@SophiaOrlando I think MSS is a question type where it can be helpful to follow your gut and then check your answer -- we often have an intuitive sense of whether an AC follows from premises, even if we don't know exactly why it does or doesn't. I agree that (C) is relatively intuitive here. So what I did is targeted (C), asked myself if it receives support from the stimulus (it does -- see final complete sentence), and then looked at the other ACs to see if they receive that level of support (they don't).

@DavidCutie This note on negative inferences is helpful, thanks! Failing to reason that way led me to choose (E), even though it felt wrong...since I didn't see (A)-(D) explicitly mentioned in the passage. But by your reasoning, we actually are told about (B)-(E) in the passage -- namely that the survey would not be useful for answering those questions. (A) is the only one that isn't implicitly rebutted by the passage.

@JohnB Kevin addresses this a bit in his video explanation. Note that (A) doesn't assert that we are able to deduce the numerical difference in access among these nations. (A) says something more modest -- that we can reason about "how...the access...differ[s]." In other words, we can say that country A has more airtime access to show X than country B does, without necessarily saying "Therefore, country A has more access to cultural productions than country B has." So (A) is actually less extreme than I think you are assuming. But I admire and share your skepticism of potential assumptions like these :)

@PaulABrox This is where I'm landing in my reflection on this question, too. Even though this Qstem says "Given the information in the passage," it doesn't seem that the correct answer is even mentioned or hinted at in the passage. We're essentially being asked what the data were are given could help tell us. I almost wish the Qstem didn't have the "Given the information in the passage" part, since I ended up choosing (E) because it was the only one that appeared to have been referenced in the passage.

I primarily use the written explanations. Occasionally, if I'm really stumped by a question, I'll watch the video(s). For me the preference mainly comes down to efficiency -- it takes longer to watch a video than to get the gist of a written explanation. Alternatively, I will watch part of a video to see if the video gives different reasoning for an AC than the written explanation does so that I can understand the problem more deeply.

Hey! I wrote a response to a related question here. Hopefully that helps! In case the link doesn't work, I've pasted my comment below.

*****

Yes, you're right about the example you gave -- being an apple is sufficient (i.e. enough to guarantee) that something is a fruit. In other words, being a fruit is necessary (i.e. required) for something to be an apple. At a conceptual level, we can also think of this as "If something isn't a fruit, it isn't an apple." That's called reasoning by the contrapositive: since apple --> fruit, then /fruit --> /apple. I'd say it could be helpful to get comfortable contraposing logical relationships -- first in the real world (e.g. dog/animal, chair/furniture, water/liquid, etc.), then with more abstract symbols. After that, practice representing sufficient and necessary conditions symbolically using circles. Sticking with the apple/fruit example, "apple" would be a circle that is surrounded by the bigger circle of "fruit." These circles show you something important: it is possible to be within the necessary condition (i.e. be a fruit) without being inside the sufficient condition (i.e. being an apple) and likewise that being outside the outer circle ("fruit" circle) guarantees that you are also outside of the inner circle ("apple" circle). Visually, sufficient conditions are inner circles and necessary conditions are outer circles. I think knowing both the symbolic and the visual ways to represent sufficiency and necessity is really useful groundwork for understanding a lot of LSAT question types and logical flaws.

And as an additional challenge, you can start working with several conditions at once to see how "sufficiency" and "necessity" are relative terms that depend on the conditions you are referring to. For example, "person" is sufficient for "organism," which is sufficient for "living." Therefore, "living" is necessary for "organism," which is necessary for "person." So /living --> /organism --> /person.

*****

There's currently a lesson for PSA questions, which are very similar to (and are often grouped with) principle questions, in case that might help!

I fell for (A) during my actual take. Now I realize why (A) does not descriptively weaken the argument: (A) deals with an irrelevant and unhelpful group of students -- O'Brien's students who had no listening exposure to the lecture. The fact that these students find Mercado's work interesting tells us nothing about what they thought of the lecture -- and in fact, we can reasonably infer that these students didn't fall into the "fascinating/not fascinating" camps, since these students didn't hear the lecture! Someone who didn't hear the lecture can't reasonably be sorted into those categories.

