5

D: not according to the semi-new hypothesis

according to the OG hypo, maybe (not starving)

new? (better hunting) prolly not

A - they already attempt, they just suck at it

B - no evidence

C - anti-passage, they didnt try to explain

D - having a problem =/= cannot be true

E - cannot account for the strength → deficient

I don't love E, but its the only one that really is supported. Would have personally prefered a compound sufficient condition with the particle accelerator as well, but E is most supported.

Once again, please explain AC D to me then. You say there could be a MYRIAD of factors that cause that phenomenon, I agree!

Now, what could be the factors?

Hint: It's either genetic, or it's environmental.

If you cannot fully explain AC D using ONLY genetic arguments/explanations (unlike the other AC's), you must be assuming some form of environmental influence, which DIRECTLY CHALLENGES the argument and it's conclusion.

If you look at AC D as trying to weaken the causal conclusion, that's not going to be satisfactory.

You have to weaken the ARGUMENT, not the conclusion.

What are the premises being used to establish the conclusion?

1. Cherry-picking a few environmental variables and generalizing based on that.

Obviously if you want to weaken the causal conclusion in real life, you're not going to choose AC D.

Also, to weaken a "no cause" conclusion doesn't neccessarily mean you must prove that the cause causes the effect.

Example:

Smoking doesnt cause cancer.

You're basically saying that AC D MUST seriously prove that smoking DOES cause cancer. Sure, that'll weaken the CONCLUSION, but not necessarily the ARGUMENT.

You're way too focused on trying to weaken the causal claim without considering why AC D perfectly slips in the gap between the premises and the conclusion.

It's not about establishing a causal link; IT'S one of MANY ways to weaken an argument, not the only. It might even be the strongest and MOST effective way to counter this argument by choosing AC F: "Two people raised in different societies at different times with different climates have different rates of sports participation". No duh, but there are other, more subtle ways to do the same thing.

Hence AC D.

Example:

Drugs clearly have little effect on cancer diagnoses.

Marijuana and cocaine have little rates of cancer.

AC D: Different methods of taking drugs have different rates of cancer diagnoses.

Calling out a problematic assumption = weaken.

It absolutely does.

Imagine if you stated "Exercise does not affect weight loss because push ups dont help and running doesnt help."

AC D does 2 things.

If this was a FLAW question, whats the flaw?

1. theres tiers of environmental factors: some are macro level (culture), others are micro level (family). you cannot just cherry pick two micro factors to support your generalization.

AC D states MACRO level factors (society to society and temporal) to call the argument out on this flaw.

2. Challenges the conclusion

Fine TRAPPEDUNDERLSAT, lets say that the phenomenon in AC D is NOT environmental AT ALL (consistent with the conclusion). Then what is it? What is your explanation of that phenomenon?

Why is it that across geographical SPACE and TIME, we see this pattern? Is it more reasonable to believe that it's 100% genetics? I don't think so.

AC D is more than just "everything else is bad", it clearly weakens the argument.

B basically implies that those with trauma and PTSD WOULDN'T have high cortisol (since its a defense mechanism), which challenges the conclusion that trauma causes cortisol

B basically implies that those with trauma and PTSD WOULDN'T have high cortisol (since its a defense mechanism), which challenges the conclusion that trauma causes cortisol

no, because the cell phone speaker cannot see the road and wouldnt be able to provide helpful warnings

not really. all the other AC's either 1. don't do anything/strengthen the argument or 2. force an arbiturary assumption that it's envrionmental over genetics

D states a phenomenon that on the face doesn't do much, but is heavily suggestive that something environmental is going on, at the macro level.

The argument uses micro level factors. AC D says hold up, across different countries we see differences. Maybe it's genetics? But even across time (decades) we see this pattern. Probably not genes (since genes would be stable)

Had AC D ONLY said "society to society" and not "decade to decade", I'd agree that it isn't that good. But LSAC is clever

23. if you chose A you probably were looking for an AC that replaces "wherewithal", not to replace "the lack of wherewithal"

if you read A as "lack experience beyond what is reflected", it sounds good

but the Q doesnt ask you to do that

it asks you to find an AC with the same meaning as saying that the judges lack the wherewithal

thats D: substituting questionable research results

got this wrong in BR:

negation of A actually does nothing

- sure, consumers will not care if its labelled, but that doesnt stop the food producers from still being scared and refraining from selling

negation of D does:

- if other places dont even behave the same way (fear), wtf are you talking about?

Completely did not understand how Q24 worked.

Function of the "observations". Why did we bring it up?

Paragraph talks about the causal mechanism of the sandslide hypothesis. We know that the sandslides can happen, and the observations tell us that if true, UT might have been a vegetated area.

So basically, using present observations to make inferences about the past.

A: watching craftsman make pottery to inquire about the past works.

I would disagree with JY about the "not remembering" bit.

If you don't remember, of course it could be that you forgot. But it could also be that 1. it wasn't important enough to be low res and 2. that it was never stated

Trust your gut based on what YOU DO know, not what you don't. In other words, use what you know to eliminate 1-3 AC's. Then if needed go back to the passage to clarify and eliminate the last one.

a question like 25 would require good attention to detail and a great low res summary.

with the low res, you could eliminate C and D (why would they talk about fossilized plants, and why would they talk about sites other than UT)?

