if you took issue with (B), like I did:

There is apparently no reliable way to protect both

remember that (B) is a different argument (outside of the passage), and we essentially treat the passage as an organ donor (a set of premises) for (B); in other words, it's B's job to consider all possible ways, it's not our job/the job of the author of our passage;

now let's see what the passage can do in B's argument; it seems that quite a lot: (1) the passage concludes that the law, at least as far as it is "often" enforced by the judges (through injunctions), is ineffective (author's conclusion); (2) there is some 'irreconcilable' contradiction between the rights of the former employer and the mind of the employee (claimed in the 1st paragraph, supported in the 2nd);

we can reasonably assume that the passage rules out mainstream legal practice as a solution, which seems to be doing a lot of work for B's argument!

if you were temped by (A), you probably took the bait

(1) (A) baits you to assume that "strong reason to believe" means the same as strong evidence ("documents and other concrete embodiments of the secrets");

(2) (A) relies on the assumption that the ineffectiveness of injunctions somehow does not apply to the cases then there is "a strong reason to believe"; that's not supported: injunctions appear to be ineffective in general;

tl;dr: if (A) were to hire you to plead their case, and you pitched them this passage as your evidence, you would be back on the job market in no time

for those who also struggled, i.e. eliminated (A):

(1) (A) removes a reasonable expectation of a legal solution, ("Given the law as it stands") formed by the question stem: "Given the passage's content and tone..." that is to say, the content and style of the passage lend themselves to a legal solution;

(2) "strong incentives to stay in their current jobs" directed at removing the cause of the issue, which is explicitly stated in the passage:

Often when a highly skilled and experienced employee leaves one company to work for another, there is the potential for a transfer of sensitive information between competitors.

On LSAT, removing one of the causes of the issue counts as support, so (A) is supported!

tip if you struggle with (A):

indispensable is a synonym for necessary, which is conditional language, so

p1 residency -> aspect (x)

p2 aspect (x) -> exceptionally long hours

(c) residency -> exceptionally long hours

we assume the same (absence of such an aspect) for controllers and operators for the argument to follow through; assuming this for residency training is necessary for the analogy to hold

that plot twist when you open up wiktionary to refresh the meaning of the word superfluous only to see it illustrated by a quote from Dostoyevsky:

1. In excess of what is required or sufficient.

With a full rain suit, carrying an umbrella may be superfluous.

1867, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter IV, in The Gambler, translated by C. J. Hogart

JY's version of aggressive: we are down to 3 ACs

My version of aggressive: we are down to 1; the case was open and shut

upd: I failed miserably

for those who are still confused why (A) is the correct answer: check the question stem; very strong wording in the AC is balanced by the noncommittal wording of the question:

would Chopin have been most likely to agree?

i.e. if you assumed that (A) claimed to accurately describe Chopin's opinion, that assumption was unwarranted

survey link is broken (403); I wanted to say thank you for the selection of questions in this module; that's the most fun I've had studying within the whole curriculum;

for those who chose (E), like I did, and eliminated (A) because it seemed to go against the premise in the passage ("with no change in situational factors"). (A) doesn't really need to contradict the data in the study to weaken it.

There are two inherit weaknesses (necessary assumptions) in the design of the study:

(1) an assumption that the family's belief matches the facts

"Family members believed they used only English at home"

(2) an assumption that the family's self-reporting is reliable

"they commented that it was used to express certain attitudes"

(E) goes after the 2nd assumption, and falls somewhat short;

(A) goes after the 1st assumption and gets it; if (A) is true, then the data can still be true, but our assumption that English is the baseline language (control baseline) no longer holds;

i.e. the facts of the passage study can still be true (Spanish indeed occurred on the tapes when there was NO change in situational factors); it's just that the family's belief that English was the baseline (the norm, the default) WITHIN those situational contexts tuned out to be not supported by the facts;

the facts of the passage study are still true, but the assumption is false; now that we know that the family actually speaks two languages at home, not only one, there is no need to explain the occurrence of Spanish on the tapes with rhetorical intent; there is nothing unusual about Spanish on the tapes that requires an explanation.

