C just kinda feels like it's disregarding the entire set of premises

Notes: susceptible vs caused; one is relative, the other is absolute.

A: "largely" is way too strong. Also, fact vs belief. Just bc many scientists believe that air pollution enhanced the strength of El Niño doesn't mean it's actually the case. Moreover, enhanced =/= cause, and susceptible =/= cause.

B: we don't know this, bc there the El Niño isn't a necessary condition for forest fires. Additionally, it attempts to quantify the number of forest fires when all we have data on is the intensity.

C: we only have data on 1997, can't generalize beyond that

D: fact vs belief. Just bc it's a fact doesn't mean scientists believe that

E: the only thing we have a strong, solid, causation relationship of is El Niño to drought. Nothing else is as steadfast. The conditional logic in the answer also ensures that a fact vs belief mixup isn't being made

I thought of this from the angle of:

Pleasure is just a byproduct of getting what you want, but it's being misconstrued as the innate thing that you want (e.g. winning the lottery = you want money; getting the job = you want prestige). Similarly, with pizza, you might eat the pizza to fit in (idk), to gain weight, or just bc you like triangular foods; there's just the byproduct of getting a stomachache. But what motivated you initially to eat the pizza wasn't the byproduct, but the previous reasons.

I think the hardest part is just identifying the conclusion.

I thought the first sentence was the conclusion, but it ultimately just served as a definition (pay attention = relevant -> intrinsic).

Next sentence: extrinsic -> irrelevant.

Together, these two sentences effective are just contrapositives (I initially had doubts about what we should pay attention to is relevant, but I think this clears all doubts).

Next sentence:

Aesthetic interaction -> directly presented.

Conclusion:

Relevant -> /symbolize

Relevant -> directly presented.

The correct answer would either need to be

intrinsic -> /symbolize

or

intrinsic -> directly presented

A (symbolize -> extrinsic = /intrinsic) is the contrapositive of the first bridge, exactly what we need.

@Kb092100 This is incredible, literally changed my brain chemistry. Thank you for sharing!

My qualm with it is that they think "appropriate" is too much but "impossible" isn't.

The reason I felt kinda iffy with A was that in the stimulus, perception is just between two things (material object and conscious being), whereas in A, there's three ("someone", "audience", "we"). But I get that it's the one that works the best.

I'm in Taipei but same (ish) timezone! I'd love to join if possible!

Can it be said, then, that when the speaker attacks an opposing view's argument by doing what we do (e.g. attacking P->C connection), they are being too meta, and hence can't "bring it back down" to conclude/make an argument of their own?

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?