The issue the I found with getting rid of A was that I thought it was a prescriptive answer and nothing within the stimulus was prescriptive, just descriptive. I didn't think the stimulus mentioned anything about what one should do, but instead that the best way to teach history is by doing xyz, and justified this on the basis of why most students were bored.

Can we assume that "the best way to teach is by XYZ" is equivalent to arguing that "one should teach by XYZ"?

What if we assumed that in a hypothetical scenario, the authors interests are not in the best interests of the children. So if they were someone who was a bad teacher but was in it for money, or if the education board had interests that were misaligned with what was best for children and the author believed it was best for the teachers to follow orders regardless, can we still assume that "one should teach by XYZ" if the argument made no claim of whether teachers should or should not do something and we are just assuming that "teachers should teach in whatever is the best way the teach" which to me is necessary in order for the answer "One should avoid boring one's students when teaching a history course" to be necessary for the argument. Or am I completely wrong?

Lets say I negate the answer "One should avoid boring one's students when teaching a history course" which translated would be "One should not avoid boring one's students when teaching a history course". Does this somehow mean that the arguments conclusion of "the best way to teach is to go over the lives of historical characters instead of dates and numbers" is no longer supported by the premises of "Many students are bored by history as it is usually taught given the focus is primarily on dates and numbers"? Because to me, that still could be very well supported as so long as the author believed that even though the best way to teach is that way, there was an alternative way that the author preferred for some reason and told others to do as well, this would clearly not be a necessary assumption and would contradict our hypothetical prescriptive conclusion. Because there is nothing included within the stimulus suggesting that the author is arguing teachers should do whatever is the best way to teach, I'm not sure how A can be a necessary assumption required for the argument as to me it is insinuating that a prescriptive assumption can be necessary to a completely descriptive stimulus.

#help

When you are on the course syllabus, if you see a button next to "Last viewed" and "Collapse" that says "Switch to v2", make sure you click that as the videos and curriculum has been updated so that v2 doesn't have logic games. If the button says "Switch to v1", you should be good and the curriculum will be updated and won't include logic games.

Even though I ended up getting the answer correct, I only did so because I realized that an extremely big assumption was being made by the LSAT writers. The assumption was that: what should be recommended to the poor drivers is was what should happen to the poor drivers.

We know that if driver education should be recommended to a poor driver, then that implies they are likely to be made more responsible drivers by undertaking that education. So if we know that a certain class of poor drivers is not likely be made more responsible drivers by the education, then all we know is that we should not recommend that poor driver take it. But does that imply that we should no longer be sentencing them to jail OR driver re-education?

An example to demonstrate this could be a judge sentencing you for shoplifting to either juvenile detention or community service, but because you shoplifted from a mom-and-pop store as opposed to a big-chain commercial grocer, he's not going to recommend that you take community service. Does that no longer imply that you can take community service? To me, all we know is that he won't be recommending it, not that it is no longer being offered.

So if we say that we should sentence someone to either X or Y, does the exclusion of whether one should recommend Y or not imply that we should sentence someone to X?

This one threw me off because instead of saying that "the inference is unwarranted because it failed to consider the possibility that..." or something like "What, if true, would indicate that the inference drawn by the argument is unwarranted", it just says "the inference drawn is unwarranted because..", but do we actually have any reason to believe that "those with more resources are more able to work as volunteers"? I know that if we assume this to be the case, then yes, the inference drawn by the argument is unwarranted, and it might even be unwarranted if it failed to consider the possibility that those with more resources are more able to volunteer, but this was not what I thought the question was asking. It was asking why the inference being drawn was incorrect, and the correct answer choice gave an answer (which if true would cause the inference being drawn to be unwarranted) but wasn't stated as such in the answers as it was essentially stating that the objective truth of the statement "those with resources are more able to work as volunteers" was what was causing the argument to be invalid.

To demonstrate, I'll provide an example of what I think this question is doing:

Joey usually goes to the pub after work. Because David want's to meet Joey after work today, he is sure to find him at the pub at that time.

The argument is flawed (the inference is unwarranted) because:

Joey doesn't go to the pub after work today

But do we know that Joey will not go to the pub after work? Or is it just that the argument fails to consider the possibility that this might be the case and as such is the reason why the inference drawn is unwarranted? I was looking for something that was true in the answer choices, not something that could be true primarily due to the fact that there was nothing in the question stem that indicated that I was looking for a hypothetical situation that wreaked the inference.

In order to fix Joey and David's question, would we not have to do something like this:

Joey usually goes to the pub after work. Because David want's to meet Joey after work today, he is sure to find him at the pub at that time.

