How I'm starting to understand C:

Say a cat named Goma exists. Then there are 10 people around Goma who are allergic to cats. But only 2 of them are having an allergic reaction caused by Goma. The rest 8 are fine around Goma.

But we do know that those 8 are allergic to cats per the stimulus. So they must be allergic to something that's not found in Goma. Something that must be present in some other cat.

...because if that something was not present in any other cat, then why would those 8 people be considered as allergic to cats? They just wouldn't be put in that category. Like they'd be allergic to nothing found in the cats...so they wouldn't be allergic.

We know they are considered as allergic, so they must be allergic to something that's found in a cat, something that's not in Goma.

So there must be SOME differences between cats -- if all cats are identical, which means identical to Goma, then those 8 people would NOT be considered as allergic to cats anymore. Because all cats would be the same and those 8 people would not be allergic to ANY cat anymore.

And this goes against the stimulus.

One thing that helped me eliminate C (which I think JY should've mentioned) is this: "It is a claim whose acceptance by critics who differ on OTHER ISSUES is..."

What are the other issues? All we know is that these critics differ on this one thing about postimpressionist paintings. What other issues do they disagree on? It's descriptively inaccurate. E doesn't make this error.

@kyoungy that response exactly.

For me, I picked B--but this isn't a circular reasoning error. The error here is taking the premise ("The loud bark...") and saying that that's an example of a behavior motivated by altruism. HUH. How are you taking the premise and saying that that's motivated by altruism? Are you a meerkat? How do you know what their motivation is? C gets at this.

Got this right by process of elimination, but am I the only one who hesitated with B because I wasn't sure if "feeling a lack of control" applied to workers who reported "the least control over their own work"? I guess it's a reasonable assumption/connection...right? Would love to have someone chime in on this. #help

This might help. Please let me know if you see anything wrong with this.

First, one thing that stood out to me as I read this: why on earth does it have to be human activity that's responsible? I'll take it to be true that 7 day cycles are of too little significance, but why on earth are you leaping now to human activity? TF? Kind of out of the blue?

So that gets us to E--if a weather pattern with a natural cause has a 7 day cycle, then the cause has a 7 day cycle. The author assumes this to be true, because (per Loophole) what if it's a 6 day cycle? 14 day? 11 days? No. The author doesn't think about this. He thinks if it's a pattern with a natural cause (and has 7 day cycle), the cause itself must be 7 day cycle. And because the cause itself doesn't seem to be 7 day cycle (too little significance like the premise), the author thinks it's not a pattern with a natural cause.

Which therefore gets us to jump to human activity, at least in his mind. That's his dumb assumption.

@ and @ thank you so much for your responses. Like you guys suggested, I'll try experimenting with the way I go through LR. Speed definitely has been a factor, so I think I need to play around with that a little more. I also read the stimulus carefully but not the answer choices themselves at times---will try to fix that as well. Hopefully trying out your suggestions will help in making the jump to the 170s! (I'll be so happy when I do haha).

Had barely any time for this question and so chose E out of panic but it's so, so wrong. What do we know about the writers of these manuscripts? Absolutely nothing. It could be the case that several manuscripts are coming from same writers. Or not. We just don't know. E is so bad.

Loophole: Why can't we just do the green manure practice--why do we have to necessarily get rid of chemical fertilizers?

Because the author seems to be implying/assuming that farmers won't do green manure crops unless they give up chem fertilizer first. E matches this.

A doesn't have to be true--so what if not alfafa. That's just one of the green manure crops. The farmers can grow other ones.

The author never said in the conclusion that you'd enjoy each piece of contemp art less than you otherwise would because of the global supply. If the author did, then E would be correct. But that's not what the conclusion says.

The idea, which the conclusion rejects, is that contemp art enables many people to get aesthetic fulfillment than they otherwise could. So there are two groups. All equal except that one group has contemp art, one group does not. And the idea is that the first group gets some net positive aesthetic fulfillment. Doesn't have to be a lot or a little amount, but a net positive.

The conclusion then comes and says that this is WRONG--contempt art doesn't give this net positive because there's a GLOBAL SUPPLY that can do this. There's no room for contemp art. His entire argument rests on this--there's no room for contemp art to come in and do its thing for aesthetic fulfillment.

So we just go for that. We think of ways to go after his flaw, which is in thinking that the global supply takes care of everything. No. Global supply =/= local supply. Maybe it's not available in some parts of the world. Then there's room there for contemp art to create this net positive.

I don't think mapping this out is necessary. This is how I understood it in my head.

Anyone believing that no individual can have an effect on society's future will feel too helpless to act to change society for the better. Okay...

Thus, anyone who wants to improve society should reject the belief that its future will be determined entirely by vast historical forces that individuals are powerless to change.

Why? Why should anyone who want to improve society reject this belief that the future is determined entirely by vast historical forces? Why does the author think that such a person needs to reject this belief?

"Because," the author would say, "look above. If a person believes that he can't have an effect on society's future (by believing in the vast historical forces idea), he'll feel helpless to act to change."

Okay...but is that consequence of feeling helpless a bad thing for those who want to improve society? Because you make it seem as if it's a natural thing to say, "Thus, anyone who wants to improve should reject the belief..."But is that consequence of feeling helpless enough for us to say, "Thus, that's why you need to reject the belief..."? Is that consequence of feeling helpless such a bad thing for those who want to improve society? Are the two connected?

"Yes," the author would say, "if you want to improve society, you cannot feel helpless to act to change."

"THANK YOU," I would say in this hypothetical conversation lmao. But yeah, this is the gap that the author leaves out. I wish he had said it from the start. But for this question, we need to fill that gap for him.

Alright, if you're having problems with 27, please read this and let me know if this makes sense to you. Trying to figure out how answer choice D works.

