In addition to JY's explanation of superlative = hire only one candidate, I realized out of the two scenarios from the principle, only one scenario is applicable with the premises.

1. no fully qualified candidate at the company → should hire the most productive

Because we're already saying we should not hire Krall in the application, we have to somehow justify that Delacruz should be hired. Otherwise, we aren't really concluding anything using the principle.

2. the contrapositive: should not hire the most productive → there are fully qualified candidates at the company

This doesn't get us to a conclusion of a) don't hire Krall or b) we should hire Delacruz. Hence, we go back to the first scenario and find something to make sure we trigger that.

This question gave me some trouble because I was assigning parts of the passage incorrectly to answer choices A and C. I unknowingly made assumptions that, even in hindsight, seemed reasonable. So, I need to be more careful in just reading the words as they are.

A - "the interpretation ignored the ways in which Alaska Natives have historically understood the term 'traditional'"

I selected A because I honed in on the sentence, "After hearing testimony... the court reconsidered what constituted a traditional item under the statute" (lines 41-45). Connecting this to the answer choice, I thought this was saying that the FWS did not consider how Alaska Natives had many uses of sea otters before the 1700s.

While Alaska Natives did share testimonies of sea otter use, testimony of traditional practices is not the same as sharing a group's historical understanding of the term "traditional." Additionally, the passage does not state what FWS considered or ignored when defining terms.

C - "the interpretation was inconsistent with what the term 'traditional' is normally understood to mean"

Kevin explains that this answer choice refers to the second part of the last paragraph, particularly the line about defying common sense (line 54).

Rather than focusing on that part of the passage, I was focused on the second paragraph. In the second paragraph, the author describes one of the most prevalent ideas associated with "tradition" (i.e., long-standing practice, passage of time continuity, and regularity of a practice).

I thought that by calling these "prevalent ideas," the author was indicating that this is what people normally understood "traditional" meant. It seems I made an assumption that "one of the most prevalent ideas" is the same as "normally understood."

Because I made this assumption, I thought that the answer choice was saying that the FWS' interpretation was not consistent with a traditional practice being long-standing, continuous, and regular. Based on this misinterpretation, I thought that FWS interpretation actually was consistent with that definition, because the use of sea otter pelts was not continuous or regular.

Watching JY answer this question timed (in the live commentary video) and immediately circling the right answer, no mapping or anything... what a king

I incorrectly chose D because I assumed that responding to the hypothesis via "warning the jury" was evidence for supporting the hypothesis as true. However, somebody assuming a hypothesis is correct already is not support for the hypothesis!

#help For question 10, I'm a bit confused with JY's explanation for answer choice A. I had eliminated it initially because I thought the the statement was too definitive, and it might have been correct if the answer choice said that interviews sometimes yield more inaccurate information than accurate information.

Going into specifically why I was confused by JY's explanation: he compares 80% accurate/20% inaccurate before hypnosis, with 60% accurate/40% inaccurate after hypnosis. His explanation is that even in the post-hypnosis 60% accurate scenario, there are still more accurate than inaccurate answers. I get that, but what if you set the ratios at a different point? For example, what if pre-hypnosis was 52% accurate, and post-hypnosis was 49% accurate? In post-hypnosis, then there actually is more inaccurate information than accurate information.

What am I not grasping?

Dang I CHOKED here

Anyways, I went wrong with C when I completely mixed up the incinerator with the power plant. I didn't catch it during blind review either :'( I thought C was saying that the town/city/wherever already had a power plant with immense air pollution, not a crappy incinerator. I was thinking, even if they got the waste-to-energy plant, isn't there still a question of why the environmentalists didn't support a less polluting gas plant? But, yeah, it makes sense after seeing JY's explanation.

The text explanation lists two inferences we can make. Is another inference we can make /prof ←s→ /vote? (Not saying it is notable inference, just trying to clarify my understanding of formal logic)

For question 17, can someone explain their rationale for why B is correct? I get why the other answer choices are wrong, but am still a bit confused about B. I think I'm also confused by the question stem itself--if a passage is concerned with something, does it have to be a main point of the passage, or not necessarily? (Is that why this is a stated question?)

B - "Does scientific research into the brain have implications regarding the freedom of the will?"

