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just a girl trying to get a 175+
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i think C still leads to the same conclusion though that marijuana causes cancer. maybe its doing it in a different way, but that's not what the conclusion is saying so you're not weakening it by just providing another way that the conclusion could be true
When taking tests on LSAC, is the interface the same as the LSAT? Last time I used it only took up 75% of my screen with the left 25% taken up.
@droddddd387 i was on the same exact boat and i don't disagree with you. i think the key here though is remembering we aren't trying to destroy our argument, just introduce some "reasonable doubt" lol.
B definitely isn't strong enough to kill this argument. i think it's just the "best" of bad answer choices. the rest are wrong for clear reasons. yes, B requires you to fill some assumptions in, but there's really no better alternative.
example: the amount of fresh water available to meet needs varies significantly from region to region... so out of the small fraction of the supply, the US can have plenty and not sweat about an increasing population. Europe could have a tiny fraction of this and have an increasing population that their supply won't be able to support. that variation introduces some doubt in thinking that no water shortages will happen, because some may happen even if it isn't on a global scale
all around, this question is tough
the video explanation for this is poor tbh.
i think in understanding why D is wrong, "eventually" is the key word. it's out of scope from the stimulus which focuses on the "near future."
honestly i completely missed the "since" in B and fell for the trap. i was really confused because my B and D both fit, and obviously how could both be correct? i went for my gut and chose D, but i was honestly lucky.
reviewing now, the "since" is a lot more obvious; i will give the test writers props bc they almost got me on smth tricky and silly at the same time. lesson learned: watch out for your premise & conclusion indicators folks!!
an easy way for me to diagram/draw this out was drawing one circle for fiction and another for nonfiction and then drawing circles within those with the criteria in the stimulus.
because the question is asking us what can be properly inferred, we know not to go beyond the stimulus or accept new info from ACs. i treated it like a MBT. some ACs were flat out wrong while others were "eh... could be true," but i'd need more info before saying if it was true/false.
if you limit it by the stimulus, i think it becomes much easier to accept E because you're only given these conditions. maybe, in the real world, the publishing house/company publishes more than just fiction and non-fiction... but as far as we know from the stimulus (which is the only "world" we can get info from), we only have these two categories so it's easy to stay within it
in reading E:
"unrequested manuscripts"... okay so either the fiction literary agent ones or the nonfiction renowned figure ones (2 out of the 4 options)
"NOT submitted by literary agents"... okay now we've just got renowned figures left. and bam that's E
@bella_nova i feel like this the most natural read if you limit your scope to the passage. i know we have to make reasonable inferences/assumptions sometimes, but i didn't think of the "risk of pursuing a legal action" as encompassing more than the passage states because that simply isn't discussed. in the passage, the only risks we talk about/are concerned with are the financial ones like the burden of paying for your lawyer.
yes, there are probably more risks in the real world like you stated in your comment, but i think we have to separate those thoughts from the ones that we get directly/indirectly from the passage.
@joshmet The author says: "...while only a minority of unabraded Calvaria major seeds germinate, the number is still probably sufficient to keep this species from becoming extinct." That's a pretty good reason to believe that the tree isn't threatened by imminent extinction.
Do we know whether the author believes there could be other factors contributing to the tree's decline? Sure, but we don't know anything about whether these factors contribute to extinction because the author doesn't even dive into that point at all.
Could they be factors that would cause extinction?? Maybe??
But the point is the author doesn't give us any indication to believe that this question/possibility is on their mind. We're not looking at what's possible here; we are looking at what the author believes and their perspective.
@Rena12345 in the case of a successful outcome, the client is to pay the lawyer's normal fee plus an agreed-upon additional percentage of that fee. so yes, we talk about those fees. but the author doesn't say whether the total fees under this specific arrangement are higher or lower than normal arrangements (non-contingency). this is the comparison D makes as an AC, and the author never compares these fees arguing that the fees for contingency agreements are so much higher or lower than if they weren't under such an agreement.
@bella_nova my reply to MnM addresses your issue with A, in case you're interested.
i was also between A and B and chose A because it felt explicitly stated to me, but i still wasn't sure how B was wrong. the textual evidence and explanation you gave on what's wrong with B makes a lot of sense and was very helpful so thanks!
@MnM the risk of pursuing legal action are those risks stated in the passage (not recovering costs and not being able to pay lawyer's fees).
the passage says that: "Contingency-fee agreements call for payment only if the lawyer is successful in the case." so if you are the client, and your case is lost under such an arrangement, you do not have to then deal with paying your lawyer. typically, that lawyer payment is a cost to you, and if you're losing your case, you're not going to recover that cost via damages (risk). but under contingency-fee arrangements, that risk no longer falls on you because you don't have to pay if you lose, it's the lawyer that has to suck up not getting paid if they lose the case.
the passage says that in contingency-fee arrangements: "the lawyer must be satisfied that the client is financially unable to pay the fee in the event that sufficient damages are not awarded." that's the risk of not obtaining a damages award that will pay their lawyer's fees, which the lawyer now has to bear the burden of.
both of those risks mentioned are the risks that generally come with a client taking legal action. however, the person who carries the burden shifts under such an arrangement.
