Hey I think the problem with AC D is that the comparative part. From the passage, I dont think we can comfortably infer that either method of bankruptcy law can lead to discharging more proportion of debts. Yes, as you said, there might be more people getting benefitted in the method the guy Korokin advocates, but at the same time, do we know that it gives back MORE, GREATER PROPORTION of debts? We don't know, we only know that maybe, just maybe, debts are reaching more people, more than just the creditors. Plus, the most fatal mistake might be that we are not sure whether the author agree with this or not. Author does not present an opinion on this comparative issue, instead the author is quite critical to Korokin's method.

E is right for the same reason that you mentioned, but I think it stands pretty good. If the creditors charge more for credits, we can infer that the price for people to borrow money, aka more expensive for people to borrow money and establish business. And we know that the author would agree with this, since the last paragraph was the author's criticism on the Korokin's method.

Hope this helps.

I think the answer can be directly answered in the sentence right after the highlighted part. The passage states that the non-American methods have an intensity in pursuing maximizing economic benefits, making these methods unsuitable for preservation of crops.

According to the highlighted sentence, the crop geneticists have been "(basing) their research and their thinking solely on agricultural methods brought to North America from else where." This means the non-American methods in the next sentence. What have they been doing, combining these two sentences? They have been focusing on the methods that are too intense in pursuing maximizing economic benefits, and these methods are not suitable for preservation. This fits perfectly into AC A. I hesitated when I saw "further intense methods," but it basically fits into the idea of "basing their research and their thinking solely on these methods...." part of the passage. To further a method means pursuing a method, and researching and thinking about the intense methods definitely fit in here. Second part of AC A is pretty obvious: these methods, as described after the highlighted part, have an intense focus on maximizing econ benefits.

@ said:

I will also quickly add that another reason A is wrong (and this is also why it's so important to read answer choices carefully!) because is states "in the face of evidence" - but there is NO evidence suggesting that below-average triggered the change in curriculum. The previous commenter has rightly noted that the "quality of plumbing instruction" is new in the conclusion and not supported by any of the premises. Therefore, this is a gap in the argument,

I second this. There is nothing in the argument that states evidence that the low performance was caused by the curriculum

For 17, I eliminated B on the basis that the argument doesn't present evidence that states the instruction quality hasn't increase. The argument is that because last year, only one-third were able to pass the test. Therefore the curriculum is working to lower the quality of instruction.

The support for the conclusion is not that there is no evidence of improvement. It is simply stating that they are fucking up, and they are below average. I dont think the author is presenting a lack of improvement and say that this curriculum lowers the quality of instruction. There might be some evidence of improvement, according to what the author said. What if the school has been the rock bottom and before only 1/5 instead of 1/3 got the cert? With what he/she stated in the argument, we cannot infer a statement about how the students are fucking up the test as a lack of improvement. Something that more fitting for lack of evidence of improvement can be like "however, still only 1/3 of the students are passing the test and getting the certs, embarrassing the school as usual before we adopted the new program."

C is right for that the author is saying we are still below average, therefore the program is lowering the quality. C points right at this problem in the argument. How do you know just because we are below average, the program is LOWERING the quality of instruction? No way we can know that, referring back to the 1/5 to 1/3 example I used earlier.

Hope this helps.

For 19, I chose A cuz I had a very hard time understanding the question and the argument under time constraint. Came back to it picked one that I knew had problem.

The argument is that the productivity growth in INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS has dropped significantly after computer, and industries that relied the most on computer witnessed the biggest decrease in productivity growth.

Conclusion: A business that increase reliance on computer has not improved its productivity.

First I think the connection between NATIONS and INDUSTRIES and the conclusion of A BUSINESS. The answer should connect these two parts. D does that, but A doesn't.

