At first I thought, what if genetically engineered crops are equally as harmful to wildlife as pesticide crops, but using them prevents the excessive spraying that comes with pesticide crops, allowing wildlife to recover? Then isn't A not required? But now I see that A says the "use" of genetically engineered crops must be less harmful when used "in place of" the pesticide crops. "In place of" implies in place of the use of pesticide crops- that we are analyzing it to be better than the net effect of the use of the pesticide crops, which is implied to entail excessive spraying of pesticides... right?
A bit confused. #help
Before understanding the meaning of dissolve as explained here, I chose E because without the possibility of the steam carrying the material, and given that there are no heavy isotopes indicating material directly from the core, it seems like the spent fuel rods are the only possible mechanism left and that it's still possible they had SOME tellurium. It just says they don't contain "significant amounts", but I don't know what significant amounts means- it doesn't seem like that has to mean they are undetectable amounts. Given all that, it seems supported that spent fuel rods brought all the material, including an insignificant but very measurable amount of tellurium, and it seems reasonable to infer that they also don't have heavy isotopes because there were none found (the phrasing that they do not have heavy isotopes in "significant" quantities leaves open whether or not they would be found, whereas it clearly says with a direct core ejection heavy isotopes would be found). #help
If what is disputed by the argument were an argument itself and not just a claim, it would have to say something like, "It is believed that the evolution of survival enhancing features optimizes an organism's odds of survival because of the fact that the features do provide an advantage," then the disputing would be done by attacking the support with the given example, right?
Couldn't "It implies that considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago are relevant to the seriousness of an offense" be called an unsupported intermediate conclusion, as well as a premise? There's no reason to think that a punishment can't be proportional to the crime while also being increased due to repeat offenses, right? So this claim underlying the whole argument is shaky/not supported? #help
If the statement were a premise, for E to be right that it is in support of an intermediate conclusion would it have to say something like, "considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago are relevant to the seriousness of an offense" (premise), "so a person who got a speeding ticket at 16 and got another one at 70 would have their previous ticket factored into the seriousness of their offense" (intermediate conclusion)?
Isn't D also wrong because the argument isn't proposing to make it impossible for CEOs to raise their own salaries by cutting their employees' salaries (under the law described they could still do it, just up to a certain amount), and therefore the assumption that if it were made impossible it would always prevent cuts is irrelevant?
For C, wouldn't the amount of positive/negative mood reflecting words outside of social media be relevant to knowing whether the trend in social media messages is a good indicator of people's actual moods? Maybe they just post fake stuff that isn't reflective at all, and in all their other communication the evidence points to different moods. It seems like in that case, C is a good criticism. Maybe C is wrong because it continues to make the problematic assumption that frequency of words means more likely to feel one way or another, whereas E is a better criticism because it completely severs the reasoning about the relationship between people's posts in the morning, afternoon, and evening- it points out that they may not even be the same people, so we can't assume they're demonstrating a progression from one mood to another. I think E is subtly confusing, though, because it says most of the social media messages posted in the evening are posted by people who rarely post "such messages" in the morning. If "such messages" is referring to the type of messages people send in the evening versus the morning, then it seems to be simply confirming the conclusion, that they post different types of messages in the morning versus the evening. But I think "such messages" is not referring back to the type of message and whether it uses more or fewer positive words, but rather is referring back to what's in the answer choice itself, which is "social media messages" in general. If "such messages" is referring to social media in general, then E reads as saying that people posting in the evening are different people from those posting in the morning, and showing that it's doubtful that anything can be concluded by comparing posts from different times of day, which is a stronger criticism because it negates the reasoning about the evidence entirely rather than just suggesting that there may be additional conflicting evidence outside social media that isn't also being considered (still true, but the argument is less vulnerable to this criticism because it allows the main claim of evidence interpretation to stand).
B is wrong in part because it only says small and medium banks were "financially stronger" five years ago. This means they could have been financially stronger before, but just as many continue to be strong now, in which case there has been no effect on how many small and medium companies banks will now lend to as opposed to how many they used to be willing to lend to.
As far as whether it could be a reasonable inference to draw from the stimulus if it said "more" instead of "most", I don't think so because of the same reason- just because more banks were financially stronger than they are now, doesn't mean it couldn't be the case that just as many banks are still financially strong, leaving open the possibility that a change in their relative strength has nothing to do with the fact that total bank lending is lower.
If B said that "more banks were financially strong" than are now, implying that we can assume some are no longer eligible for lending because they are NOT financially strong, we would still need to know what impact on total lending was had by large companies receiving loans- are they receiving fewer, the same amount, or more (which A tells us)- to logically conclude that total lending has decreased due to the change in loans to small/medium banks.
From the information given, we also could not reasonably infer that more small/medium banks were financially strong (in a hypothetical most strongly supported B answer), because there could be other reasons current lending to them has decreased, even if the same amount were still financially strong or more were financially strong.
I always freeze when I read answer choices that say "takes a necessary condition to be a sufficient condition". I know in the abstract what they each are, but thinking through applying them as flaws is very difficult for me. Any tips?
I think E can be logically inferred because it says just that violence is "a" product of one's cultural environment (which is true because in these "certain situations" it is indeed a product of cultural environment), but it doesn't say that all violence is a product of cultural environment. I read into it the same way you did, though- that violence (inherently, and all of it) is a product of cultural environment.
In JY's explanation it says we have "proven" we can't do nothing with the film. How? Other comments have mentioned how the author seems to be a "purist"- it seems like it is at least technically supported that the author would be behind a move to make an exact reproduction of the film, one without subtitles. I guess JY is just saying its a reasonable assumption that the author would want to do at least something to help Russian speakers in the audience understand?