I think the confusing part in E is "until 1986", and it might be clear if we change the place of this phrase: serious accident is considered as X until 1986.

analogy: We do not learn calculus until grade 12. meaning: before grade 12, we do not learn calculus (original); but after grade 12, we learn it (negate).

Same in this question: before 1986, serious accidents is considered as X (original); but after 1986, serious accidents is not considered as X (negate). [dictionary proof: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/until]

analyze X: before 1986, serious accidents → 2 weeks for staying hospital as patient + death; after 1986, we consider it as a serious accident as long as someone gets into the hospital (even staying in hospital for 1 hour, we still consider it is a serious accident).

This ac strengthens stimulus, saying the decrease of serious accidents is not because of changing definition, since even we broadened the range of "serious accident", the number of it still decreased.

Hope helps!

Another thing I was thinking is "ignore", which means one overlooks something. It often introduces weakening statement (e.g., in some FR answer choices).

In this stimulus, the author use "economists ignore the distinction" to weaken the relationship btw “unregulated market" and "democratic sovereignty". The last sentence seems to be the result after weakening.

We could use "why" to test which sentence is conclusion: why + true conclusion? The remaining sentence(s) could answer this question.

Why "these economists ignores the distinction“? Forget the stimulus for a sec, answer this question by yourself. Maybe they are stupid, maybe they are careless. Now, could the last sentence in the stimulus answer this question? No.

Why "democracy could also support the regulated market"? Or why the complementary statement of economist's view could be supported as well? Because these economists ignore the crucial distinction.

Therefore, the last sentence is conclusion.

Hope helps!

For answer choice itself:

This answer choice only said “btw 1975 to 1980” and “temporarily” increased the price of fertilizers, and thus disrupted the production of fertilizers in 1975-1980. 1) How much we disputed? large or small? 2) what if we have much more fertilizers between 1980 to 1985? How could you know "an economic dispute preceding 1985"? 3) how could you know such decreasing amount of fertilizer cause less farmers use fertilizers?

About the stimulus:

The apparent conflict here is: increasing the productivity, but less fertilizers’ usage? Why?

In other words, the assumption made by stimulus: when we would like to increase the productivity after 1985, fertilizers should also increase at that period of time.

We need to break this assumption, such as: fertilizers could not be there when productivity increases

E) doesn’t break the assumption. The fact what happened in price btw 1975-1980 doesn't explain why productivity after 1985 does not need more fertilizers

Hope helps!

We could translate this AC C) into: above-average intelligence ←s→ /able to fully concentrate

In the stimulus, we are given: able to fully concentrate → above-average intelligence

Explanation:

1) when Necessary condition satisfied, the rule falls away;

2) Using Venn diagram to represent the conditional relationship in stimulus: there are two conditions: 1) imagine two circles, one is inside another, inside circle represents "able to fully concentrate people", and outer circle represents "above-average intelligence"; the blank in the middle is what C) represents; 2) two circles have the same size, two circles coincide. In this condition, C) is false

Therefore, C) is CBT, not MBF

Hope helps!

For your first question, in B), "offered in support of the position being challenged", this whole thing is the modifier for "evidence" right before it.

For ac E), I found the following problems for this answer choice:

1) "counterexamples": first, the stimulus provides the evidence (or phenomenon) to support alternative explanation, not "example";

second, IMO, "counter" is not accurate. The function of "alt explanation" is to weaken the support for our causal conclusion, but it does not necessarily mean our conclusion is wrong. It just shows that from recent premises, there are some other routes to get other conclusions.

2) The assumption made by common knowledge is correlation → one-way causation, there are actually 4 possible explanations for one correlation phenomenon. Here is the lesson for it: https://7sage.com/lessons/foundations/logic-of-causation/competing-hypotheses-to-explain-correlation

3) cause always precede their effects, since causation implies "chronology", here is the lesson for that: https://7sage.com/lessons/foundations/logic-of-causation/chronology

Hope helps!

MC: it’s impossible to implement the welfare state successfully

[why?]

MP/SC: the welfare state is based on false assumption: people are unselfish

[why?]

SP: use hard-earned funds to help others required unselfish attitude + people innately seek their own well-being

A) talks about the main conclusion

E) only shows a part of SP

First, we are allowed to attack the conclusion; it's just because most of wrong answer choices seem to attack conclusion, but actually do nothing, that's why JY said if the answer tried to attack conclusion, we should be careful.

Second, I don't think AC A) attacks conclusion. The conclusion is about general people, which generalized from samples from "several studies", assuming 10 studies. A) said there is the 11th study, and these samples showed a different result. It weakens the support, since it indicates that these 10 studies are not representatives for general population.

