E really feels like it does not match the method of reasoning, but I suppose you have to accept that it's the closest. In the stim, the principle is that if someone does something bad and gains something from it, the punishment should offset what they gained. In E, someone does something bad, but they never get the chance to gain from it. It doesn't say if they gained anything from committing the crime or not. They also never get the chance to make profits from the book, so there is no "offsetting." The money they make is instantly donated, rather than retroactively. I chose B because it seemed as if they were being punished retroactively for any benefits they might've had from violating pollution laws (dumping is free) by then having to pay afterward, which just felt more similar.

I actually chose A for Q12. The passage states that the case's ruling only applies to Native Americans who can establish standing. One of the ways that they can establish standing is by being descendants of the people to whom the artifacts belong. I thought that one of the questions they would have to ask in order to determine if there was standing is "Are the descendants still alive?" If no, they would have to check if the group had standing in some other way. However, I see now that the native Americans could have established standing in some other manner, and thus, the court would never have had to check ancestry.

B seemed far too obvious-- I felt that, in making the ruling, they did not have to evaluate the purpose of why the artifacts were buried, because they only concluded what the purpose wasn't. However, I do see now that they would need to know if the artifacts were simply buried for some miscellaneous reason, or if they were buried along with the dead.

I ended up not choosing B because I realized it was comparing "last year" to "previous years." If we are talking about the "past year," why do I care about what happened last year? This past year is still 2024, so why would I care about what happened in 2023? All the other answer choices were careful to maintain the wording of "past" rather than "last," so I thought it was a subtle way of saying that answer was irrelevant.

However, I now realize that "past year" is simply the past 365 days from the current moment. Unless this is taking place on the very final day of the year, then "past year" does include some days from the previous year.

I didn't choose B for 23 simply because it said "biologist" and not "immunologist." I suppose it's obvious now that the immune system is part of our biology, thus he would be a biologist, but that just seems like a dirty trick

It really seems to me that, even if answer choice A was fixed in the stimulus, and it was true that HC was a necessary condition for M, it doesn't matter if the formal logic is sound. They are still arguing "Harsh criticism is better than gentle criticism because it invokes change." When was it established that change is a better result from criticism? Regardless of the logic used to reach that conclusion, there is still a lack of a connection from being "better than gentle" to "causing change," which is what B addresses.

However, I understand that A is correct because they wanted you to notice the error in the formal logic.

I didn't choose D because every time I've done a strengthening or weakening question, JY says to not choose answers that independently try to attach themselves to the conclusion. D felt like it was providing its own evidence out of left field rather than strengthening the connection to the premises, while C felt like it at least somewhat could be connected to the premises.

Some reasons I chose A instead of E:

- E states that its denying an "assumption." I did not think that it constituted an assumption because the opp. argument explicitly states that "willingness to pay shows that they really need those goods." I felt this was too explicit of a correlation to be considered an assumption. However, I now see that they are assuming there's a correlation in order to then draw the inference that high willingness to pay equals high need.

- For A, I believe the word "explanation" is ambiguous enough to work. The opp. argument does explain that price gouging streamlines products to the people who need them most. The adv. argument explains alternatively that price gouging streamlines products to people with the most money. They are both providing explanations regarding the effects of price gouging-- however, because their intent is NOT to explain what price gouging does, but rather whether it is efficient for that reason or not, A just can't be the correct answer.

I chose A for 20 because I felt like "the logical asymmetry of positive and negative evidence" could have been a central topic of Passage B.

In Passage B, both a piece of positive evidence and negative evidence are shown for Newton's theory. Despite there being equal positive and negative evidence, the negative outweighs the positive and causes scientists to reject the theory. That seems like a logical asymmetry. However, I can understand that that's a connection IM making, and not truly a "central topic" of the passage itself.

The reason you're disappointed is because you want to be better, to do better. Don't forget that. Allow yourself to get better by practicing every day! Even if you keep getting questions wrong, keep taking them. Try to start doing 10-15 questions in target time per day. Eventually, your analytics will show you which areas you get wrong most consistently, and then you can go watch the lectures for those concepts.

I chose D because the question asked "which most helps to justify the critic's reasoning," and not "which most helps to justify the critic's argument/conclusion." I felt that the critic's conclusion was "it is not," and their reasoning was the whole section about the harm that violence causes outweighing free speech. Thus, I thought D most supported the REASONING about the harm done by violence, since "if the exercise of a basic freedom leads to some harm," it should be restricted. Should I interpret reasoning as the same thing as conclusion, rather than the same thing as premise, then?

So, I guess the answer can be something that is already said to be an assumption in the prompt?

Prompt: I don't need to go outside with a jacket on. I only need to go outside with a jacket on if it's raining. If what the weather app says is true, then it's not raining.

What is the necessary assumption?

Answer: What the weather app says is true.

Really? I mean yes, it makes sense, but that just feels so different than every other assumption question.

I just could not find myself accepting C after everything I've learned about sufficient and necessary conditions. We know that Not Sharing -> Unnecessary Human Suffering. But we can't say that Sharing -> No Unnecessary Human Suffering. We've never been allowed to assume that just because not doing something causes something, doing it prevents the cause. How can you be allowed to do that here?

But after thinking about it some more, if the human suffering is considered "unnecessary," that means it wouldn't be happening if the Not Sharing wasn't happening, and thus could be prevented by Sharing, since it wasn't necessary to begin with.

I actually think you missed the main issue with D. It says "It is surprising that more ethnographic studies do not..." If I were to say, "I'm surprised more people do not buy this car," I'm surprised at the lack of people buying the car, and I believe more people should be buying the car. Following that grammar, D means that the author believes more ethnographers should exclude information from women about women. That simply isn't true. Now, C is tricky, because it is hard to say she believes its "unfortunate" if you do not know what the word "salutary" means. But after eliminating D, it just winds up being the only reasonable answer.

Also, I don't believe the word "available" in D means they are ALREADY available-- I don't think that's what makes D wrong. There is information available through interviews with women that simply isn't being tapped into. It's available, but not yet procured. That's a reasonable interpretation of that word, Again, it has more to do with the answer saying "more" when it could have said "most," and then the secondary issue is being so specifically about interviews rather than in general.

B just feels like we can't jump to that assumption. What if they are depleting the moss at .01% every year, and the moss can only regrow at .001% every year? They're depleting it faster than it can regrow, but it definitely isn't significantly reducing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere at this point. Maybe if it said "eventually," you could infer that. We also don't know if the moss itself comprises a significant amount of oxygen production. Sure, it's more than rainforests, but what if something else (idk, coral reefs?) are 90%, moss is 8%, and rainforests are 2%? Sure, that goes against our common knowledge, but you aren't supposed to use outside knowledge to assume things to be true.

I realize it’s past the due date, I submitted my application about a month or two ago and just wanted to check and make sure it did in fact go through back when I submitted it!