(A) would be a good answer choice if it said "some of Professor O'Brien's students found Mercado's lecture fascinating but were unable to attend the lecture from the beginning." But that's not what (A) says.

I think (A) is a pretty smart trap answer, to LSAC's credit. It begs us to focus on the question of whether "very interested" and "fascinating" can be understood as reasonably equivalent...all while missing the problem with (A) -- that it deals with a group of students unhelpful for evaluating this argument.

(E) is a perfect way to express the "lack of support vs. false evidence" flaw. I incorrectly chose (A) by 1) mistakenly disputing the premise, and 2) failing to recognize that even if (A) were descriptively accurate, doing what (A) suggests is not a flaw (as discussed in the written explanation for (A)).

On my actual take, I should have felt skeptical of the wording of (A) without getting too into the weeds on it. Then I should have seen how great of an AC (E) is, picked (E), then moved on without feeling like I had to have a perfect sense of all the logical nuance of (A) to eliminate it.

@ryanlattavo516 I think one thing that you overlooked in your explanation is that "either/or" actually does let us infer the presence of one condition based on the absence of the other condition (not to be confused with "or" alone, which doesn't let us make this inference). I agree, though, that the descriptive/normative gap is another flaw in this argument.

As to why (E) is acceptable even though it seems to be fighting a premise, I think user "srusty" gives a helpful response on the PowerScore blog (Jan 14, 2024 comment).

Building on that explanation, the stimulus sets out a conditional relationship: either "can fight for anarchy" or "can tolerate totalitarian government control." The "either/or" construction allows us to infer that "can fight for anarchy" --> "can't tolerate totalitarian government control." And conversely, "can tolerate totalitarian government control" --> "can't fight for anarchy."

The second sentence of the stimulus seeks to show a drawback of tolerating totalitarian government, which, if we assume that shows that "can't tolerate totalitarian government control" obtains, means that people "can fight for anarchy." Note the can here. The fact that people can fight for anarchy is not sufficient to prove that people should fight for anarchy...to make this (albeit subtle) logical leap, as the stimulus does, we are assuming that anarchy and totalitarianism are "the only two political alternatives that are available," just as the stimulus says.

@aborges0428418 I think I see what you're saying, but to be fair, AC (D) says "for workers," not "for all workers." So even if this pattern only holds true for the workers with little training (the ones mentioned in the stimulus), (D) would still be fair. It would be a big leap, however, if (D) said "for all workers."

@fl7dqf252 Interesting point. It's true that, for all we know, it's possible for mussels to be farm-raised (and thus not contain sand) even though they aren't available at a seafood market (e.g. say they're shipped to your home directly instead).

The reason (E) is still necessary, even in light of the above, is that for the argument's premises to support the conclusion, i.e. for the argument itself to remain tenable, (E) must be true. So even though there is a way to reach your intermediate conclusion -- that the mussels you are using don't contain sand -- without having the mussels come from a seafood market, there is no way for your premise "...because the mussels available at seafood markets are farm raised" to support your conclusion without making the assumption in (E).

There's some interesting talk on this thread about people being amazed at how lots of people missed this. I don't think that's necessarily fair...One potential reason is that some high scorers may have had the same question you had and thus have had some hesitancy about (E). But even with that hesitancy, (E) is still necessary. Another reason could be what JY highlights about (B) baiting us into making an unwarranted assumption.

@Al_foroodian@sfu.ca This is an amazing explanation. I hopped over the comment section to see if anyone had gotten hung up on the same point as I was, which you stated very well under "Criticism #1 Explained." I think your answer at the end of your comment is spot-on. Thanks for sharing!

(A) strengthens this hypothesis through an interesting approach that I don't remember seeing before in an LSAT question: it gives evidence of a compensatory mechanism to support a hypothesized function of a trait.