For A, it simply states the situation with the industry, wasnt what i was looking for regarding connection to BUSINESS. Yes there might be connection between a business and industry, but A has another flaw, which has been pointed out by someone else's comment above. A tricks us into assuming that inefficiencies are caused by computer technologies, but we have no idea where those inefficiencies come from. Yea it seems to be providing an alternative explanation to the argument's point that computer contributed to the inefficiencies, but we don't know that. Maybe the inefficiencies are due to the computers, which strengthens the argument in one sense, maybe not, which provide an alternative explanation. Plus, A says the inefficiencies hindered the growth. What if the inefficiencies simply slowed the growth down, but the computer tech actually made it even lower or reversed the growth? Anyway this should get the point through: to make A correct we have to make a lot of assumptions.

D is more attractive for weakening for two reason: First for me it connects with the business part, making it more relevant to attack the premise conclusion: You mentioned industries and nations, here I am isolating businesses to show the applicable situation. Also, D directly hits the point of the argument that states increased reliance on computer doesnt do good to a business. D states that no no no, the business with the most growth are those that are the most invested in computer tech. This definitely weakens the argument that says relying more on comp tech doesn't help with growth. My biggest skepticism that made me eliminate D was that investment =/= reliance. And also, D is another correlation/causation type answer. But D, for my own review, still does better at directing the attention to business and providing a quite solid correlation that weakens the premise-conclusion relationship.

Definitely a 5 star difficulty question. The correct answer is pretty fishy, but for weakening, that might suffice. I'd love to see what JY has to say about this question.

A lot of ppl chose E and I thought E was attractive.

But let's try to negate E. We get something like "the ancient people had a technical understanding of medical functions of the prohibitions." Ok I thought it was attractive because it goes against the part that says the ancient people did not have access to the data. Hey look they had a technical understanding, that might mean they have access to the modern data, right?

Hell no. They can have a technical understanding of everything, but that definitely does not equate to access to modern data. They might know that prohibiting excessive wine consumption is good for the public because technically, wine induces insanity as observed by the doctors-equivalent of ancient times. But does that mean that technical observation is equivalent to today's neurological experiment on how alcohol depresses brain function by blocking those electronic signal receivers in the brain? Hell no. To make E necessary, we have to make the assumption that technical understanding equates with modern data, which is pretty far-fetch.

I think the trick to dealing with this question is to have a very good grasp of the support and conclusion and also to pay attention to the part "televised debate." What does televised debate mean to us in the question? It doesn't mean anything other than that it was shown on TV. When I was going through the answer choices, I thought that the answer choices set up stuff like "live audience" and distinction between people who watched it and people who don't to trap our attention. It doesn't matter whether someone watched it in the live audience or not, we don't know how many watched it or whether the survey targets those who watched it live/on TV. We just know that the survey was conducted after the debate, not on a certain medium.

Knowing this led me to eliminate A B and C on this basis: whether the people watched the debate or not (A), whether it was a live audience (B) or whether those who watched it simply don't matter much. E is irrelevant, leaving us with D, which is basically job done.

I don't know why this question seemed super confusing when I was doing it under time, but upon review I found it quite easy to understand.

The comparison is between the office workers and the...let's just say people who do deadlifts and squats. According to the passage, the office workers are having more injuries in their lower back compared to the deadlift and squat enjoyers, two lifts that places stress on one's lower back. The conclusion is that the chair used by office workers are inducive to lower back injury.

Apparently, the conclusion doesn't connect. We don't know if it is the chair or the stress of the office working environment, or anything else. The office workers may engage in something else that is, let's say arguing with their boss, actually scientifically proven to be inducive to lower back injuries. It is very easy for us to make the earthy assumption that constantly placing stress on the lower back has to be inducive to lower back injuries, and the question capitalizes on that assumption. It is pretty hard upfront to see why the argument doesn't stand, but it doesn't since there is a gap in the comparison, and the answer should be one that exploits that gap in the comparison between office workers and powerlifters.

AC C: I was very skeptical at C because it really doesn't offer much, but since this was the last question unanswered, I chose it anyway. Yea sure, the powerlifters are encouraged to use better techniques like bracing or wearing a belt or better movement to reduce the chance of injuries, but so what? It might still be true that the stress placed on your lower back is still tremendously more during a squat than sitting on an office chair for 6 hours. Does that mean that these encouragements actually led to solid injury prevention? Nothing like this is mentioned. If these are true and the office workers are still getting more injuries, it might be very plausible that the office chairs are faulty.