(B) is correct, as long as something weakly supported can be most strongly supported at the same time

(B) in the video lesson is characterised as flawed, and in text lesson it's characterised as valid, which is misleading:

(B) If a plant is carelessly treated, it is likely to develop blight. If a plant develops blight, it is likely to die. Therefore, if a plant is carelessly treated, it is likely to die.

This is valid conditional reasoning. End of shallow dip analysis. Move on. The two conditional premises chain up to yield the conclusion as a proper inference.

Feedback: there is no link to the lecture from Prof. Dan Epps at the end of the lesson. Fix this please, we'd like to hear it!

if you were confused about the explanations for (D), here's Gemini's version, which makes more sense:

Option (D) tries to make you think, "Ah! The counselor is confused because harsh criticism actually gives someone a motive to avoid the critic, not a motive to do the self-improvement/change!"

The stimulus mentions that harsh criticism is unpleasant, which naturally makes a reader think about avoidance behaviors. Psychologically, humans are motivated to avoid pain (unpleasant criticism) and do things that bring pleasure.

if you chose (E) like I did and wander why it turned out to be wrong, here's my take with a benefit of hindsight;

conclusion descriptor:

(1) arguing that a type of human cognition is unreliable

actual conclusion:

any history book gives only a distorted view

the conclusion is about the product of perception, not perception itself; just like the major premise (accurate conception of one’s physical environment);

(2) in one instance

the product of perception is unreliable not because of the instance as is, but because the perception was too brief (a single momentary perception); i.e. you didn't see the gas leak (upon a single momentary perception), but you could have smelled it/heard the hissing if you had more time to examine the pipe;

(3) because it has been shown to be unreliable

the major premise (One cannot frame an accurate conception of) technically did not show anything, it simply asserted unreliability; my gas leak example above, on the contrary, somewhat showed it;

(4) under similar circumstances

the circumstances (writing a history book/looking in the past) are technically not similar to one’s physical environment; what is similar though is the process or reasoning about the environment/history;

Completely out of nowhere: a super insightful deep dive into negation of quantifiers. Thank you, I loved this session.

using set framework to eliminate (C):

the argument reasons about a specific subset of "exceptionally long hours"

(C) reasons about the entire superset of hours, "exceptionally long" and normal/"short" hours as well

we can eliminate (C) on the grounds of being too strong and hence unncecessary

humbly offer my feedback on the explanations: set framework seems to be really going against the grain applied to this question;

conclusion:

/preserved -> /developed

prediction:

undiscovered substances are unique

(A) undiscovered substances are unique in relation to the substances that have already been discovered;

(A) is interesting because it cuts so deeply into the set that we've outlined as our prediction, but that doesn't seem to do much with the framework of sets;

J.Y.'s explanations on (E) when it's an NA question:

"If we were to swap out the question stem for a Strengthen or PSA then (E) and not (B) would be correct."

J.Y.'s explanations on (E) if it were indeed a PSA question:

"I mean WHO CARES, RIGHT? (E) is UTTERLY irrelevant. Okay, Colette had this noble purpose to explore moral questions. Grated! Too bad that her novels doesn't show this. I mean WHAT DOES (E) HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? The conclusion doesn't care about Colette's intentions. The conclusion is concerned with the fairness of the claims about her novels. (E) built a bridge between Colette's intentions and some important moral questions. SO WHAT? What do I do with this?! Does this mean that the novels CARE about those important questions? We don't know. (E) is ABSOLUTELY irrelevant."

if you chose (E) like I did, note that it builds a bridge over the existing premise ("Such emotional crises almost invariably raise important moral questions."), i.e. between crises and questions, not over the assumption gap (the gap between questions and /indifference); even if you have (E), in order to get to the conclusion you will still have to further assume (albeit with more confidence) that raising moral questions somehow rule out indifference; furthermore, the premise ("Such emotional crises almost invariably raise important moral questions.") is stronger than (E) (Colette's purpose), because it confirms the outcome (Colette's intention does not guarantee the outcome); so (E) is redundant;

(B) builds the bridge over the assumption gap (between moral questions and indifference); if (E) is true and (B) is false, the argument IS invalid (indeed Colette had this purpose, and indeed the important moral questions were raised, too bad that the novels can still be indifferent to those questions);

well, if there is the ultimate promo of the upgrade, it's this free video; I absolutely loved it: it's insightful, it's to the point, and the selection of questions is just brilliant. You can't wait to compare your line of thinking with Eric's or the participants. Thank you, color me tempted to upgrade.

