Since we're trying to weaken the Geologist's argument, "the theory is refuted", we have to show that maybe the presence of biomarkers does not refute the other theory. In other words, show that biomarkers could be consistent with the theory. Fair enough. Totally good up to here.

Then we want to anticipate an answer choice that shows that biomarkers can be consistent with the theory at large, got that.

Where my issue arises, is from the fact that the theory we are trying to disprove has two distinct components, and it is not clear that any of the answer choices adequately lends support to the notion that biomarkers are consistent with the opposing theory.

Component 1: Petroleum did not form from living things

Component 2: Petroleum formed from deep carbon deposits

D, the right answer choice states that some bacteria thrive beneath the earths crust. Ok sure.

Here is my issue with D:

First, how are we to make the assumption that some bacteria were in some shape or form part of these supposed carbon deposits simply from the claim that some bacteria tend to do well beneath the crust? Does this not seem like a pole vault of a jump?

Second, the theory states that petroleum does not come from living things. So if this bacteria really was assumed to be a constituent of these carbon deposits, then we would at the very least still be refuting the component of the opposing theorist's argument that states that petroleum did not come from living things

Maybe i'm missing something, but until that becomes apparent this question gets a 0/10 from me, would not recommend.

I have absolutely no idea how to go about beginning to comprehend this question lmao :)

#help

Rip to anyone who chose E for #10 :///

Is it just me or has LSAT almost never used answer choice E as the correct answer choice for a flaw question lol

E shouldn't be wrong, it addresses the first flaw that the argument makes. The one where the legislator argues that because she voted for an act that deterred investment in the past, that it cannot be her real reason.

To me, E says: hey by the way this argument sucks, you can't conclude that it isn't her real reason just because it isn't consistent with her past actions. Oh you don't believe me? Here's E that says she could be responding to her voters wishes which can change, making this her real reason

Beyond the plethora of fundamental issues with D that are listed all over the comments, my main problem with this question is that it defies the lesson that we are taught in the curriculum that specifically requires you to Weaken or Strengthen the support structure of the argument.

In other words, half of these answer choices bring up considerations that; on the majority of other questions, would be considered wholly irrelevant to the argument structure in the stimulus.

By bringing up other studies that are not relevant, or instead are dissimilar, we're essentially violating deeply ingrained lessons that we typically avoid on weaken/strengthen questions

To illustrate:

If the stimulus says: on earth, people are not red

A valid weakening answer choice cannot say: "ok but on mars the people are red"

The objection above would be immediately eliminated because it brings up considerations independent from the argument, and does not address its support structure that focuses on the people of earth.

The same is done in all of the answer choices that bring up other dissimilar studies. I don't know if this is just me, but in prior videos I feel like J.Y. has eliminated questions where the results of independent studies are used to weaken the study at hand on the basis that they do not address the support structure of the argument, specifically the bridge between premise and conclusion.

I was able to get rid of all the other answer choices and semi-willingly choose D, but I still have no clue how it resolves much.

Sounds like it's saying that there's a plan that will essentially give them a new concert hall with no added drawbacks (unless you consider acquiring a brand new auditorium to your town a drawback) so i'm not quite sure how D accounts for their opposition to the plan tbh.

I suppose I could be wrongly assuming that the new concert hall will include their desired upgrades. Which if not assumed, would just displace the existing issue of seats and acoustics to another location. But even so, I still don't see how that is necessarily something they would be opposed to.

Anyways, I do know that the rest of the answer choices were donkey dookie so I whatever i'll take it

Is this one of those NA where its technically also a SA

I got 3 questions wrong on this section: Two 5 star difficulty and then this 2 star. Not too sure why choosing between A and B was so difficult for me.

For 25 I was down to C and E. I didn't really understand what E was doing, but I chose it because I thought we couldn't conclude that "physicists" were primarily represented in the traditional tendency to separate the observer from the phenomenon, since the passage just says it is the tendency of scientists. I still do not think we can conclude that it is the tendency of namely Physicists, but I do see why E is garbage now. Still a bit of a stretch tho for C.

#help on #3

Genuinely asking: From where do we get the sense that Rawls' theory was novel?

I didn't pick this up at all on my first pass or on BR, which led me to irrationally eliminate B and not consider the rest of the answer choice

Here is why I chose D and in retrospect understand why it is not as much of a flaw as B:

Not evaluating the significance of the collapse of Alexander's empire shortly after his death points out the fact that it is possible that the tomb that they found may not have been Alexander's tomb. To me, it subtly gives rise to an important consideration that the archaeologist does not acknowledge. It hints to the possibility that the tomb they found may have belonged to the leaders of the empire that followed Alexander's, which certainly would not be the Macedonians. So in that way, not acknowledging the significance of that concession could be viewed as a flaw, but obviously not in a cookie cutter LSAT way like B unfortunately. I think the reason why is because B is a flaw for obvious reasons and D requires immense speculation.