E is perfect at invalidating the comparison. AC E states that constant physical activity is the most beneficial to lower back health. Engaging in this activity helps to minimize the risk of injuries despite the tremendous stress placed on it. Before going into thinking oh the one kind of exercise might be different, but not really. AC E is just saying constant physical exercise. This is an encompassing statement that includes every kind of physical exercise, including the one that places tremendous stress on the lower back mentioned in the passage. Now, with this additional information in mind, does the comparison between the office worker and the powerlifters still stand? Hell naw. The powerlifter by doing constant exercise are pretty damn healthy when it comes to the lower back, and they cannot serve as a good comparison to the office workers. In this comparison, the office workers may just have normal rate of back injuries, a rate that is still more than the powerlifters who has been conducting the most beneficial lower back activity. In this sense, the office chair is not so much to be blamed. E rekts the comparison, and that's what we want to have.

the lsat writers are just looking at this question and be like "suck on this"

@ said:

I think that's a decent paraphrase and yeah...the author should have been asking precisely that instead of just rushing to the conclusion that everybody else in the field was just out to get him. Imagine writing a paper about some topic and publishing it and then responding this way when your peers start critiquing your work: oh, you all are just out to get me!

Holy smoke i see it now. That somehow just clicked in my head i was staring at this answer for so long having no clue why it is right. Thank you

I eliminated D very quickly under time. What does paper, metal, glass have to do with the argument? Saw these three and clicked the x right away and didn't even read and chose B.

D weakens it because what we know from the passage is that the proportion of plastic that is recycled by the plant has been increasing. PROPORTION. Does that mean that the total quantity of the plastic they recycle has been constantly increasing? Maybe yes and maybe no. The author seems very convinced that the proportion being shooting up can be readily interpreted as the absolute quantity of the plastic going up.

That interpretation is the flaw in this argument. We simply cannot say that just because the proportion something takes up has become larger, it's quantity has become larger. Say you have 10 cats. 7 of them are yellow and 3 of them are black. The black cats take up 30% of your cat possession. Now you got into law school and realize "hmm maybe i have too many cats and I like the black ones more," and you decided to give 5 of your yellow cats to your parents. Now you have 5 cats, but the proportion of your black cats shoot right up to 60%. That doesn't mean that you acquired more black cats.

At this point the problem of the argument is clear. The proportion of plastic waste going up does not translate into an corresponding increase in its absolute quantity. That is exactly what D points out. The other things that the plant recycles have been decreasing. Just like you with your cat collection, the plant gives up on some other part of its waste recycling collection, leading to an increase in the proportion of plastic being recycled in the plant. Does that mean that the amount of plastic that is being recycled hasn't gone up? No, but we know that we can weaken the argument in this way so that it is not as likely that the plastic recycling encouragement has been failing.

AC B can be true and doesn't hurt the argument. It can totally be true that a lot of the plastics they process at the plant cannot be recycled, but that is not at all discussed in the argument. We only care about how much plastic people dispose, not how much RECYCLABLE plastic people dispose. Even the plastic treatment plant is not mentioned to be a plastic RECYCLING plant. So we don't need to care about whether the plastic are recyclable or not. This is the kind of worldly inference we make in our head, the kind that LSAT prohibits.

Very very tricky question, and I got it wrong. But here is how i figured it out.

For traditional knowledge, we know that feudalism presupposes the existence of nobility. In lawgic, that is Feudalism --> Nobility. Presuppose = require. According to author's own definition, nobility requires legal recognition. N --> L.

So from that we can conclude that F --> N --> L.

Now comes the fun part. Before 12th century, there was no legal sanction. So /L, contrapose that back we get /L -- /N -- /F. In english, it goes like "Without legal sanction, there should not be nobility, so there is no Feudalism." But we know that Feudalism existed back in the 8th century, back when there was no legal sanctions for nobility. Therefore we get a situation where the lack of legal sanction (/L) did not prohibit the existence of feudalism, a situation that violates the /L-->/F lawgic we just had.

