For something to be a necessary/sufficient condition, does it need to be part of an if-then relationship (conditional relationship)?

To me, it seems that according to common sense, it would be necessary for the device to be safer than other communication devices for the device to not be dangerously distracting. But would it be a mistake to say this is a necessary or sufficient condition since it isn’t part of an if-then relationship?

I know this isn’t the case for necessary/sufficient assumptions. I just realized that conditions and assumptions must be different things.

I've heard about the negation method for PSA questions for the first time while watching this video. What I've gathered is that, for a PSA question, you should first try to negate the principle given in the answer choice. Then, you look in the premise to see if there is any indication that the negated version of the principle is true? I do not yet know how this provides that the principle justifies the answer's reasoning. I'd appreciate an explanation on how this does so. Thank you

I THOUGHT A MINIVAN WAS A SMALL CAR BECAUSE OF THE WORD MINI

I don’t know the boundaries for how similar the structure of the right answer choice needs to be to the structure of the stimulus. I saw that the stimulus has two premises, with one being an “all” statement and one being a “some” statement — but I thought it might be possible for answer choice A to be right, even though both of them are “some” statements, because the reasoning seemed similar otherwise.

Is it fair to say that the “quantity” (all, some, etc.) of the premises and conclusion in the stimulus and in the correct answer need to be identical? Always?

If every single passage is either a single position or a critique/debate, and many but not all of the passages are one of the three Engagement-Based Style, would that mean any passage that has an Engagement-Based Style also is a single position or a critique/debate?

Actually, I have a different interpretation of why answer choice C is the correct answer.

The reasoning of this passage is as follows:

Premise: the campaign only accepted contributions from residents and former residents

Conclusion: the campaign complied with the law that “all contributions to the campaigns in excess of $100 made by nonresidents who were not formerly residents must be registered”

There’s a clear disconnect between the premise and conclusion. In other words, there’s a missing piece that needs to be added to the premise for the conclusion to follow. That missing piece is that the law also does not require for contributions from residents and former residents to be registered. Otherwise, how would we know that the campaign fulfilled the law?

That is what answer choice C says. “No contributions to the campaign needed to be registered.” Since the only accepted contributions were residents and former residents, we can substitute that wording to make “No residents and former residents needed to be registered.”

My reasoning would only stand if we can safely assume that the passage chose not to reveal one aspect of the law. It’s kind of funny that they would do that. But I suppose we could think of this question as a “what information is needed for the reasoning to hold” type of question, which the LSAT often tests. It’s just cleverly hidden as a “must be true” question. If my reasoning is correct, I’ve learned a new lesson — the LSAT can disguise certain question types as others.

IT REALLY DO BE THAT ONE WORD “TEMPORARY” DANG

Dang it really do be that one word “might” that rules out unreservedly optimistic

I’m still a bit thrown off by the correct answer for number 16. I thought that the primary purpose of the last paragraph was to explain how Payne’s hypothesis was proven to be correct. After reading the answer choice, I can see how the last paragraph would also serve the function of explaining why her fellow scientists rejected her hypothesis… but if anything, the majority of the discussion of nuclear fusion seems to explain why her hypothesis works rather than why it doesn’t work. This makes me think that the explanation would serve to show why later scientist accepted her hypothesis rather than why scientists of Payne’s time rejected her hypothesis…

Could anyone help me see where I’ve gone wrong here?

I have an issue with question 11.

I did choose answer choice D because it fits the best out of those given. However, I feel that it is an overstretch to say the author would be most likely to agree with the idea that the type of interpretation OFTEN requires a "consideration of facts beyond those that can be determined from the excavated remains alone." The reason is that although I understand that this is what Olsen did in the passage, I do not see any mention from the author that this is what needs to be done OFTEN. #Help would be greatly appreciated; thank you.

I feel iffy about concluding that the statement in question wouldn’t be considered a premise. It seems to me that the statement could be considered a premise of the last sentence of the paragraph (“ But this would make determining the seriousness of an offense so difficult that it would be impossible to apply the proportionality principle.”

On the flip side, I do see that the statement in question basically leads to the sentence after it (“ If such remote considerations were relevant, almost every other consideration would be too”). I feel it is safe to say that the “If such remote considerations were relevant…” sentence is a premise for the intermediate conclusion “But this would make determining the seriousness of an offense so difficult that it would be impossible to apply the proportionality principle.”

My questions are:

1. Is the statement in question in fact not a premise due to my reasoning above?

2. In such cases where one sentence begins a chain of logic that leads to another sentence that directly supports a conclusion, would we consider the first sentence to not be a premise?

#27 - am I right to think that passage A and passage B define "consequences of human actions" (as mentioned in answer choice D) differently?

It seems that passage A thinks of these consequences as "outputs" mentioned in line 27. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what these "ouputs" mean, but I'm guessing they mean the actions committed by the person under trial (or otherwise awaiting rendering of justice).

In contrast, it seems that for passage B, the "consequences" would be whether the punishment deters crime (as referred to in lines 54 to 57)?

If anyone could let me know whether I'm defining "consequences" correctly for each passage (especially passage B) that would be great. Also, if I am, I'd love to know whether it's common for the correct answer choice to a question asking what two authors would agree on to mention a term defined differently by each author, as would be the case with this question.

I realized that for questions that ask what would be the biggest flaw, if I ask myself, is this REALLY an issue tho? And the answer is no, then that’s usually not the answer. Even if it technically IS true in the stimulus.

Then, use process of elimination — and the last answer standing, which may have looked ridiculous at first, on second thought COULD work if you think of it a certain way…

My best bet at getting a 5 star question right.

How is this four stars 😭😭😭 this is one of the hardest RC passages I’ve ever encountered

I'm interested! I've been scoring in the mid-160s to low 170-s

WOWWWWWWW #12 the answer to a question really is just one single sentence in that darn long passage. LOL

I don’t agree with JY’s explanation for why E is wrong — I don’t think the answer choice is referring to “when in the future” predictions of global recessions will be possible. Isn’t it just referring to global recessions?

I’ve realized that the LSAT assumes people are not all-knowing or necessarily capable (lol). Answer choice C being wrong is an example — we see that just because something IS the case does not mean consumers will expect for it to be so. When the stimulus is describing a rule regarding people, the word “expect” sets off an alarm in my mind!

Even if the proposed law isn’t yet implemented, couldn’t answer choice B still apply to a world where the proposed law HAS been implemented? I would think that for the idea that the law should be set as a “uniform” national speed limit (last sentence of stimulus), there needs to be extra justification. And answer choice B seems to offer that justification.

This is a funny question. The answer is basically “it works because it works.”