Got this question right in BR. The answer is B. None of the other answers I particularly liked and during timed I wrote B off. But the stimulus does assume that just because the whole earths population doesn't use much water that there won't be water shortages. Looking deeper at B, if the amount of fresh water varies, maybe one region has very little compared to another. So even if collectively there's a lot of fresh water in the whole earth, one region may run into water shortages regardless.

a) I just don't think A weakens. It's just calling into question the growth trend and not really attacking the argument itself.

c) well this could mean 900/1000 ppl will adopt water conservation, so I mean in that case this would be fine and wouldn't weaken. so C is gone for me.

d) so I originally chose D but I don't love it because the stimulus discusses the near future, and D just says oh eventually we'll run out of water. Like obviously, but we need something suggesting the near future there will be water shortages.

e) genuinely no clue what E is supposed to do. Like ok? is this good or bad for water shortages

I wanted to make a comment just in case this could help someone who had the same issue with Q17 (A) like I did. I was really hung up on the word "significantly" because I felt like that was pretty strong language. But then I realized there's the word "could" in answer choice (A).

(A) In the absence of additional ice ages, the number of species at high latitudes could eventually increase significantly.

So A is supported by time theory, as we'd expect if there aren't any more ice age interruptions, that the number of species at high latitude areas could eventually increase to the point of tropical climates (low latitude). The way I initially read A was that the number of species at high latitudes would eventually increase significantly. But that's not what A says. It says the number of species COULD eventually increase significantly. A leaves the door open for the possibility of a significant increase. But it's not saying that WILL happen. Just that it's possible.

If you think about the current difference in number of species in arctic vs. tropics, according to the passage that's a big difference, aka a significant difference. If the arctic number of species eventually match the tropics number of species, the increase from the current arctic number of species would be a significant increase.

"nobody understands Kant" so real

thank you this was a great clarification! I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around it for a bit with B.

I thought about the contrapositive as well. The way you have it set up isn't the contrapositive though so it wouldn't be the same as the argument logically. the contrapositive would be /should not play practical joke -> /contempt and /believe it would harm. And I think the reason this doesn't really help is because the idea "should play the practical joke (aka the negation of should not play the practical joke)" is now the sufficient condition instead of the necessary condition (the conclusion we're trying to look for in the answers). If we see an answer with "should play the practical joke" in the answers, it doesn't really help because that's a conclusion we could never reach even with the contrapositive (since in the contrapositive it would be a sufficient condition not necessary). Hope this helped some!! That's just the way I thought about it.

The way that I saw it was that it is a reasonable assumption that if people are getting magnets applied to them, they'd see or feel something being applied as opposed to those with no treatment (who'd also notice that nothing was applied to them). Since there is no placebo that looks and feels like a magnet (treatment), then the patients who don't get anything would know they didn't receive magnet treatment due to the lack of anything being applied.

Anyone have any advice on how to get faster at these questions? I'm getting them right but it takes me way longer than the target time

I also wrote that down cause for #1 with the other conditional relationship the answer included "some" as a solution.