Is "provide" a sufficient condition indicator?

(C3) a cause need not be a necessary cause

Can someone explain how this abstracted version of AC C is still correct? I'm struggling to understand how it applies.

To have this argument and its underlying math work, it would have to be death -> iatrogenic disease. ID is necessary for death.

However, since we know it's flawed and doesn't work (and iatrogenic disease -> death just seems to be wrong from common sense), that therefore discounts ID as a necessary condition for this argument?

I thought it was D bc I thought it served as a bridge to the conclusion, where the concept of "student achievement" was introduced. I understand now that the scope of the answer was wrong ("any" vs "overall"), but can someone explain if this answer choice was wrong, additionally, for the following reasons:

1. This is an NA question, so building the P->C bridge isn't necessary

   1. Moreover, can a "suffered education" be equated with a "not improved overall student achievement"? Or, is this bridge unnecessary altogether, regardless of question type, because its gap is already acknowledged by the educator's admission of uncertainty: "probably"?

Thanks!

@elephant15 My question also -- isn't this a double negation?

Could we say that A should be eliminated just through sheer redundancy? I'm not sure I understood the stim completely, but I thought that AC A was just repeating the information stated here: "[colored paper] readily permits a repeated use of exactly the same color in different compositions."

Is it fine if AC B doesn't include "on the web"? Wouldn't this broaden the scope and cause it to not be necessary? #help

What I got:

sub-conclusion: love = feeling -> /sense

(premise: feelings ->/control;

premise: /control -> /sense)

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

conclusion: love = feeling -> /interpret

I know the missing link is /sense -> /interpret, but I'm not sure how to translate AC D to give us that.

"Promises should not be interpreted in such a way that they make no sense."

What role does "should" play in this, if at all? If I'm only considering the conditional indicators we learned on 7Sage, I know I'm looking at "no", which is negate necessary, and wouldn't that give us:

/interpret -> /sense ?

But I thought in a PSA, you should go for the most strongly worded AC. So for B, I thought "always" made this more attractive than C's "sometimes." I've seen the ambiguity of the "producers" (e.g. the exporters or the domestic ones) being cited as a reason to choose against this AC, but what other reasons are there?

I was thrown off by this question. I skipped past B, bc I thought, in terms of LSAT logic, "smaller" doesn't quite cut it. We don't know how this one difference impacts the columnist's claim, if at all. Therefore, I thought E was the answer, bc it provides something that directly answers to the stimulus (or, at least, one part of it), which is that the investment "is likely to have a big payoff in several years." I thought E weakens this statement bc it says that those other cities didn't see any returns in the first few years, and I equated several and few, so I took E to be the most powerful answer in weakening the columnist's claim.

Could someone explain how pointing out that the premises used to support the conclusion aren't actually relevant (e.g. Titanic being used as justification for the Avatar being the best movie) isn't a valid weakening? Or could someone provide a valid weakening using this example?

What tripped me up the most was the temporality. So here's a timeline:

1. W's approval rating = 52%

2. Ethics violation accusation

3. ~50% believe the accusation

4. W's approval rating = 52%

In this format, it's clearer to see that his approval rating didn't change bc maybe the 48% who didn't approve of W had been in disapproval even before the actual accusations. This also lets us make a reasonable assumption that they were the "almost half" of respondents who believed that W is guilty of ethics violations.

I don't love AC A bc it doesn't really touch on how/why the rating didn't decrease (e.g. addressing why the residents didn't believe in the accusations and why these accusations didn't cause them to change their approval ratings, etc.), but it does explain why the rating stayed the same.

@faithmngo Got it, thanks!

@hsuyt25 Update:

1. the conclusion in the stimulus emphasized # of documents rather than seals

2. "Apart from the rare cases where the seal authenticated a document of special importance, most seals had served their purpose when the document was opened." + "most lead seals would have been recast once they had served their purpose."

   A key thing to note here is the repetition of "served their purpose". Translation: most lead seals would have been recast once the document they were affixed to had been opened.

3. Therefore, A explains it best: most of the land seals produced during the early Byzantine Empire were affixed to documents that were then opened during that period (having served their purpose, they would then be recast). The exception to this "most" would be the "rare cases where the seal authenticated a document of special importance."

4. E isn't right, bc "fewer than" makes no sense. If it had been "no fewer than", that would make more sense (I was thinking 'at least' before looking at the answer choices), but even so, it wouldn't be as strong (as able to strengthen the argument) as A, especially bc the "at any given time" is confusing, and the stimulus never mentioned temporality.

I did large nurseries -> disease-free

Since "only" was used, was it not okay for me to use the conditional arrow as opposed to the "most" arrow?

A question about the general definition of "may" on the LSAT: does it always mean "probable", and so anytime that it is used in a conditional, it renders it invalid? When I read the stimulus, I took it to mean as "allowed" e.g. "you may go".

Can someone further elaborate on how the negation technique would've been helpful in ascertaining that AC D is correct? Thanks!

How would we negate "all political systems that aim at preventing conflict are legitimate"?

Would it be

There is at least one political system that doesn't aim at preventing conflict that is legitimate

or

There is at least one political system that aims at preventing conflict that is illegitimate

Can someone explain why B and D are not relevant? When we're doing flaw questions, should we just analyze what's given to us, and not consider other possibilities beyond the premises?

To clarify, the only manipulation that can be done with <-s-> is just flipping the two ideas?

As in:

/art <-s-> participant =

participant <-s-> /art

I can't, for example, do:

It is not the case that some participants are not active in art = All participants are active in art =

participant -> active

Could someone explain the reasoning behind this?

@jordkerns Hi! Thank you for your incredibly detailed response. It makes so much sense. The translation from Lawgic to English totally unravels my interpretation. And agreed--I need to stick to the question stem instead of drawing from general knowledge. Thanks so much for your help, and best of luck with your studying!!

@hsuyt25 Also, I feel like in the way the answer choices are written, they're still taking the "not just [investment value]" into consideration. Is there someway to write it out with the rest of the conditional?

Can someone explain the logic/lawgic of "not just"? I thought to include it as "and investment value", because I thought it applies as "in addition", as opposed to something that can be replaced once the other two conditions (authenticity & intrinsically desirable) are met.

I feel the most confident using the Joint Sufficient Condition Framework, but I wanted to confirm if my thinking is correct.

If I wanted to apply two separate conditionals, should I put whatever I see first at the core, and then just build onto that core as I encounter by putting it on the outside?

In the example

All residents of The Beresford are prohibited from keeping pets in their apartments unless the animal serves a legitimate medical purpose.

Should I do "all" (Group 1) first:

Residents -> prohibited

And then I tack on "unless" (Group 3):

/purpose(residents->prohibited)

Is this a viable framework?

Can someone explain question 3?

I got it right by assuming "anyone" is very inclusive, like most Group 1 indicators, so I put infected + week as sufficient.

But I also feel like antibodies -> infected and week could work: if you have antibodies, that is enough to say that you've been infected and it's been a week.

I get that AC E is right, but I'm still hung up on AC C: can't it be said that, for example, a cashier is still leaking "trade secrets" by collecting and stacking up cash in a certain way to make it faster, which could've been something learned from a previous cashier role, which just so happens to be a competitor?