I went with A, but on second look a while later, I'm contemplating D's wording:

It says that two birds increased, which means MORE birds, but leaves the fact that the number of species decreased alone. That is the argument: increase in spiders is because of loss of bird species. The reduction from 12 to 2. Does not matter what the 2 remaining did, the reduction in species count can still be held, and this could still be a plausible explanation (maybe each different species had a taste for a different kind of spider, and so by reducing the species type, some spiders now thrive and have no natural predator).

After typing this all out, I do see that although this rationale shows it does not WEAKEN the question, it still does not strengthen it. Really, its merely consistent. More birds. Great. Still more spiders.

The hypothesis is basically default "fear" and swim away, and then learn over time that some things aren't that bad.

C supports this, giving a case of an adult seal that defaults fear, because they have not learned that something is not really dangerous.

E is wrong because it supports a different hypothesis. It supports that seals learn TO fear, not learn to NOT fear. In E, a seal is approached by a technically harmless but accidentally harmful killer whale, and then learned to fear it, whereas the default (of all the other seals) is to not avoid it. Not what the hypothesis of the experimenters is!

I have a question about RRE in general: are we to assume that the stimulus is true? That the statements made are correct, and then find the middle ground?

I've seen that basically all answers deal with the middle ground.

I ask because to resolve a discrepancy, I could either prove first person wrong, second person wrong, or find the explanation to bridge the two.

It seems the answer is never disproving one person or the other, but rather takes the argument as fact and then finds the reason.

Option E here does this, telling us that they are both right (more tornadoes recorded and factors unchanged, but then the unrecorded tornadoes were just as high beforehand, citizens have now stepped up and helped us find them, but they always existed).

Option A is a tricky answer since it almost sounds right.

It is saying that the meteorologists, before 1953, actually did not know the factors well, so their statement saying factors are unchanged is shaky. Maybe before it was lower, and now it is higher, which explains more tornadoes.

However, because the argument is talking about tornadoes since 1953, option A really doesn't apply. Sure, before we did not know. But since 1953, which is the time period we are interested in, the meteorologists may have known! Actually, it is probably reasonable to assume that the factors ARE known, since A says before 1953 it wasn't. If we know the factors at and after 1953, then the discrepancy still stands and A does not help us.

What I wonder is:

What if we had option A say that meteorologists in year 1953 did not know the factors.

This then throws shade on them, saying hey, you can't make the claim that factors are unchanged, since you did not even know them at the start of the period. Maybe they were really low! And now they are baseline. This would explain the increase in tornadoes.

This option, now changed, would resolve the discrepancy by saying one party is wrong (rather than bridging).

Anyone know if this would be right?

when answering this question before the vid, i glanced through the answers and crossed out A. Then after reading B, C, D, E, and thinking "huh those are kind of a stretch, needs a bunch of assumptions to go from the data provided in the study to this conclusion", it finally dawned on me that A, while unrelated to the passage, is the only question that can actually be answered. Tricky LSAT ;)

For these question types, I tend to just ask myself "why do I care?"

Great, so the Earth was likely also struck. And?

For A to be right, and for the authors PURPOSE to have written that as being support for a particular theory, some theories would have to have been against the Earth being struck, and others for the Earth being struck, and so this sentence would differentiate some theories from others (as ones the author supports).

In this case, they all agree that the Earth was struck, and no one opposes that or even argues anything about that, so it can't be that the author wrote this as support for one theory or another.

For D, when I ask "so what?" I realize the author follows this with stating that this would potentially have profound consequences on Earth's history. Ooooh okay, so this makes sense, explaining why scientists would want to study it!

im a little confused as to the argument being made in the last paragraph about the mars rock.

they state that the rock is 4 billion years old, and thus it must have come from mars to earth at around that time. but couldn't a rock be 4 billion years old, still stay on mars, and then only dislodge 1 billion years ago? and then when tested, it would still be a 4 billion year old rock...

how is the fact that it is 4 billion years old evidence for it being knocked from the planet at the same time the moon is experiencing LHB?

congrats all!

well that was fun!

definitely a series of difficult questions

I have a question on the rationale for this question and how it applies to the split approach for comparative passages:

if here we go with answer choice B despite Kim never having mentioned technology (which I agree both actors in the stimulus would support), how can we eliminate answer choices in the split reading format based on "which would A and B agree on" if answers can be out of the scope of what they mentioned but they may agree on it?

E does say several were nearsighted in the study after using nightlights as infants, but it doesn't tell you anything about the number that are nearsighted that did not use night lights.

Lets say its 4 and 4 in each out of the 50 per group. Well, then, based on that, you find no correlation. This is because if the numbers are equal, you can't point to nightlights causing nearsightedness.

In this answer choice, its all about the fact that it doesn't provide a comparison.

