Ahh, I love the riddle!

To play devils advocate, an intermediary/subsidiary conc. can provide support for another main conclusion, but in this case, our intermediary conclusion is "thus, voters often reelect politicians they resent".

I totally misread this argument the first time, ignored the "thus" indicator, and took the statement in question about people tending not to reelect inactive politicians as the IC. Wrong wrong wrong. Only in blind review did I really pull apart the pieces to determine what is supporting what.

But really, "thus" should have tipped me off immediately!

My thoughts exactly. Retrospectively, I understand why this is the correct answer, but I personally didn't realize that transcripts don’t include opinions from the judge...and chose B like most of us who got this one wrong.

Thank you so much for this. This was exactly what I needed.

I made the exact same mistake. I assumed the airports were about to become overcroweded because the ones that survive will be aquiring those that did not...

I chose answer choice D, because I made the mistake of not really analyzing the meaning of the comparative relationship established between price of Impressionist paintings vs. old masters. I just took it to mean "oh, if we knew the prices were higher back then...then yeah, knowing this would add an alternative possible hypothesis for why these collectors were scooping them up now...the price must be lower now". BUT IT DOESN'T!

This answer choice just presents us with a comparative statement between the Impressionist paintings, and another group of paintings (old masters). Sure the prices of Impressionist paintings may have been higher than old master's in the 60's and 70's, but this doesn't actually tell us anything about the relationship of prices in the 1980's (are prices of Impressionist paintings higher? lower? We just don't know.) so we aboslutely cannot speculate about any possible implications to strengthen our hypothesis: that the reason for the phenomenon is that the collectors found the paintings beautiful. (And not another reason, just as economics).

This question tauught me to be extra careful to make sure that any comparative relationships introduced actually do bear relevance to the premise-conclusion relationship. I definitely should not have been tripped up so easily by an "Easy" problem.

I spent too much time trying to decode this question, and even though I ultimately got the answer right, I think it's a tricky question.

Premises:

1. Regime made up primarily of ordinary people

2. Regime executed many people in pursuit of it's goal (paradise, proved untenable)

Conclusion:

At least some ordinary people were murders.

We're claiming ordinary people were murders (not just fanatics) so we're looking for an AC that strengthens our claim of calling them murders, on the basis that they belonged to this paradise-seeking regime that executed people.

A. The pursuit of paradise does not justify murder (ok, justified or not, still murder)

B. The pursuit of paradise justifies fanaticism (we're not here to say fanaticism is ok, we're here to claim they're murderers).

C. Execution [in pursuit of what is later found to be unattainable] constitutes murder. This grammar here is a little bit confusing because we're taking about such extreme concepts spoken of as if they're casual, run-of-the-mill principles, but removing the qualifier makes this extra clear (at least to me).

D. Fanaticism consititutes inhumanity (Yep. Still irrelevant.)

E. Enthusiasm in pursuit of what is later found to be untenable constitutes fanaticism. In my blind review, I found myself spending WAY too much time thinking about the AC, because I was trying to fit it into my logic chain (Ordinary people were enthusiastic, therefore fanatics...but this in no way actually helps what I'm here to prove: that ordinary people were murders. This just tells me they were fanatics!)

Oh man, I'm SO sorry guys, the first example should read "Objective" (based on universal fact/reality) and the second "Subjective" (stemming from personal opinions)

:( I'm SO sorry the typo rendered my examples confusing.

Objective=based on fact. Subjective=open to personal influence/feeling.

If different artists from different periods of time who were not influenced by one another all came up with the same notion of beauty, then that would serve as evidence that beauty is....subjective.

vs.

If different artists all came up with different depictions of beauty, then Beauty can be said to be .....objective.

Wow, I'm kind of ashamed of myself now, but I actually chose E after choosing between D and E. I thought D might be making too much of an assumption to posit "Environmental Pollution" as an alternative hypothesis for the phenomenon (cancer).

I chose E because I read the conclusion as perscriptive for what "individuals who want to reduce their risk of cancer" should do ("reduce their fat intake"). I made the mistake of identifying the error to be corrected here as one of saying "what's right for the whole nation might not be right for each and every individual, ie. if that individual already eats very little fat)

BUT I MISSED THE TARGET in nitpicking this issue. Instead, the heart of the matter with the flaw in this argument is that the conclusion takes mere correlation to mean CAUSATION, and that my friends, is where it all goes haywire, and that is the weakness that our correct answer will need to expose.

To expose/address this flawed presumption of correlation, we need to suggest: reversal, irrelevance of the comparison, or most commonly, an alternative 3rd cause. Answer choice D is ultimately the only answer choice that achieves this.

This question tricked me into spending more time on it then I would have liked, but I feel like I have a better grasp on it now. I orginially chose answer choice E, but now see that E is patently irrelevant.

"Many other regions have much lower rates of HD than France"....ok, so? We in North Amercia still might be able to use this tip (for example, if the other regions achieved this low HD through some crazy extreme method that would never fly in North America), so the first part does nothing to weaken the claim (as dictated by the QStem). The second part "even though they drink less red wine than do North Americans" is kind of a trap to see if we're reading carefully...because we need to compare wine consumption in Germany to France before this could weaken the conclusion (via the supporting premises...by suggesting that wine helps lower HD). But it doesn't say that. But even if it did say France instead of North America it still wouldnt neccessarily weaken the question...because like JY said, there may be some other crazy reason why the Germans have healthier hearts (which we don't have in North America) but it could presumably still stand that the author's conclusion still stood as a decent recommendation for North America (when of course, our job here is to weaken).