I did not select this because it did not seem like the passages were concerned with answering this question. Rather, both passages seem to just accept that there is scientific research that implies free will. In Passage A, findings in neuroscience explain that choices may not be made freely. In Passage B, neuroscience supports the idea of determinism. If the question stem just said, "both passages state a response to the following" or something like that, maybe I would have selected B.

If we made some minor tweaks to E, would it more closely mirror the stimulus?

Our notion of fashion trends will probably be inaccurate if we rely on TV fashion programs, because despite the fact that these programs deliberately select the most outrageous outfits in order to get the viewers' attention.

One of the reasons I initially did not pick E was because of all the effort and visualization that goes into understanding B. In visualizing that B was a net-zero situation by displacing the sewage and illnesses from the harbor lobsters to the open-ocean lobsters (i.e., pointless), I projected this image into the types of lobsters caught and eaten by humans in answer choice E. It would be pointless whether humans were getting sick from harbor lobsters or open-ocean lobsters. In reality, the stimulus and E don't say anything about eating the open-ocean lobsters! It was an important reminder for me not to let one answer choice influence how I interpret another.

like if you want a dino nugget rn

Here is my reasoning for why D is wrong and E is right (and if the assumption I made in E is reasonable). Does this make sense to other people?

Minor premise: painting is not presented in an order

Major premise 1: paintings have no particular path to read

Major premise 2: music has a temporal order

--

Conclusion: music has temporal dimension and paintings do not have temporal dimension

The flaw is how the author got from major premise 1 to the conclusion. How did we get from "paintings have no particular path to read" → "paintings do not have temporal dimension"?

E kind of gets to this, because it says, how did you assume "paintings have no particular path" → "no path at all"? What trips me up is, do we know that having a path means it has a temporal dimension? I guess it's a reasonable assumption that a path would have a temporal dimension, since you can't take a path all at once. But anyways, assuming that's a fair assumption, then we get to, yeah, paintings can have a path → paintings have a temporal dimension.

As for why D is wrong, recall that the flaw is the jump from the major premise 1 to the conclusion. The metaphor of reading in itself is fine, and is more of an adjective if anything. The issue is specifically about going from "no particular path" → "no temporal dimension."

Tldr I inappropriately considered outside knowledge/perspective when answering the question and I’m just a girl who wants to spend her life walking on the beach

--

This may be silly, but I equated “walking on the beach” as living up to my potential, and that influenced why I switched my answer from C to B… in other words, I actually thought that Deirdre had the same definition of happiness as the philosophers. Like, perhaps some people aspire to just walk on the beach?

I then thought, well, walking on the beach could be me living up to my potential at one point in my life, but that might not be the case in a couple days to a couple years from now. In that case, Deirdre is not considering that one’s perception of what they think makes them happy (as defined by the philosophers) can change over time, and that’s why I thought Deirdre’s argument was flawed.

When JY describes why A is wrong, he said that this is the implication of the conclusion being right, but I didn't understand what that meant. Can someone help explain?

I interpreted A as saying, "It is not possible for someone to view a painting and not be conscious of time." Or in other words, "someone viewing a painting would be conscious of time." How can that be an implication of the conclusion, if the conclusion is that paintings have no temporal order?

I ruled answer choice A out for other reasons--mainly, that it just isn't present in the argument--but could use some elaboration on JY's reasoning.

I initially picked B because I conflated "prediction did not occur yet" with "the sufficient condition in the prediction has not been triggered." I also (like many) was confused by the wording in A. Glad to see that looking for something akin to "sufficient condition was not triggered" or "conditional premise was not triggered" was correct, but I need to be more careful reading...

It took me a while to understand how JY eliminates answer choice A for Q11. I realized when he described including/excluding Spain, it was actually a high-level summary of my thought process (apologies for the word vomit in advance--only posting so I can articulate my thoughts and hopefully help another 7Sager out!).

Reason 1 to eliminate: In the passage, "Many [Spanish-language proverbs] belong, in fact, to the common proverb tradition of Europe." The "common proverb tradition of Europe" phrase is identical in the passage and the answer choice. "Many" in the passage is not the same as "most" in the answer choice, so that's reason enough to eliminate answer choice A.

Reason 2: Some people, including myself, focused on, "the great majority of Spanish-language proverbs reached Mexico from peninsular Spain," and knowing that Spain is a part of Europe. So, shouldn't we think that the this subset of proverbs has their origin in Europe?

However, there is the rest of the sentence: "not all [Spanish-language proverbs] originate there [in Spain]. Many belong, in fact, to the common proverb tradition of Europe."