The argument is flawed (the inference is unwarranted) because it fails to consider the possibility that:

Joey doesn't go to the pub after work today

OR

The argument is flawed (the inference is unwarranted) because:

It doesn't consider the possibility of Joey not going to the pub after work

OR

What, if true, would indicate that the inference drawn by the argument is unwarranted:

Joey doesn't go to the pub after work today

I'm not exactly sure how answer choice A is necessary for the argument. I'm just not sure how the conclusion cannot follow from the premises if we assume the negated version of answer choice A. My reasoning is as follows:

Overview of my interpretation of the stimulus: We know that a shortage of oxygen causes both ordinary mountain sickness and cerebral edema, and that these differ in both how common they are (ordinary mountain sickness being extremely common and cerebral edema being rare) and in what risks they pose (ordinary mountain sickness most people recover from while cerebral edema can be life threatening). But we also know that the symptoms are similar, and as J.Y. illuded to, we can assume this to imply that a climber would not be able to tell one from the other and could mistake them.

Now, lets make some additional assumptions that do not contradict the stimulus in that ordinary mountain sickness just causes the feelings of a little dizziness and no other effects thereafter (and we can do this given that nothing in the stimulus mentions the effects of the mountain sickness so we can't assume anything of mountain sickness generally). Let's also assume that for cerebral edema, the same perceived feeling of dizziness occurs but instead of the perceived effects dissipating within a few minutes, the actual symptoms then become life-threatening. All this should be consistent with the stimulus.

Lets also review the negated answer choice for A, which would be "the treatment for ordinary mountain sickness does not differ from the treatment for cerebral edema" or "the treatment for ordinary mountain sickness is the same as the treatment for cerebral edema". So let's make one final assumption consistent with the stimulus, that being the treatment for both ordinary mountain sickness and cerebral edema is to return to lower atmosphere oxygen levels.

So, if your hiking up a mountain and you've been told that if you feel a little dizzy, there is a 99.99% chance that you have ordinary mountain sickness and a 0.01% chance you have cerebral edema, even if the the treatment for both is the same, I do not think it follows that we can assume that the conclusion of "cerebral edema is especially dangerous at high altitudes" does not follow anymore.

My reasoning for this is, the stimulus doesn't establish anything indicating what should and shouldn't be considered dangerous, so we need to infer that what is "dangerous" in this context is limited to assuming that the only thing that is dangerous would be to administer only the wrong treatment. But doesn't this leave out other alternative considerations? What if the climbers experiencing symptoms always administer both treatment methods? But more importantly, what if the climber decides not to take either treatment methods? This goes into a point not touched on in the explanation, but what happens if the climber confuses cerebral edema for ordinary mountain sickness (as J.Y. illudes is the possibility that can occur given the symptoms are the same) but decides not to take any treatment given the risks posed by ordinary mountain sickness may not be the same as those posed by cerebral edema.

So even if the treatment methods for both are the same "blue pill" or "climbing down the mountain or using supplemental oxygen supplies", could cerebral edema still not be incredibly dangerous for the very reason that one person mistaking it for a less deadly mountain sickness may cause them not take the steps necessary to receive treatment, even if those treatment methods are the same? If we assume that danger implies any situation which causes a risk to ones life, then would it not be a risk to ones life to confuse one illness with another far more deadly one, even if the treatment methods are the same given the fact that one might decide not to take a treatment on the basis of what illness they believe to have?

If the treatment for a mild cough and the black plague were both drinking the most disgusting vial putrid elixir, and the initial feeling for a mild cough and the black plague were both the same such that you would confuse one for another, and the mild cough is 1,000x more likely to occur than the black plague such that you aren't generally concerned that when you present symptoms you have the black plague, why would it not be reasonable to infer that there is an inherent risk that people not wanting to drink the vial putrid elixir may mistake their symptoms for nothing but a mild cough, when in fact they have the black plague. They could have drank the elixir and it would have cured either the cough or the plague, but because they confused their symptoms with something that posed less of a risk they decided not to take the treatment at all because they were adverse to taking the treatment unless it caused severe issues.

I'm not sure where I went wrong here or whether this is actually a valid criticism of assuming that answer choice A is necessary for the argument, but any help on this would be greatly appreciated as I really don't like moving on from a question if I haven't 100% figured out why I was wrong and why the correct answer choice is actually correct.

Not entirely sure, but with the new LSAT format is it still correct that you will receive "Your raw score (0 – 100)" or with the new format is the raw score now between 0 and 75?

