I chose A, with the thinking that if the reason for the maintenance was something that would have prevented the speaker from parking there anyways, then that would invalidate the argument. The conclusion is "if they had done the maintenance on a different day, I wouldn't have been late," but if the maintenance was being done because something was wrong with the lot that would render it unusable, then it wouldn't have mattered if they did the maintenance later, the speaker still wouldn't have been able to park there.

I dismissed C on my first reading because I mistook "in the vicinity" as not including the parking lot. I guess it comes down to C being a MORE useful question to ask, not the only useful question, because the answer to C would tell you whether or not the lot would likely have had space, whereas the answer to A COULD be useful but also could end up meaning nothing for the purposes of evaluating the argument. But it still sucks to see a reasonable answer dismissed with absolutely no recognition of what would make someone select it. It's just bad teaching and isn't helpful to test-takers. I've found a lot of 7Sage's explanations (or lack thereof) pretty disappointing when they dismiss an answer so offhandedly that it gives no opportunity for students to learn why they were mistaken. It would be much better to actually stop at each answer and consider "if you selected this, it's probably because you made this mistake, here's why that's wrong." Even answers that are seemingly irrelevant (and immediately dismissed with "this doesn't matter/I don't care") often have some logic behind why someone would pick them.

Conclusion: Blue Irises cannot be part of the art movement.

Evidence in the stimulus: Blue Irises has brushwork but not a sharp contrast of light and shadow. Paintings in the movement either have both brushstrokes and light-shadow contrast, or they are abstract. These abstract paintings do not have both brushstrokes and light/shadow contrast, and in fact don't have light or shadow at all.

Now, is that evidence enough to show that Blue Irises isn't part of the art movement? Not on its own. The lack of sharp contrast of light and shadow shows that it cannot be part of the "almost all" group of paintings. But there is another group of paintings that is part of the movement - the abstract paintings. Blue Irises could be one of these, because the stimulus (at least to my reading) leaves open the possibility that abstract paintings in the movement have brush strokes. They just don't have "brush strokes and sharp contrast" together, and they don't have light and shadow alone, either. [If I were diagramming, I'd be capturing that most paintings in the movement have (brushstrokes and contrast), not (brushstrokes or contrast).]

So the stimulus claims that Blue Irises cannot be part of the movement, but it hasn't proven it, as the possibility still exists that Blue Irises is an abstract painting with brush strokes but no sharp contrast. The correct answer must therefore be one that addresses this possibility. C is the correct answer because it closes this possibility. If we know that Blue Irises is not abstract, then we know it isn't part of the movement.

In case anyone new sees this, the issue with B isn't actually about what's possible vs what's desirable, though that is what they want you to focus on and that's why the answer is attractive. What's important to note about B is that it says they disagree on whether it's possible to make art that both sides enjoy and support. But the speakers actually disagree on whether it's possible to make art that would express a consensus or lead to reconciliation. These are two different things.

Speaker A says art should bring people to an agreement or compromise. Speaker B implies that this is impossible. So they disagree on whether it's possible for art to make two opposing groups make peace with each other. But it's possible that they still both agree that it's possible to make art that two opposing groups can enjoy and support. Consider an example: An artist makes a very nice picture of a rose. Both supporters of Israel and supporters of Palestine can enjoy and support the art, even though the art doesn't make them come to a consensus. Nothing in the stimulus suggests that the speakers would disagree on this possibility. Thus, we can't say that they disagree on whether it's possible to make art that both sides can enjoy.

I'm not understanding why E isn't a viable answer. My reasoning was that D was incorrect because it concerned societies with similar - but not the same - principles. Showing that two societies with similar principles yielded different policies, to me, doesn't demonstrate that a society's principles are insufficient to predict the details of its policies.

Conversely, E seemed like a logical choice to me because the fact that two societies with different principles could arrive at the same policies seems to strengthen the argument that you can't predict a society's policies from its principles.

Not trying to argue against the test, just hoping that someone can explain to me why I'm wrong, since the video dismisses Answer E so offhandedly that I don't even really understand why it's wrong. It just seems like a very surface-level explanation that doesn't sufficiently address why certain answers may seem right or common misunderstandings that test-takers could have.