In the argument, it says if there is an effect, it disappears with age. Then we are looking in E at those of older age, and we need to show the alleged effect disappeared. To do this, we need to show what it was initially and then how it dropped. If we don't know what the baseline is, we can't really say anything about the finding that some had nearsightedness.

B says the average age increased.

Either new undergrads (that are young) are not applying to PhD or more older applicants ARE applying. We know the total app numbers are down, so it would have to be that at least some new grads are not applying immediately. They might be applying down the line, and need to accrue more pre-reqs or something.

The argument says since total apps reported are down, the interest is down. After having looked at B, it really does nothing for the argument, and thus is the "except" since it does not weaken.

E is tricky since it creates a new correlation. The assumption bait is that since premature births were more likely to receive inadequate care, then we assume being premature is a cause potentially (based on E) for low birth weight and also for receiving inadequate care.

If its the case that being premature caused these two, then its weakening the argument that poor care caused low birth weight. But... this requires a bunch of unreasonable assumptions.

What makes you think that the inadequate care received was because of being premature?

And just because one thing causes another doesn't preclude the other from also being a cause too!

Tricky question!

D is simply about probability. Even if accountants are less likely to make an error, if I have more of them, then the likelihood that its one of them over an actuary changes! Thus when we assume initially its equal, and then this assumption is challenged, it moves the odds over to accountants. Slight weakener (since we know accountants are less likely to make an error), but weakener nonetheless.

C about a report requires too many assumptions in order to weaken. Who was the independent report shown to? Internal? External? You can't assume the public saw it. It just says independent report! Also, given its MAYBE external, did a person see it outside and say hey lemme embezzle since they are vulnerable? Equally likely that someone internal saw the report and decided that with their access they can exploit the vulnerability. Realistically a point that is simply consistent but does not strengthen nor weaken the argument.

tricky!

For 1, could you also push the hunting permitted into domain? Such that domain is surrounding countries where hunting is permitted.

And then the argument proceeds:

last 8 years -> /pop deer increased

pop deer increased -> /last 8 years

color coding is helpful! good addition thanks

good explanation!

Kevin just wanted to say your ability to work through every question methodically is an inspiration. Every objection my brain comes up with, you have thought of and thoroughly explain the reasoning to overcome it.

Thank you.

One thing I think is a lil dangerous about eliminating answers after reading A but before reading B is that B might regard something as a mistaken assumption that A did not actually mistakenly assume. B might be making a faulty argument!

For example, imagine A said "wow its probably so sunny outside today, as it always has been this week".

A assumes past sunny means future sunny.

And then imagine B responds "well, A forgot its currently raining!" B is saying this statement because they think A is assuming it is not raining, but it actually is. But A never said its NOT raining. Maybe A believes / agrees that its both!

I just remember an LR question about placebo vs therapeutic effect and two people disagreeing, and the answer was actually something the second arguer mistakenly thought the first was saying.

If it is true that B makes a logical argument, then yes, you can eliminate things A did not assume right off the bat. But if LSAT is trying to trip us up, there's a chance the right answer may be something B regards as mistaken even though A never even assumed it in the first place.

glitter.

I'm a bit confused as to why C weakens the argument rather than strengthens it. I fully understand why E is stronger, as it eliminates a competing hypothesis, but in the case of C, it says that 3 variables were in essence held constant and thus cannot be confounding.

If they were not held constant, then one could point to age being the reason, for example, that some people had more snoring and more abnormalities.

Given that those 3 factors are equal, they cannot be reasonable explanations as to why some people had more snoring and more abnormalities. If this WERE the case, every person should have increases in snoring and abnormalities, but only some people had this increase!

Like most New Yorkers, Dave loves the Statue of Liberty.

In fact, most people who are not New Yorkers don't like the Statue of Liberty.

Thus, Dave is a New Yorker.

Flawed because:

Dave actually lives in Australia. Most people abroad don't even know of the Statue of Liberty, but there are still tons of Europeans who love it, and they outnumber the New Yorkers!

New Yorkers ‑m→ Love Statue of Liberty

New Yorker ‑m→ Love Statue of Liberty

Dave (loves statue of liberty)

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

Dave is a New Yorker

- reverses "most" arrow, thus false

#feedback there are a couple of minutes of black screen / no audio towards the end of the video

Just wanted to say that I've found I get nearly every question right when we do this in depth reading of the passage, regardless of question difficulty.

That is to say, when you read it out, and analyze every part and then review it, I barely even need to return to the text to answer the questions; I do them in record time and with record accuracy, since we had what I would consider "deep engagement" with the writing.

I find that when I do passages on my own, I tend to try to read the passage really fast and then go to the questions, only to find I spend too much time on a question, have to refer back to the passage, and ultimately lose time or get the question wrong.

Definitely will be slowing myself down, engaging more with the passage, asking questions, understanding it, even if this requires faking interest!, and hopefully improving my score through this!

Thank you Kevin