@kingmish on the basis of the stimulus the only conclusion you can draw is that someone is not acting responsibly; you can't conclude that someone is acting responsibly. if you were to diagram it, it would look like:

act responsibly --> act on the basis of information that...

and the contrapositive would be: /act on the basis of information that... --> /act responsibly

I understand the reasoning for C, I just think it requires making a few assumptions. However, I also chose B because of a few assumptions (that feel on a comparable level). So how do I know when I’m making reasonable vs. unreasonable leaps of logic?

The way I approached B was “ what if this wasn’t true?” what if people living under someone regarded (also, because “regarded” is ambiguous here, I interpreted it as “generally regarded, possibly by people in the future” not necessarily “regarded by those people living under his rule”) as a cruel tyrant is NOT more likely to view that person unfavorably than favorably? If this were the case — that people don’t necessarily view their tyrants unfavorably (maybe because they’re brainwashed; they don’t know any better; etc - like a possible NK situation), then it’s possible that’s the reason those people under his rule left no/few records of his alleged cruelty, not because he wasn’t cruel. So since B eliminates this alternate possibility, I thought it could strengthen the idea that he in fact wasn’t a cruel ruler.

I get that I’m making a few (possibly convoluted) assumptions. But C also requires quite a few assumptions (that his enemies have read the earlier documentation; that caligula wasn’t intentionally copying these acts; etc.).

i hate this question

would the law count as a biconditional? as in if you fall into this category, then you are required to register; but also, if you are required to register, then you must fall into this category.

my problem was only reading it as " category -> required to register " so I couldn't faithfully pick C since that set up wouldn't allow me to conclude anything about who/what was not required to register.

Why is francis bacon even mentioned

I ended up getting this question right out of guessing/POE, but I don't feel that E is really analogous to the "side of the road" convention discussed in P2 at all. For one, in P2 the act that is forbidden (driving on the wrong side of the road) is not inherently harm-producing but rather the lack of consensus that is harmful; in other words, any rule would be as good as any other, if people just agree on it.

But it doesn't seem that for the aircraft/altitude situation the act that is forbidden (flying at the wrong altitude) is not inherently harm-producing --- yes, the coordination that results from the rule is good, but doesn't the rule also directly prevent harm by regulating which aircraft can fly at certain altitudes? For example, a certain type of small aircraft may be unsuitable to fly at high altitudes because it cannot withstand that kind of atmosphere. Then the good doesn't just result from coordination but also from preventing harm directly. I don't know anything about aircrafts so idk if that's true, but intuitively it does seem like E is not just a "problem of pure coordination" like the explanation suggests.

( i also feel like there's an important distinction to be made in E in regards to whether "different aircraft" refer to different kinds of aircraft or multiple aircraft of the same type)

I really don't understand the distinction between "often" and "too often" in AC (B) here. Since the author says anthropologists "should" attend to the often neglected dimension of community, doesn't that necessarily imply they think that community is too often neglected? (since they're saying it shouldn't be!) How can it be a neutral observation if it's part of a prescription/recommendation that the author is making??

is it really acceptable to make the leap from of indian ethnicity --> eat indian curries? knowing when we can and can't make these kinds of logical leaps has got to be the single hardest part of the lsat.

C is such a weak answer for the supposedly most supported answer of the bunch. it seems like the kind of logical jump that lsat writers would deem a flaw to pick apart on any other question. seriously, how can we assume that the drug prevents obesity through its inhibition of angiogenesis and not through some inadvertent side affect like appetite suppression or something? just seems like kind of a big leap.

definitely overthought this question but i still don't get how harm = killed. couldn't it be that liming can only be effective if it is used in lakes where life has been harmed but not yet killed from acidification? isn't that compatible with the stimulus? yes, of course D is compatible with the stimulus as well but MBT questions require a higher threshold of certainty.

@beepbopboop i THINK all B concedes is the correlation between the subset 'trauma + no PTSD' and 'increased cortisol." it doesn't concede the that stress causes increased cortisol, it suggests that increased cortisol actually makes it more likely for a person to have experienced trauma in this case due to the sampling selection/parameters of the study that have isolated said subgroup.

E is stupid as a weakener .... just because later music might have 5% in common with the jazz genre and 1% with all other genres doesn't mean it should be classified as jazz. maybe it should be classified as its own genre. but i guess though it's not enough to completely discredit the argument it at least introduces doubt which is more than the other ACs can say?

chose E because in the case of Mali UNESCO's effectiveness was hampered by Mali's inability to afford to fund archaeological excavations...how do we recognize that "funding" refers to UNESCO's funding specifically and not funding in general?

@bappel i think C is meant to be interpreted as "willingness to pay is not proportional to need" is the statement being disputed, not that it is the statement doing the disputing.

the component of reasoning disputed by this statement is "willingness to pay is proportional to need."

I misread the stem as "disagree" and was going crazy over this hardball of a first question lmao

missed this bc I skipped over the "around the "time people first started cultivating fruit" part of the stimulus and thought to myself, 'well, they could have already been cultivated for a long time 5,000 years ago.' ughhh

@Taylor345 I get what you're saying but I think the more generous interpretation the writers want you to make is something like "people who watch themselves/someone who looks like them perform an activity are more likely to overreport themselves doing that activity."

How are we supposed to know to interpret E as "voting patterns of different generations will change" and not "voting patterns will change as individuals grow older within one generation." b/c if you interpret it in the latter way it becomes very similar to what A is saying (in that what the author is overlooking is that relative age may be the more salient factor over the fixed generation)

the flaw seems so obvious from reading the stimulus but the wording of the answer choices can really trip you up.

Looking at this question now I'm wondering why I struggled with it since it seems pretty straightforward. I think what was holding me back from being confident in A was making erroneous assumptions from real-world knowledge --- ie I was subconsciously thinking that there are limits/cap to improvement from strenuous exercise due to strain/overworking muscles. But the stimulus never even alludes to that, so things like that shouldn't be considered.

perhaps a dumb question, but does form "readily" in this context mean that amino acids can never form unless in a reducing atmosphere or that they will rarely form without such an atmosphere? I interpreted it as the latter (in which case a single amino acid could have conceivably formed).

got it wrong because i misconstrued the argument. Passage B is tentative in declaring whether fingerprint examination is reliable or not, but assertive in declaring that fingerprint identification is questionable. in other words it's assertive in its tentativeness ughhhh either way B is the safer bet though

@FultonHoover If that was the whole answer choice it probably would be considered circular reasoning. But A includes outside evidence that these people are polite: that they are consistently polite in their daily lives. The introduction of outside evidence makes it not circular anymore.

A is leagues above the other answers so it's obvious, but I still feel like it's not a great match for the stimulus in that 'pay attention to how they react to challenge' does not equal 'understanding why the memory lapse occurred." the latter is more like paying attention to why the challenge occurred and there's no mention of the pianist observing how they reacted to the memory lapse.

Do I need to zoom out in identifying the principle as just a broad "face a challenge & learn from it"?

Does talk-story being traditionally performed in the dialects of "various ethnic enclaves" not count as a diversity of ancient sources? I get that there was one source: China/Sung Dynasty - but there's still a lot of diversity within China that feels hinted at in P2.