a is the only one that makes sense after all the other ones are literally valid and I double back and go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Okay I can see the chain is funky. Is POE the way to go??? ㅠㅠ

i linked up each employee must report potentially hazardous situations with the safety program. that's an assumption-- i don't know that it's the safety program. grr.

Wow, these new short answers feel like a huge swing in the opposite direction. I really loved the kind of quirky prompts. In a community that seems to emphasize and enjoy a certain warmth, this feels a bit odd.

@Kevin_Lin There were a ton more parallel reasoning questions than I anticipated-- around 5/4 in one section? (super hoping that it was the experimental, but I don't think it was) There were multiple parallel reasoning/flaw questions where the language didn't line up, it was just about the logic and a "shallow dip" method didn't work for me personally -- after looking at the underlying logic and diagramming quickly i could see that the ACs just changed the order of the argument around (not the actual lawgic--> just the order of the premises/conclusion as it shows up, along with wording that made it feel different on the surface) in ways I didn't understand until after diagramming. Then I felt dumb and super played, but just started diagramming ACs with the others before I did anything else and I just kind of hope the change in strategy paid off. Certain questions in LR felt like they leaned closer to inference RC questions than the hard logic LR questions I'm used to. The font for me wasn't the newest font-- it was the font after they changed it, but before they stealth changed it to the one that felt closer to the old font with the three highlighters, though the font size was much smaller than I anticipated. The sufficient/necessary flaw questions didn't come up as often as I thought it would or as much as I'm used to. The number of "math" type questions seemed to have increased. There were a lot more person a says this person b says this type questions too (I think it’s point of issue?) and several more method of reasoning questions. Only one of my LR sections felt typical of what I had been studying, but that was the outlier. RC felt the same, for the most part. The rest was pretty straight forward (define this word, main point, etc). The grammar was wild on one passage, but a quick sentence diagram worked it out.

Just also want to talk about how accessible the course is-- they don't assume you come in knowing things, and they genuinely teach things in a way I can understand and think through with them. They think intentionally about their product and have it accessible at all levels. Huge task, but they make it look so easy. Truly GOATs

Here's my take on the question. I worked through it like this:

(it's all about literature)

idealized world in romance =/= debased satire (let's say the romance books make the world seem super sunshine and rainbows, and the satire books make the world seem like we're living in a super wicked one)

BUT overlap in moral qualities that reflect those worlds in their characters

(so characters in romance books are also sunshine and rainbows and positive and idealized/ in satire books, satire characters are super mean and cheat others and are wicked)

that's romance and satire.

now we're going into comedy and tragedy.

in those stories, the moral qualities of the characters have to change over the book.

(we don't know anything about whether these qualities are reflective of their worlds or not. Just that they have moral qualities, and that they change)

(so a super positive character might turn into a really wicked one, or a bad guy will turn into a good one like Zuko or Snape or something)

We don't know why the condition "moral qualities have to change" triggers that it can't be a romance or satire yet. We know these characters in those books have moral qualities that reflect the worlds, but if the conclusion is to follow, then we know that something about that triggers why something won't be romance or satire.

a doesn't do that. it just tells us more about the moral qualities within tragedies and comedies. This is saying, hey some of these characters in C/T aren't debased/idealized (like R/S). But that still doesn't tell us why a change makes it so that C/T can't be R/S.

b doesn't do that either. we don't really need to know about the world, because we don't know about whether the moral qualities also are reflective of the world in C/T, but we also don't know why change would make it not R/S,

c just follows the rule of change. Doesn't explain why the change makes it so it's not R/S.

D--> bingo. If this were true, it answers our question of why changes in moral qualities would make something not R/S.

e says that both c/t require change in minor characters--> great we already know that. It follows the premise. We don't know why that premise will make something so it's not R/S.

I'd be curious to see where you thought the moral qualities of characters are also reflective of the worlds in comedy and satire. I think we only get that about the romance. I think the jump you're making is that, okay, if C/T can't be R/S, then what we get about R/S must be false about C/T. But we don't know that to be true.

It could be.

But that ignores the thing that we know that triggers why C/T can't be R/S. The argument is saying, "Look, these guys change! So they can't be R/S." We want to know why the change disqualifies C/T from R/s, not where the moral qualities come from themselves or why those changes happen--we need a comparison. It sounds like you might have picked b, but maybe think about if B actually does anything to the argument. Does it sway the conclusion in one way or another? Does it make me see why the conclusion is the conclusion? It doesn't have to be the only way to get the conclusion overall, but I think compared to the other answers, the AC will always make sure the conclusion is the explanation vs anything else. I think that's a helpful test to use for these kinds of questions! Hope it helps!