@Marin.Arvin even though von Frisch didn't completely solve this phenomenon, "von Frisch and colleagues discovered a pattern in the dance. They observed a foraging honeybee's dance, deciphered it, and thereby deduced the location of the food source the bee had discovered." thanks to von Frisch and his colleagues, we then knew that bees could communicate through dances
from the info we have, this is a pretty big deal. they discovered this pattern and even if we couldn't exactly explain how they transmitted info (the precise mechanism), this could reasonably be seen as a breakthrough in figuring out how honeybees communicate
@ColinReilly15503 i think you kind of answer your own question. the passage isn't explicitly stating that most of those who buy houses in sprawling suburbs don't pay drastically less that they can afford. all these new urbanists (NU) say is that these homes are identical in price which leads to a de facto economic segregation of residential neighborhoods.
why though? what if i'm a millionaire who can afford a $1m house, but i choose to live in a $300k one and my neighbor can only afford a $300k house?
that's precisely why the question stem says assumption. by saying that these identical prices result in de facto econ. segregation, NU must make the assumption stated in AC A.
i don't know if this will make it more difficult to understand but maybe think of this question similar to NA in LR. for NU's point ab economic segregation to be true/valid, they've got to assume that there's not a wide variation in wealth amongst neighbors in these suburban communities.
@TeklaCo The anthropologist says the first hypothesis/conclusion is unwarranted. This doesn't mean the anthropologist is completely writing it off or saying it's wrong, they are just saying this conclusion lacks justification/support.
That's also the conclusion in the anthropologist's argument. Why do they say this though? What's their support for saying it's unwarranted? Well... (premise) here's another plausible explanation (alternative hypothesis). Taboos might have actually come from this other purpose and so the taboos might have led to finding some use for these animals.
I think the semicolon here also helps identify how these two phrases are tied together and how the second part of that last stimulus sentence is what supports/suggests "but that conclusion is unwarranted."
The conclusion is unwarranted if a valid alternative hypothesis explains the exact same evidence just as well. Without proving that this alternative hypothesis is false, we can't exactly argue for the first hypothesis as the sole explanation.
@DaisukeKaga thanks for the tip! will try this in the next applicable example
@jenniferlim4063653 i flagged this question for that reason. there was no other AC better than A, but i still had my doubts on it because of the reasons you stated. however, i guess we just want to weaken the claim so a negative thing about x that y doesn't have works (i guess)
@legallyhaya ^ this is true, but an additional error of E is how it says its quicker and less expensive than X, but then says nothing about beneficial changes in treating these specific illnesses. we know x and y have those same beneficial changes, what if z has none/less? this does nothing to our argument
@SerinJ hi, side question. as someone who is hoping to jump over 10 points between my first official score and future final one, i have heard that i should probably explain this in my law school applications. i'm not sure if you've applied or ever gone through that process, but if so, how did you go about addressing that difference?
Hi all, Phenomenon-hypothesis (LR) is my highest priority in tags for logical reasoning. I know it's not a question type like Weaken, Strengthen, etc., but does anyone have any tips or advice for handling questions with this tag or improving at these? Thanks!
@mikezhu1234371 I know this is a late response, but I had the same exact thoughts. I switched from E to A during BR but still didn't like it because there was 0 mention of whether these keyboards were the type that were more efficient. I think there were other weaknesses in A (like the most wording) that we'd have to make assumptions to cover, and I think it just ends up being too much to cover compared to E. Personally, I eliminated E on the second round because it could totally be false and there in fact could be a reason that you'd want to limit typing speed on computers. E was too strong to me, however now I see my mistake in eliminating it for this potential for falsity because it equally could be true. I was treating it under scrutiny that you would apply to a MBT, but MSS just needs a bit of support it doesn't have to be 100% foolproof.
i was really lost on identifying what the conclusion was and exactly what point i was trying to "strengthen." none of the ACs looked great, and i thought the main thing was "if springhill would introduce econ incentives for water conservation, then emergencies could be avoided."
i still wasn't convinced that was the conclusion because the stimulus was worded/structured so weird. i re-read it trying to differentiate fact from opinion. the avoided premise is one thought, but what immediately follows is "actually" that they discourage conservation. and then they tell us why. that was the aha moment for me in seeing that i needed to strengthen that springhill is, in fact, not encouraging conservation. C strengthens that idea because if the threshold is so high that barely anyone is hitting it, then everyone's usage stays the same at a good rate for them, so there's no incentive for them to lower their water utilization (conserve water).
if the threshold were to be higher, where most would now be over it, there's an economic incentive encouraging conservation because households are going to want to cut back due to that hefty per-liter rate