So now we know that the logic chain does not have to be the case, according to the historical fact that feudalism could live without legal sanction without nobility. Answer A matches this. It is saying that the notion that Feudalism HAS TO presuppose Nobility does not match up with historical record.

whip it around and help it mates...

chuckled, just like JY did

@ said:

C is saying that...maybe the scientists are just trying to provide evidence that would bring us closer to the truth...all because what they've found so far contradict's Smith's work. That's it.

ok I might be dumb. I have no idea why answer C translates into the alternative explanation of the scientists trying to bring evidence. Isn't C saying that "the author did not ask why the scientists are not providing new evidence?"

I think the number method mentioned above is one way, but I'm terrible with numbers so here is my answer to why D is better than B. I chose B under time, and now I kinda see why not.

B states that the evaluation system disadvantages some, leading to unfairness. Well, guess what, we are literally doing that kind of evaluation. The logical God in China who knows zero English will get consistently 120/180 in LSAT, but does that mean he is not good at logical reasoning? No. This is quite similar to the situation B is objecting to, and we probably all object to this kind of situation. But is that the main concern of those trying to find out who to give the scholarship to? Not at all.

The audition may well be designed to be the most biased audition ever, but the goal here is not how to object to the audition. The goal is why the audition wouldn't produce the result of "only the applicants with the most highly evaluated audition will receive the scholarship." B addresses a potential flaw of the audition: it might not be accurate; we don't know how would that affect the goal of giving the scholarship to only the 10% highest evaluated auditions. The lesson is to focus on what the question is actually asking us to do and not to bring our own worldly knowledge into it.

D address that problem. It states that it is possible for some students who have lower evaluation results to get the scholarship while the students who have higher evaluation are left without scholarship. When I was doing it, I eliminated it thinking no way that can happen. But who cares how this can happen? If D is true, there is no way that only the highest evaluated students receive the scholarship since some underachievers are somehow getting it. This situation is the one that would undermine the effectiveness of the evaluation set by the trustees, fitting the main point of the question.

Note to myself: make sure to abandon real-life assumptions and expectations; stick to the question

I chose C as well. Upon reviewing I think the problem with C is that the main intention for holding elected office can still be money even though the pay varies. I overlooked the fact that being "paid poorly" does not rule out the possibility that the politicians are still in for the money and the money only, though that sounds very unlikely in real life (if LSAT adheres to real life we would have a much easier time). Maybe the pay is low only when Valitican experiences major economic crisis and no other job that pays well is available so everyone chooses politics for the money. There can be thousands of possible scenarios in which the politicians main goal is still money when the pay is low.

E is definitely a much stronger weakening answer. E states that for MOST politicians, 51%, there are better options for them if their intention is just money. They can become a merchant or a wealthy TV host and make a lot more, but they still choose to become politicians. That shows that the intention is not so much money anymore. Ok maybe becoming a politician brings in connections or whatever and eventually you get more money, but that is still a more weakening statement comparing to C since it provides that most of the politicians always have other more profiting options that they did not choose.

What is the theory that is not adequately accounted for? The "theory' in AC C seems to be something that the question stem does not talk about. We dont know if the invisible spectrum theory "adequately account" for anything, we just know that relativity accounts for star's visibility better.

Negating E destroys the argument. If relativity relies on invisible light spectrum to account completely for the phenomenon, we cannot disregard invisible spectrum at all, since saying that invisible light spectrum shouldn't be consider would also make relativity theory irrelevant

@ said:

I think I messaged everyone in that asked for the checklist with my email so that I can email the the checklist but let me know if I missed someone. Another key thing I would recommend is a simple system for skipping questions. I posted about this before so check my previous comment on skipping. I found it very helpful to skip from 5-7 questions per LR section.