#help #help#help#help #help

Isn't D going against the premise???? I eliminated D on the sole fact that the premise states that there are closely related species of iguana in South America and no where else. I took this to mean that they couldn't be in Australia?

Is D non-contradicting because it discusses fossils and not currently existing iguanas??

#help

Ok this question is BS.

Premise: The students want to replace their current vendor with a "different" vendor

Where exactly does everyone get this notion that "different" means "new"????

Doesn't different vendor just mean a vendor that is not the current one?

And in that case, wouldn't Hall Dining suffice???

I understand that common sense would lead us to believe that the students want someone new. However, I believe that is an assumption that we are making which leads me to reject that idea. Technically speaking from the premises, Hall dining being a prior vendor does not necessarily exclude them from meeting the preferences of the students.

B is aggravating :/

Someone please tell me why D is wrong in infant terms

I'm confused

For A, wouldn't the negation of "do not" be "some don't"? And wouldn't this be a very very weak NA? Not so much concerned about the weakness as I am about making sure i'm negating correctly.

#help

@ said:

@ said:

Alright looks like the ban is over, so I'll post the contents of my exam and maybe they'll be useful to somebody.

LR-RC-LG-RC

LR: 26 questions. Few topics I can remember: goats in the fertile crescent/Azerbaijan, sperm whales and orcas in different regions, patterns for popular startup companies, something about coal. A little on the hard side? Felt like there were some tricky questions, moreso than usual but I'm pretty bad at discerning LR difficulty.

RC: Functional extinction, Rap/Rakim, redoing psych experiments, neuroimaging. Not too bad? Maybe a single tricky question per passage but nothing crazy.

LG: I never remember the first game, presentations, Assignment of senior VPs to juniors, Wed/Thursday Work Schedules. First three were fine but I can see how the third can be tricky. Had to brute force most of the last but thankfully finished with time. Pretty fundamental section with some tricky rules. I think knowing when to skip and when to trust your gut was key here.

RC: Indigenous sovereignty, work hours & consumerism, whig history, hydrogen cars. Probably leaning on the difficult side, especially the first passage and maybe the third passage. Key was definitely spending more time on the questions than the passage.

From what it looks like online, the last RC was probably real? Honestly pretty ambivalent as to which one is the experimental. All I'm hoping was that I went -0/-1 on LG and my LR+RC wasn't too bad. Honestly predicting the last RC will tip the curve -1 but doubt the LG and LR will adjust the curve in any way. Will just have to wait Thursday for Powerscore's curve prediction.

Okay, having listened to the powerscore podcast it looks like I had the harder combo of LG and RC. Both real LGs seemed to loosen your scale by -1 and both RCs by -1 (the real one in my case was in fact the second I mentioned). LR seemed to neither loosen nor tighten the scale for everybody. In any case, this confirmed my suspicion that Nov was mildly harder than Oct.

What do you mean by loosen your scale?

For anyone with technical difficulties that is planning on retaking: Do you know if filing a complaint will allow you to retake in a timely manner? I am considering filing a complain regarding my experience but do not want to worry about "receiving a coupon" for a future test date considering January is so far down the line. Does anyone know if the retest can be scheduled for a sooner time? Or if it has to be for the next test date AKA jan?

Sounds like everyone had some rough experiences with their proctor and at least some issues with the software lol. At least I wasn't the only one

@ said:

What's with the 20 oz clear bottle being allowed on the desktop? Are you allowed to sip from it during a section?

I was able to drink out of it and my proctor said it was totally fine

For number 17 i'm a little torn about these answer choices.

My initial thoughts about A were that it was taking the author's stated position on texts that are most central to a genre, and running with that to infer her stance on borderline cases.. To me this seemed unsupported. The author tells us about central texts, so it just felt unwarranted to conclude A, even though it obviously felt intuitive, so I kept looking.

Answer choice D looked really good to me.

The text says that what determines a genre is the reading protocol that we use to read the text. So, it would almost seem redundant to conclude that our "interpretation of a sentence", or in other words, our "reading protocol", does not depend on what genre the text falls into. And the reason why is because the reading protocol in fact determines the genre...

Just seems like D was way more air tight and should have been the right answer here.

Eliminated E during the test because I didnt realize that 1 2 and 3 were all instances of development. I read the word "development" and assumed that it was referring to 1. Through that thought process I figured that the other nation could still fulfil 2 or 3 and so eliminated it. Made the connection in BR that all 3 were technically instances of development

Wowwww these new LR questions are on steroids

#help can someone tell me what C is saying for #14?