Think this section needs to be updated to reflect changes to the LSAT format (removing LG section)

I'm still extremely confused about question 23 and the explanation didn't do much to address my confusion... I ended up putting "Total indifference" because I thought that the author didn't actually share whether or not they believed that the rights-based legal system would be successful and therefore was not interested in its success or failure, only on others peoples position and the effects it would have. All he did was share the optimism and concerns of others (i.e., "South African lawyers", "Among lawyers and judges", & "Some scholars") over the effects of this new legal system, share the authors personal beliefs on the effects of the legal change (e.g., "this shift will lead to extraordinary changes"), and specify a condition that needed to be met before the possibility of this new legal system could succeed after identifying a problem, but nowhere within the passage did I find anything mentioning whether the author thought these changes would be successful on a non-conditional basis, only that if the citizens view law as a tool of oppression these changes would not be successful.

So if the answer truly is "guarded optimism", where does the author show that he is optimistic that the rights-based legal system will be successful? The author does elaborate on his position that he believes the effects will be profound and have a major effect on the way law works and the way citizens are treated under those laws, but I don't see anything that suggests that he is optimistic that these changes are going to be successful. The only part of the passage that I believe actually indicates the authors view on whether a rights-based legal system could be successful is the last paragraph, but this paragraph only specifies a condition required before a rights-based system can be successful.

Personally, I almost see the opposite of optimism as by specifying that the only way a rights-based system will work is on the condition that the government show its citizens that the legal system is no longer a tool of oppression, are we inferring that the government will or is likely to do this? Because if we assume that it is unlikely that the government do this, then I think that this would be indicative of a pessimistic attitude towards the possibility. But lets say for example that the government is likely to show its citizens that the legal system is no longer a tool of oppression, how does this indicate that the author is optimistic when all we know is that the only way a rights-based culture can be successful is if the government shows the law is not a tool of oppression. To me that is like mistaking sufficiency for necessity, as we are taking "If a rights-based culture is to succeed, the government will need to show its citizens that a legal system is no longer a tool of oppression" and mistranslating to "If the government shows its citizens that a legal system is no longer a tool of oppression, a rights-based culture will succeed" and then assuming that the government is likely to show its citizens that a legal system is no longer a tool of oppression and then inferring from this that the author must have a "guarded" optimism towards the subject.

Although I would argue that assuming that the author is indifferent from this passage is incorrect as the author doesn't clearly state their position on the unconditional success of a rights-based system, to me this is the most accurate statement of the authors position as outlined within the passage as assuming they are optimistic about it being successful isn't demonstrated (at least clear enough to me) within the passage so I hope I am just missing something important as I don't understand how we can jump to the conclusion that the author must be optimistic about something in which they only provided other peoples opinion on the success as well a condition needed to be met before success was even on the table.

I'm extremely confused on this one. He says that the argument forgot to talk about costs (specifically costs to the company and their overall position), but why are we assuming that the Drug company manager is concerned about costs, the company's overall position, or cuts to other marketing campaigns?

Aren't we trying to weaken his argument about how a marketing campaign can potentially "save" their newest product that is not selling? Isn't an argument that would weaken or strengthen this for example be whether the market is currently saturated and whether or not they will not be able to increase their customer base for this new product?

If the correct answer mentions that "undertaking these campaigns would endanger the companies position and necessitate cutbacks to other campaigns", how does this weaken support for the conclusion "We should try it ... as it is our one chance to save the product".

To me the focus of the authors argument is not on whether it would be overall beneficial to their company but instead beneficial to the products success, so wouldn't an assumption need to be made that the author is less concerned about the individual products success and is more concerned for the success of the corporation overall? To me I just thought this was unreasonable considering that he fails to mention this once within his argument and is specifically focused on the success of a single product as opposed to the success and overall position of the drug company.

Could it not be true that this Drug company manager has a personal interest in the success of this single product he could be in charge of and maybe his future working at the Drug company depends on? What if the "we" he is using when he says "we should try it" is someone with the same vested interest in the products success? Then does it still follow that if "it endangers the overall position of the corporation" and "necessitates cutbacks on other campaigns" this weakens his argument when in reality all we know about the situation that the author has provided us with the fact that he is concerned about the success of their new product, and concludes with the fact that we should try it (the marketing campaign)?

So in this scenario as long as he believes that having a shot at saving the new product might work, would he not take it? I have heard of many self-destructive corporate mishaps where this type of thing occurs (i.e., where the interests of managers and the interests of the corporation differ and aren't aligned to the detriment of the company), so should we assume that he is really in this solely for the overall benefit of the corporation and will risk this products failure by not engaging in a marketing campaign to achieve its success? Is it reasonable or not to make this assumption?

This one was difficult...