JY's explanation may have its merits for a blind review, but not as a valid approach to this question. For me personally "recap the stimulus in your own words" worked wonders.

tl;dr: try to pindown the idea in the stimulus in your own words right after you've finished reading and before starting to diagram.

What's the idea of the argument? The more one knows about history, the more morally blunt one becomes. Causal relationship is intuitively central here, not probabilistic (likely/unlikely).

So what causes the disenchantment of someone who starts off with "unambiguous moral beliefs"? [we plug in our real-world examples here] History is essentially an endless string of bloody wars, and betrayals, murders, assassinations, and injustices. Think Rome, think Shakespeare. The more you know, the more you understand historic figures, their motives and their circumstances, the less you judge them. It's a simple idea wrapped up in lsatspeak.

Once you take hold of the idea, these abstract components are pigeonholed:

p1: higher [moral] standards -c (enables)-> see more [moral aspects]

p2: read more -c-> judge less

c: read more -c-> see less

expectation: judgement must be necessary for something that enables us to see moral aspects (less judgement causes us to see less), so:

judge less -c-> something (judgement causes something) OR

something -> judgement (judgement is necessary for something)

Approaching it from the other end is a recipe for disaster. It's hard to grasp the meaning of the abstract components in the stimulus, let alone abstract probabilistic connections between them (likely/unlikely, more/less). But once you have the big picture, you can slap the labels on them more confidently (e.g. knowledge of history increases = read more), and you won't lose track, because you know what you're looking for (judgement causes comething that's necessary, judgement is necessary for something; you'll see that there is only one AC that directly links judgement to something else).

note on the text version of the lesson:

Answer choice D

"The conclusion makes a claim about the set of consumers who don't bother acquiring such information. That they are behaving irrationally."

that's not what the conclusion claims:

"Therefore, consumers who do not bother to acquire such information are thereby behaving rationally."

some food for thought for those who chose (B) like I did: kick "promise of love" (marital vow) into the domain, and things will start to make sense

sub-premises:

sp1: feeling --> /control

sp2: /control --> /sense

sub-conclusion:

feeling --> /sense

main conclusion:

feeling -?-> shouldn't

(D) /sense --> shouldn't

(B) promise and /control --> shouldn't

Think of a couple that has already made a vow. Now let's assume they do interpret love as a feeling. In this case the argument + (B) allows them to conclude: 1) they shouldn't have made this promise to each other (B); 2) that their promises make no sense (the argument). The argument + (D) on the other hand allows them to conclude that they shouldn't interpret the vow like a promise of a feeling, thanks to the missing piece supplied by (D): /sense --> /feeling.

H/T to J.Y. for selecting this question for our core curriculum. It turned out to be rather thought-provoking.

did someone get through the text explanations? any idea what this peace supposed to mean?

Answer Choice (C) ...

"This is the same bait laid out in (B). (C) is also baiting to commit the sufficiency necessity error. To conclude that Penn should not receive the award because Franklin failed one of the conditions in Rule 2."

very motivating indeed, thank you!

@jyoti_sh_n

You seem to be conflicted between (A) and (B) because you reason about what you are reading into the form, not about the form/structure itself.

(B)

the stimulus says hiccups --> ebola; (B) says ebola <--some--> /hiccups. (B) wants to pass as a contradiction to hiccups --> ebola, but it's not. If you simply add ebola <--some--> /hiccups to the stimulus, nothing will change. (B) targets those, who confuse necessity for sufficiency; those will see (B) as a counterexample.

(A)

the stimulus says other Ebola symptoms are mentioned, but it never clarifies how many; we reasonably assume that enough to be relevant and mentioned by the author; (A) blocks that reasonable assumption. Without this assumption the information about the accounts gives far less support for the conclusion.

Hope that helps.