For A, misreading mammal for animal would be how LSAC traps us. if you manage to catch this, I would go back to double check

For B, the low res can help. The sandstones are samples (from the past) that we use to analyze the hypothesis. There's no reason to believe that we know anything about sandstones in the present.

E is the only feasible AC the entire last paragraph talks about present day sand dune mechanisms.

*Example to show

1. Whole to part subset change flaw

2. causal attribution flaw*

Canada saw the greatest increase in car crashes following the legalization of drunk driving.

Furthermore, most car crashes occurred in provinces/states that had the most drunk drivers.

Thus, a city that legalizes drunk driving would probably not decrease it's car crash rates.

Flaw 1: Canada-State-City

There's a correlation of car crash and drunk driving. Fine, but you cannot pin that onto a single city. What if Toronto smokes marijuana and drives, and has insanely bad traffic that leads to more deaths, therefore pulling the average of the nation/state up? Then a city like Vancouver may not increase crashes if they legalized drunk driving. In fact, it's entirely possible that while Toronto is having car crashes over blinding traffic lights and psycho jay-walkers, Vancouver has been decreasing their crash-rate by letting people drink and drive.

Flaw 2: Causal Attribution

- its correlated, but maybe its because car quality was deteriorating.

A: inefficiencies (because of drunk driving?) nope.

B: In the US were were also increases in car crashes. Okay, maybe its because they ALSO have the same laws?

C: States that sell liquor after the law was enacted had fewer car crashes

- okay, but we're talking about a different subset now. we need to talk about the individual city

D: Any city that has the least crashes are those that are the most lenient with drunk driving.

- city level

- opposite correlation that is actually BETTER than the correlation in the stimulus

- the stimulus uses a nation-industry level correlation to support a business conclusion. this AC introduces a business-level correlation to contradict a business-level conclusion.

E: We don't care about what happens in the future

Also, there is nothing stopping the being in AC D to be the same being in the stimulus.

in order for AC D to work, the conclusion must already be established that the being isnt someone with PI.

someone who is never deprived of anything could still solely use practical intelligence

theres a few layers of difficulty in this SA:

1. nuance and less formal logic

2. you have to connect the ideas together (never deprived of anything and getting everything you want = dont NEED practical intelligence)

- you would need PI if you had no other method of discovering means to ends.

3. AC is more subtle - it could have stated "PI requires deprivation" but instead it references to PI as "skill" and uses the concept of "need"

not a traditional SA question

the arg concludes that if youre never deprived and get everything you want you will never become practically intelligent.

Why? We would need something like "developing practical intelligence means you need to be deprived" or "if you're not deprived your cannot develop practical intelligence"

A- help of others? dont care

C - the best way?

E - we dont care what happens when they are deprived

B - if a skill is acquired it must be needed

- acquired is in the sufficient condition, which means that we can contrapose and make it the neccessary condition and conclude that a skill will NOT be acquired (which is what we need)

"if a skill is not needed it wont be acquired"

whats the skill? practical intelligence. it's not needed because if you're never deprived of anything, you dont NEED to discover means to ends (because youd already have the ends).

since you dont need PI, you wont acquire PI.

D - we dont care if someone is or isnt a person with PI, we need smt to help us conclude that it would lead them to NEVER develop it

it's E because it will vary from case to case "except ----" and it was never stated that the degree of ownership is the same every time

C is also too weak: "not uncommon" is suchhh weak language. it's common for people to use live models in their paintings.

so... what if the self portrait guy just didnt want to use live models so used himself?

so... what if the self-portrait guy WAS the live model? (whether you say yes or no to this matters)

C is like an evaluate AC; depending on what you assume, it will weaken/strengthen the argument

if you turn it into an evaluate AC: "Could artists at the time use themselves as live models?" (Yes = strengthen, No = weaken)

Compare this to D, which has NO evaluate aspect, just simple weakening (albeit not super strong)

D: It's a violation of etiquette. Well, it's a bad thing to do, and maybe people did or did not follow the norms, but this decreases the likelihood of an artist using themselves as a model, whereas C is completely open-ended -

It's like an RRE question:

Phenomenon: This self-portrait guy appears in this historic battle painting. Why?

Conclusion: The self-portrait guy painted the battle scene.

C: its common for people to use live models (of themselves or others? still not the best RRE AC)

D: its a violation of etiquette to use yourself, so it's probably not the same guy (better RRE, eliminates one possibility)

E doesnt do anything because it states "widely applied"

if its widely applied (to both low and high ceiling houses), yet we still see the correlation that air con houses with low ceilings sell well, we can't attribute that to the insulation.

A is the oldest trick int he book

no more funding for basic research, less likely basic advancements

no additional research from non-profits --> less likely basic advancements -> no prestige from basic advancements

why non profits? has to be the case that either we need non profits or that profits arent helping

D - if non profit doesnt increase → funding from basic research wont increase (→less advancements)

A is a trap and wrong because you can disagree with someone's premise but agree with their conclusion.

Mark: The sky is blue because my dog barked

Mathias: But the dog also barks when the sky is dark. (He can still agree implicitly).

What gives away C is that speaker B says "murder should not be a defining characteristics" of this film.