@ Hey can you send me a checklist as well? Thank you so much!

damn am i doomed for having english as a second language and thought too often can be translated into most

Hey I had a similar problem with C, and I made a discussion post a day or two ago with my take on this question. Would you mind taking a look at that and either see if it makes sense or add some more to my interpretation of it? Thanks hope that can help

Hey I got both 23 and 22 wrong, and better yet, I randomly picked one for 22 and picked B for 23 just like you did.

for 23, B is wrong on the ground of "many complex causes." The sociologists are just saying that there "cannot be one simple cause." What about one complex cause? What about 50 simple causes? These can all be true. Just because there cannot be one simple cause doesnt mean it has to be a bunch of complex causes. I came back and looked at this question and doubted my judgement on A and chose B. Since you kinda see why A is good, I'll keep it simple. A is good in the sense that the sociologists don't think the rise of political party can have a simple explanation of people care only about their own money. We can get this from linking the previous part of the argument with the sociologists' statement.

For 22, I made a post today explaining why I think it should be what it is. It is super long but you can go and check it out and I still want to answer 24 for you without posting an essay up.

24,

premise the change in genes is very very slight, provided some stats about how slight it is, and claim that since this kind of change is slight, there is no need to be worrisome about the harm.

Conclusion: the risk of this practice is minimal.

Right off the bat we know this argument is crap. We can totally expect changing one gene of something can create a whole new animal, and im sure there are movies out there about this exact topic. D matches up to this prediction, stating that in many instances, changing one gene leads to toxicity.

C is wrong. It basically says that some people don't know which gene is causing a certain characteristic. It doesn't matter if some people don't know where the gene is in corn that causes the corn to look yellow and has a few green leaves dangling on its side. Not knowing the exact location of the gene doesn't matter. The premise can still lead to the conclusion that changing one gene doesnt matter.

Hope this helps!

Hey did you happen to get question 22 right? I have no idea why that should be E nor I understand what that means.

A states that the invisible light spectrum would not adequately explain the phenomenon.

Conclusion: there is no reason to believe this to be the case

premise: Einstein's relativity COMPLETELY explains this phenomenon

Let's negate A. We get invisible light spectrum would adequately explain the phenomenon. That is not necessary on the ground that it can explain the thing adequately, but Einstein's relativity just does it much better by COMPLETELY explaining it. This doesn't kill the argument. We can still say that yea this kinda explains it, but Einstein's theory explains it the best, so we don't need to consider this theory.

I have some examples from my time doing reading comp on lsat. Let's say the geocentric theory did a pretty good job in explaining the movement of the stars and the observations of seasons, day/night or whatever I got this from lsat. Then we got Copernicus heliocentric theory. It explains the phenomenon so much better comparing to geocentrism. People back then can say that hey, if heliocentrism explains this so perfectly, why do we still need to consider geocentrism? "But geocentrism can explain it adequately tho come on guys," said a geocentrist. See how little that does to rekt the argument? We still don't need to consider geocentrism if heliocentrism does a great job already.

Negating AC E would kill the argument, as you already know. Hope this helps

I found a trick to this question is to recognize that the cars by R sold to B is a set number. That number is the constant in this question.

Let's say R sells X number of cars to B. From the stimulus, we know that X represents at least 51% of the R's car sale of the year (the fact that R broke its sales record is irrelevant here).

X=51% of R

Moving on, we know that for the residents in B, the cars from R bought by B's residents this year is still X. Then we know that X represents at most 49% of the total car purchase of B.

This seems pretty simple now. For R, X represents 51% or more, but for B, X represents 49% or less. That means R is a smaller number compared to B. AC D correct

@ said:

Hi! For this one I did "/poorly promoted --> so." Then, I did "/so" and concluded "/properly promoted." I changed "/poorly promoted" to "properly promoted." While in most questions that's not advisable, I feel like for these very abstract questions where you need to simplify it as much as possible it really helps you see the error and apply it to others.

I think the main confusion with this question is people mixing up the poorly promoted and properly promoted. Does that make sense?

Yea that makes sense. My confusion is that in review and even with properly promoted as the reference, I still get:

/SO --> /Properly Promoted

/SO

/PP

Im just wondering if the logic is that C is the equivalent of the contrapositive of this logic chain, therefore it is still correct even though it is not the exact match but the contrapositive. I mean these two definitely mean the same thing logically:

PP --> SO

/SO

/PP

Am I making sense here? Thanks for the explanation!