Here's a real-world example of this way of strengthening a hypothesis in case it helps: suppose sunlight is hypothesized to facilitate the production of vitamin D in humans. Scientists have found that in the absence of sunlight, but not in the presence of sunlight, the liver secretes a chemical that facilitates the production of vitamin D. This fact supports (though of course doesn't prove) the hypothesis that sunlight facilitates the production of vitamin D.

Yes, you're right about the example you gave -- being an apple is sufficient (i.e. enough to guarantee) that something is a fruit. In other words, being a fruit is necessary (i.e. required) for something to be an apple. At a conceptual level, we can also think of this as "If something isn't a fruit, it isn't an apple." That's called reasoning by the contrapositive: since apple --> fruit, then /fruit --> /apple. I'd say it could be helpful to get comfortable contraposing logical relationships -- first in the real world (e.g. dog/animal, chair/furniture, water/liquid, etc.), then with more abstract symbols. After that, practice representing sufficient and necessary conditions symbolically using circles. Sticking with the apple/fruit example, "apple" would be a circle that is surrounded by the bigger circle of "fruit." These circles show you something important: it is possible to be within the necessary condition (i.e. be a fruit) without being inside the sufficient condition (i.e. being an apple) and likewise that being outside the outer circle ("fruit" circle) guarantees that you are also outside of the inner circle ("apple" circle). Visually, sufficient conditions are inner circles and necessary conditions are outer circles. I think knowing both the symbolic and the visual ways to represent sufficiency and necessity is really useful groundwork for understanding a lot of LSAT question types and logical flaws.

And as an additional challenge, you can start working with several conditions at once to see how "sufficiency" and "necessity" are relative terms that depend on the conditions you are referring to. For example, "person" is sufficient for "organism," which is sufficient for "living." Therefore, "living" is necessary for "organism," which is necessary for "person." So /living --> /organism --> /person.

@lsattaker264 This was my hang-up too!

(D) can be thought of as strengthening the argument by dispelling a potential competing hypothesis (that tourists were staying in the city longer for their visits and thus spending more on hotels and food, without increasing the amount of money spent on passes).

For (E) to actually weaken, we'd need to assume that the painting of the historic battle accurately represents the figures involved in the battle (and does not include any additional figures). That is a major and unwarranted assumption, especially considering that (D) marginally weakens without needing any such assumption.

@Xexne198 That's fair. I think the main issue with (B) is that the two possible outcomes -- "succeeds" and "fails" in the stimulus, which are opposites of one another -- aren't opposites in this answer choice. (D), on the other hand, maintains this "pair of opposite outcomes" relationship.

Using the method of reasoning in the stimulus, we could similarly argue that, because floods have always been preceded by rain, the fact that it's raining outside means it's about to flood. But that would be unreasonable! Consider that floods only follow a tiny portion of rain episodes.

The abstracted flaw is: X has always been preceded by Y. Therefore, the presence of Y means that X is impending.

(E) matches that abstracted flaw.

If it helps, you can also think about this as a quasi-sufficiency/necessity mistake: in our domain of discussion, earthquake --> tremors came before. Tremors came. Therefore, earthquake is coming.

@mh212529 The question stem says "to the policy...not advocated by the author of passage B?" The way this question is phrased does not require outright rejection by passage B. Rather, the correct answer choice simply needs to express a policy that was advocated by passage A and not advocated for by B. "Not advocated for by B" can mean an outright rejection of the policy, a hint at a rejection of the policy, or no mention of the policy -- anything so long as it is not advocacy.

@nicoleegatto791 I agree. I don't love how the written explanation for (C) says that "The analogy isn't between the info processed by a brain and the info transmitted by the Internet," since there is in fact an analogy between those two means of transmitting information as stated in the first sentence of the stimulus. Then there's a second analogy about the brain and the Internet. It's just that it's this second analogy that is the dubious one, not the first, hence why (C) is wrong.