as being a long laundry list of obligations. However, the "substantial" part is referring to the fact that philosophical anarchists have (1) negative moral duties (not killing people or assaulting them, not stealing, etc.) and (2) positive moral obligations (caring for others, etc.) Those are actually two different sets of obligations, and when you think about it, it's a lot of obligations because it means philosophical anarchists are obligated to not do wrong things and to try to do what's right. In my head, I wanted to believe that these people aren't subject to substantial moral obligations because they're anarchists... my own biases made me think "no way that anarchists have SUBSTANTIAL more obligations." But that's just not supported by the text, which actually highlights different categories of obligations.

Also, E just says "people" which could technically be interpreted as non-political anarchists, too. But more importantly, lines 44-49 simply don't talk about political anarchists refraining from crime. That is the topic of discussion in the sentences before line 44, but objectively, lines 44-49 are talking about positive moral obligation. So E is describing the wrong set of lines.

honestly... shallow dips for the win

In case anyone had the same issue I did with question #15:

I chose B instead of C. Honestly, looking back, B was not a good answer. At no point does the author show reluctance, which would've been wording like "maybe" or "supposedly," something that shows us that they're not ready to agree. The only thing that truly stuck out to me about the vibes of passage A was the fact that the author kept quoting Borges, which made me feel like the author wanted to distance themselves from Borges or somehow poke at the language that Borges used to describe his ideas. In my head I was thinking, "why can't the author just paraphrase, why is every other word in quotes here?" I think it annoyed me, and so I projected my annoyance onto the author, when actually that was the complete opposite of what needed to be done.

If someone is just back to back quoting another person, that should indicate complete agreement. It's like in real life: if you were having a conversation with someone and all they kept saying is "Borges said this and then Borges said this and then he said this other thing," you would probably think that person is obsessed with Borges. It's the same thing in this passage, where the use of quotes is not supposed to be sarcastic or something - it's authentic, the author is just authentically so aligned with Borges that they're just borrowing chunks of his language directly.

This is also why A is the right answer over C: the author is not cautious here. They are mass-quoting Borges. Also, the fact that each paragraph ends with a statement that is not attributed to Borges is meant to show us that the author is just running with Borges' ideas and coming to conclusions of their own. What sorts of conclusions? Agreements with Borges, or applications of his ideas as "insight into the general nature of literature."