First...I picked E, but it's wrong because...traditional grounds have been "questioned"? Haven't they been confirmed by the recent studies, if anything?

Now, D. This is how I'm understanding it. It's like this.

The more susceptible you are to being influenced by leading questions--"oh shit, what did the lawyer just ask? Was like this?"--the more this exacerbates the memory problems since time has passed and your memory is shit. Like, in addition to being asked/influenced which might make you misremember "oh maybe his shirt was blue after all?", time has also gone by (you're no longer at the crime scene, you're at a courtroom now) and so you're likely to misremember bc of time, too.

So basically. Imagine one person who isn't susceptible to leading questions. Then maybe other risk factors aren't at play because he knows what he knows and won't pull something out of his ass. He'll stick to his script/version of what happened, no matter what. Now you have someone who is susceptible. The more likely you're influenced by leading questions "oh shit maybe i'm wrong and the lawyer is right about XYZ?" the more likely the testimony becomes inaccurate bc, oh no, time has passed too-- and so you're more likely to just make something up without even realizing.

Thus, if you are more likely to be influenced by leading questions, the risk of inaccurate testimony bc of factors like time having passed by increases

@ Ah I should note that this was my 2nd try, so I don't have the score preview option. Ahaha.

I LOVE this question. I got it wrong and could not figure it out at all in the beginning, but after watching the video...wow. Gotta respect the people who come up with these questions. Amazing.

The "unique" word is the KEY to this. Because it's in essence saying that highly successful entrepreneurs are THE ONLY (group 1) ones who SSII. So SSII → HSE. Then, we also see that for HSE, whenever they see solutions they implement it...so HSE → SSII. Which means that this is a two way street; it's a bi-conditional.

There is a VERY simple way of solving this, per Ellen Cassidy's Loophole. The argument's reasoning here is that:

1) voice tech can't distinguish between homophones

2) so until voice tech improved to recognize and utilize grammar and what not

3) voice programs will not accurately translate spoken words into text

So the loophole is...why does the 2) voice tech improvement in grammar and what not have to happen? what if voice programs can accurately translate and figure out homophones through a different method? Why the hell does 2) have to happen?

This is a Necessary Assumption, so you have to then say: there is NO OTHER way to accurately translate and figure out homophones except for this voice tech improvement with grammar and what not. So THE ONLY way voice tech can distinguish is by this method. Which is A).

Stressed because I want this to be my last test--I love the test, but I want to move on and prioritize my law school apps. Hoping that we both get what we want :-)

Will be trying this out for the first time tomorrow before I take my flex. Thank you for sharing!

170 or higher!

Got this right by two things.

1. Every other answer choice sucked.

2. Answer choice C, when negated, basically led me to this simple thought: "If DNA of ancestors and Neanderthals are more significantly similar, then maybe they must have interbred...?

Man, came back to this question after some time and picked C again. It's wrong because 1. we don't know how publicized the flood was and 2. we don't know the amount--maybe Hollyville contributes less than 1 percent of the aid, and federal relief is like 99 percent of the total amount, and maybe federal relief is extremely connected with the publicized factor. Again, we just don't know and can't make any predictions like this.

D is correct. Seems like they were more willing to help after going through something.

I missed this a few months ago, then came back to this question having forgotten what the right answer was. Picked E, again. Rats. Why did E draw me in? I think it's because I misinterpreted once again "counteract" and also missed the "in any way" in the answer choice. Need to read more carefully...

I hope none of you made the same mistake I did, which was to focus only on the "better protects the environment" idea and forget about the actual argument itself of "raise the hope..." I picked C because of this. I thought why does cost matter for the "better protects the environment idea." Upset at myself for not seeing the full conclusion lol.

Lol only 27% got this question right? Yikes. Okay, argument is...overwhelming majority of 9-year-olds can recognize cigarette brand logos. But less than 1% of them smoke. Therefore, little or connection between cig brand logo recognition and smoking. Loophole: what if the 9-year-olds recognized brand logos because people in their households smoked? Wouldn't it then be the case that there's connection between logo recognition and smoking? Or would the argument say, yeah, maybe other people in the households smoked, but that would still reaffirm the view---no link between recognition and smoking because 9-year-olds aren't smoking and are yet recognizing the brand. Hm...is this a valid chain of thought? Is this the right flaw? Going to see the video now.

Like someone else said, I didn't think "near future" was a specific prediction. I also thought that the main error in reasoning was going from this likelihood of meteor strike into saying that this warrants funding---like why funding? What if there are other, better prescriptions? Why does the likelihood entail this specific proposal? Going to see the video now.

Upset that I got this wrong wrong, what was I thinking. Going to write my thoughts before watching the video. Argument: not true that the complexity of connecting PC components is not a widespread obstacle. That is, the complexity is a widespread obstacle. Why? Because installing accessories is a PITA and their extra software can mess things up. Loophole: what if installing accessories unnecessary? Why the hell are these consumers installing accessories? Writing it this way, I can see that the obvious loophole is that maybe PCs are sold with accessories installed already. Then customers wouldn't have to go through the trouble of installing accessories themselves.

A Manuals explain purpose of jumpers and switches...don't care, get out of here.

B Accessory software can often be obtained for free. So what? The problem still remains.

C Installing software will become easy in the foreseeable future? That's great, but what about now? The problem still remains.

D Ah, there we go. PC includes accessories. Free installation I'm not sure about, doesn't it require an assumption to think that this means someone else will do it for you, as someone in the comments suggested? Regardless, just the fact that PCs includes accessories in their sales is good enough.

E Manufacturers don't really think about ease of installation when they design accessories...this almost strengthens the stimulus in a way. Why the hell did I choose this one? Sometimes I don't understand the way my brain thinks in timed conditions.