To be honest, I am not sure what "common proverb tradition of Europe" actually means, but the author is making a distinction between 1) proverbs originating from Spain, vs. 2) proverbs from a common proverb tradition of Europe. These two subsets can't overlap. So, while the majority of proverbs are coming from Spain, we can't assume that they also belong to the common proverb tradition of Europe.

This is only a two star question, yet I've picked a different answer the past three times I've tried this question :D

In my most recent attempt, I selected C because I misread the minor premise of the stimulus, and also misunderstood what answer choice C meant. I thought the stimulus was saying that the advertisement firm was consulting (and therefore surveying) dermatologists that were involved in Dermactin's development, which would render the 75% surveyed biased. (That's not what it says.) Answer choice C seemed to allude to potential bias, but it's really speaking more about qualifications.

I did consider answer choice B because it's one of those cookie-cutter answers for flaw/survey questions, but I think I got thrown off by the complex argument structure.

I missed the main point question because I kind of glossed over the first paragraph. I identified that writers were influenced by cosmopolitanism and nativism, but I didn't connect that this was a "two-fold movement" to disconnect from Spain. Had I identified that, it would have been clearer that B was the correct answer.

Kevin touched on this in the explanation video, but D is like a better version of A. I initially (and wrongly) made the jump that A implied D. I assumed that by explaining what evolutionary psychology is, answer choice A was already getting at, "evolutionary psychology can be explained by the proliferation of genes." In reality, answer choice A doesn't say anything about the flawed reasoning.

I was stuck between B and C. I tried translating Passage A, lines 3-7 into casual logic to see if that would help:

Human behavior -c→ reproductive success -c→ proliferation of gene causing human behavior.

Both B and C seemed to follow the chain, but after hearing JY’s explanation, the nuance was in if Passage A is talking about all actions and all human behavior, which it is not.

Given type of human behavior -c→ reproductive success -c→ proliferation of gene causing human behavior

Given type of human behavior =/= any action

Good reminder to pay attention to words like “any,” “never,” etc.

I got this question right by looking for "x does not directly address y, so don't do x." I attempted to turn the stimulus into formal logic, but was not sure if my translation was correct. Can someone comfortable with formal logic verify if this is correct, or explain how it could be translated?

/(x → y)

Therefore: /x

where:

x = increasing police force,

y = address root cause of crime

/(x → y) = increasing police force does not address the root cause of crime

I did not have phonemic awareness while attempting this question

When I negated B to test if the argument would still stand, I initially thought the argument could still work. Negated B = there are viewers that will watch shows they find controversial/disturbing. Initially, my take was that those viewers wouldn't mind watching a show with with bland opinions, so I thought, seem consistent with the conclusion and didn't wreck the argument, so it's not necessary.

It occurred to me after listening to Kevin's explanation that the assumption is not just about what viewers will tolerate--of course, they would tolerate the mainstream--which is where I went wrong. The assumption is about what people will not tolerate, and how that necessitates the bland and innocuous talk shows. If people are willing to tolerate non-mainstream opinions, then there's no need to appeal to the mainstream.

For Q22, I was able to get to the correct answer from just passage A, but I was confused on how answer choice A makes sense for passage B. Passage B's author is against having the appellate court do research. When the answer choice says that research should be constrained to the structure of the trial, is it saying that research should only be used by the trial courts? And/or, the appellate court's role is to rely on what was presented in trial court, and therefore, appellate research is ruled out of that that trial-appellate relationship?

Or if my guesses are way off, can you walk me through your interpretation of "structure of the trial"?

Something that helped me quickly identify the correct answer choice was including an additional cause/effect in the casual chain.

The stimulus states “active form of vitamin D needed in order to for the body to absorb calcium.” Rather than mapping the argument out as: active vitamin D deficiency -c-> calcium deficiency

I mapped it out as: (active vitamin D deficiency -c-> absorb calcium) -c-> calcium deficiency.

I got to that by noting there was a necessary condition in the statement quoted above, which would map out to: absorb calcium —> active vitamin D.

If you negate this, it would be: /active vitamin D —> absorb calcium.

And, another way of saying /active vitamin D is just vitamin D deficiency.

I haven’t been exposed to enough LR questions to know if what I did is actually helpful in timed circumstances for other questions, but thought I’d share in case it helps someone else out!