This question is quite similar to "Blood strain" in CC: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/blood-stain-weaken-question/

I think for sentences like AC D), we need to parse out the sentence first.

subject: all employees of Global Airlines; verb: can participate in; object: the retirement plan; the other parts of sentence are all modifiers; so if we would like to diagram for this simple sentence, it should be like: employees of Global Airlines → participate in the retirement plan; this should be a foundation for further diagramming;

now, we need to add more info into this diagram: "after a year or more", which part should this modifier describe? Employees. so the diagram now is like: employees [after one year or more] → participate in the retirement plan

Hope helps!

so if we negate E), it would be: there are some days that he worked in insurance company and blacksmith. I think you made an assumption that "blacksmith" could only worked on Fridays (blacksmith → Fridays). But in the premise, we only told Fridays→blacksmith, he could work as blacksmith whenever he wants during his 5-day working. So what if on Tuesday last week, he worked as blacksmith and in insurance company? He still could work in insurance company from Mon. to Thurs..

Compared to D), if he worked one day of weekend, and he only worked 5 days in a week, then there must be one day off among those weekdays.

Actually, I didn't refer the "histories written by enemies" to "little documentations";

So I used these two premises as this: First, they told us there are so little documentation, implying we hardly reach or study Roman's original documentations, combined with the second premise, we get: so we are using the histories made by enemies, instead of original documentations;

so then, C) showed like, you thought the enemies writings are biased, but look at Roman itself documentation, they showed Caligula is similar to previous tyrant emperors;

Caligula has the problem of lack of documentations, but for the previous tyrant emperors, definitely not all of them had such problem, so this is an evidence that he could be similar to those emperors as "really cruel"

I fall in the trap in B) under timed conditions, b/c I thought this provided some info about "people under his domination", these people might be more likely to reflect what kind of emperor than enemies, but I missed the modifier that "they already regarded Caligula as 'tyrant'", so this showed these people's view also not relatively objective

In this question, the main problem is how to find the correct paradox. I think that "unexpectedly" makes this very tricky, we would assume or predict that the following should say like, the early human spent less time to have social grooming; therefore, C is an very attractive one, which could explain why the early human have less time for social grooming;

but in the last sentence, the paradox is not about the time issue; even the early human only have social grooming with parents, the length of time that they have social grooming might still longer than other primates; what we need to solve is that why early human has such specific people to have social grooming: why only parents but not others;

now, B) is a great statement to solve: saying, for other people within the group, the early human use language, which is more effective; while C) couldn't explain why early human do not use "social grooming" to others within the group

For your question, I think you are correct, if you think "the type of risk" as: "quitting the job" risk vs. the other risk, like having disease;

but even we consider "the type of risks" as "the types within 'quitting job'" I think it's still descriptively inaccurate: in Brooks' arg., we don't know what specific type of risk he would like to say; he only said "risks involved in quitting job", but what type? for example, psychological suffering, like depression, or financial suffering

Besides, the support for "you might just quit" is not from the confusion of "risks", the risk is in the premise, which we need to accept it anyway; whether Brooks agree with the risk mentioned in Morgenstern's arg. or not, it doesn't influence the conclusion at all

the presumption there is not about "risk", but about "unhappy"

For E), we also need to read the question stem carefully, we are explaining "how comes the modular furniture

more expensive?", but not "among the same size and quality sofa, modular is more expensive?"

under timed condition, I chose E b/c the stimulus said "comparable size and quality";

but in the study mentioned in the stimulus, we select the same size and the same quality, and then compared their prices btw "standard" and "molecular"; this is just an evidence to show us how the price is expensive;

but this is a subset of "three-piece molecular sofa" to use to compare, what's the proportion of "same quality as standard sofa" within the whole set of "three-piece molecular sofas"? we don't know, so E does not conflict with the stimulus

while B needs a bunch of assumptions;

first, how much demand and supply before increasing?

second, demand "sometimes increased more quickly" than supply, even though we assume demand actually larger than supply, it's just sometimes happened, how comes it becomes general situation?

add for A):

I think A) is hidden in the way that we thought: what if physics are completely effective, as they said, then enhancing safeguard do nothing;

but even though we are in this extreme point, the goal of such action is to prevent further flaw; we do it, we devote effort on preventing flaw, and according to A), such effort is the shield, preventing harm of development of physics; then you are helping with the development of physics;

we don't care whether you need this action or not, we just care whether you are helping the progress of physics; by A), you do, then your premise support the conclusion

come back with some new thought;

what did the biologists do? enhance their discipline's safeguards; the goal for this action, according to the biologists, is to prevent the further scientific flaw;

for C:

even though we negate it, saying there is completely effective discipline, and let's assume it happened in the physics, so what? does the enhancement of safeguards not help with the "development of physics"? who knows? such action just not helped with the flaw prevention, which not achieve their original goal, but who knows whether there are some other function in helping physics, which go beyond original goal; for example, maybe they found something new during this action? the support still could be there

there still exists the gap btw "development of physics" and "action of enhancing the safeguard"

but for A):

if we negate it, we said, "major incidents of fraud are not harmful to development of a subject", then now, the original goal doesn't help with "development of any discipline"; whether you do enhance safeguard or not, it just doesn't influence the conclusion;

