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).
Thank you!
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?
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?