For your first question, in the stimulus, we said when we evaluated "how reasonable argument were", we don't care "the ability of bringing the facts"; however, in the conclusion, we evaluated their "debate performance" as a whole, then now, we need to consider both factors the author mentioned;

For the second question, if they have the same reasonable arg., so they got the same score in this ability: Britta = Robert; in the aspect of bringing facts: Britta > Robert; finally, Britta would be better than Robert;

how could Robert have the same performance as Britta?

Therefore, Robert must be better in reasonable arg. to counteract the his disadvantage in bringing the fact

I choose A at the first time, and choose C during BR;

During timed condition, I thought I would like to concluded with "it's wrong to keep confidential", and I need something to trigger the relationship, so A seems really good to me;

I think I make the mistake in separating SP/SC/MC;

SP: research didn't shared → development of effective medical treatment may be delayed

SC: humans may suffered unnecessarily

MC: wrong to keep confidential

there are two bridges needed; from SP→SC; and SC→MC;

the "triggering" is required btw SP→SC;

while in the main arg., we need to accept "human may suffered unnecessarily" is true, and to support MC; so in this arg., we just need the conditional bridge to link them together;

For A), 1) "the behavior that they know..." makes the behavior mentioned in this AC narrower than what the stimulus said; 2) "will" makes this AC much narrower;

so, this couldn't be used to negate our SC, used contrapositive and get "research should be shared"

Please correct me if I'm wrong :)

I choose C during the timed condition b/c I thought the support is from the analogy.

If we have the conclusion that is really supported by the similarity btw physics and biology, what it should be like? I think it's like this: physicists should do the same things so that they could get such benefits; then I guess C might be a great AC; b/c it points out that physics need the "safeguards"

But for this question, "if" physicists were to do such things, this told us:

1) whether physicists do it or not, I don't know and I don't care;

2) we would like to support a relationship whether it could be triggered or not, not just a specific action emitted by specific person;

now we could change this conclusion as: if biologists (b/c now we only care about this relationship, not really care about who did it) were to do the same thing, it would be conducive to progress in biological field;

why?

because: biologists did it and prevent the further major incidents;

now, you see, we need the bridge there, prevent further major incidents ===> conducive to progress;

this is what A provided: major incidents are suck, thus preventing it is good (conducive to progress)

This question is really smart to use "physicists" in the conclusion, to confuse us to think like, concluded with physics and supported by biology, there should be something similar btw them; but if we just want to support the relationship, it doesn't matter who emitted; they could change any person they want

I think it's wrong because of "new discoveries"; the author didn't say something like: look,we found something new in her art; the painting is still that painting, the author just change a viewpoint to see this painting even though we are charitable to say, the new discoveries is the viewpoint of author, is that "new" thought? or other people in the past already had that thought, just no one care? we don't know; so E is wrong b/c it's factually inaccurate

I think JY move "on River Street" outside as a big set (like drawing a big circle, and all these relationship happened within this circle), b/c every statement in this stimulus happened "on River Street"

now the first statement is like: every brick house is the house with a front yard: BH→FY

most house with front yard have two stories: FY‑m→2S

link them up: BH→FY‑m→2S

come back to this question with some new thought

when we consider the percentage, it's like "existential relationship", meaning it should be like 2 factors (set) overlapping; such interaction (2*2) could separate our whole set of into 4 subgroups: accident/injury | accident/not injury | not accident/injury | not accident/not injury; the percentage of each group in the whole set rely on the other 3 groups;

the flaw in this stimulus is that we only stand in one factor (set), "accident", and compare only 2 groups within (related to) this factor (set), accident/injury vs. accident/not injury: let's use small car, saying 80% and 20%; but we concluded with the subset of accident/not injury in the whole set; but the percentage of them in the whole set couldn't be known without knowing what's the percentage of "not accident/injury" and "not accident/not injury";

that's why we need to consider the percentage of another factor (set) "not accident" to weaken or strengthen

I don't think "the resource" referred to the texts used by scholars of 19 centuries; the modifier of "the resource" in E) said "necessary to the carrying out of a task"; our task is to figure out how the medieval law actually affect the women; according to the passage, these texts is not necessary for our tasks b/c they couldn't even solve our task

For B), the problem is that, even there are some native earthworms eat leaf litter, so what? in this stimulus, we only concern about the action of these European earthworm; the phenomenon is still that those earthworm coming from Europe eat leaf litter, and the fern disappeared; and we used "causation" to explain this phenomenon; the negation of B) doesn't touch our support at all