This sounds great! I'm looking for more info on the program, but it looks like the link for more info on the program on the About Us page is broken-- at least on my end.

https://7sage.com/blog/7sage-summer-fellowship-program

Would it be possible to get more details?

So diagrams with the squares activity is super helpful. But after a while on my paper I start to wonder which square means what... So i started writing the labels not in the squares but on the lines after this question. Made it much easier to see the connections!

I kid you not-- this is just what made conditional logic click for me. Conditional logic has been a weak spot, but the visuals and the ability to move things around and see the intersections and the following implications (what must be true, could be true/false, and must be false) as a result just did something magical for my brain. I did a question on lawyers, bankers, and athletes (spoilers) and did the squares-- made it so simple. 7Sage you did it again. Big thanks!!!

The researcher is saying that drawing a parallel between animals and human diets isn't okay.

The people that are supporting this idea are saying, these animals that were fed less lived longer than the other guys who kept eating the same. SO humans should do that too!

But the researcher is saying, hey that's not actually how that works. That parallel can't be drawn because lab animals eat more than they should be in their natural homes. So making them eat less is just the normal baseline.

What our job is then is to strengthen the people supporting the idea that we can draw the parallel between humans and animal diets. A) does this really well! If we are also eating more than what is optimal for a human diet, then it follows exactly why we should be reducing our calories too. (humans and animals are the same)

B is comparing humans to humans, we can't draw any connections between humans and animals.

C is basically saying hey, we might not really do anything based on animal studies, because humans can be different, so not everything we know about human health comes from lab animals. --> This doesn't really do much for us. We want to show that humans and animals are actually really interconnected when we talk about caloric intake.

D is pointing out hey, you know some people (which we know is at least 1) eat less and they live long! What we have is correlation, which is cool, but it's not causation (compared with a that draws a parallel to the same causal mechanism this is looking especially not our pick). That correlation isn't strong enough, and because we don't have a cause that we can tie back to how the studies with animal diets, this doesn't do much for our case.

E is wrong for the same reason D is and B too. Okay, we know that diet and longevity are connected in between some species of animals, but we don't have any causal mechanisms, just correlation. And it's wrong for the same reason B is in that we're drawing a connection between animals and diet to other animals and diet. We want specifically animals and diet to humans and diet.

@lebronfan I'd say this actually shows that there is an assumption here that the argument needs to be true to hold any weight! If that assumption were false and more species actually went extinct than emerged, then we'd have a problem with what the columnist is saying. The columnist already compared the times to 1970 and said as many would go extinct. We don't know if there is a constant, but we do know that there is a correlation there and we can rely on the extinctions being the same rate. That's what helped me know that a was the right answer.

A is the only one that weakens the answer. The argument is basically saying that because stimulating the VNO made them smell things, the VNO must be important to our senses.

A is suggesting an alternative that would make the scientists have to do another experiment--> what if they were stimulating the smelling cells? Then it wouldn't have to do with the VNO at all.

B is saying that our VNO is smaller than the other animals. Doesn't have to do much with how it connects to if it actually helps with our senses.

C again is comparing other animals to humans, which again isn't what we want.

D repeats this again

and E repeats this again.

We don't actually care about the relationship comparing animal VNO and human VNOs because we don't know if the VNO even contributes to the sense of smell in animals. That's what we are really interested, and the only one that addresses this is A.

So the text was dense but I quickly said oh this is just an experiment and kept going past what I didn't understand knowing that something would be flawed about the experiment or conclusions made.

Which followed! So translated: these monkeys do things. and we predicted how they would act by assuming they knew everyone's social standing.

BECAUSE our prediction was spot on, all the monkeys know everyone's social standing.

P says so your assumption helped you, but I disagree with your conclusion that monkeys know everyone's social standings. that's like saying hey, this machine must want to do its job right, so when it does its job it shows it has wants and wishes.

The point of disagreement is d. All because our assumptions help us get to our conclusions, doesn't mean that our assumptions are true.

Okay trippy, but when I slowed down, I think I got it. I was caught between b and c because I knew I was looking for a flaw that says whole-to-part style things; what is true of the whole must be true to the part. On second glance, I was able to rule out B because I realized that B had to be true, but also, that B was a case where whole-to-part reasoning would actually make sense. If everybody voted for this thing, and Martinez was on the group that voted, then they had to have voted. This is also slightly different from the stim in that it makes the generalization to one specific person vs any of the people. Either way, this wouldn't have been flawed, but we want a flawed argument that does this.

C is the only one that does that. We start with the big collection, and then we assume that what must be true about the big thing has to be true of the small things in it. (Flaw, it could just be one thing that's doing all the work)

I think a lot of the tricky thing is knowing whether something is part-to-whole or whole-to-part, but I think it's clearer when we look at d. If we wanted to make d right and do whole-to-part, we would have started with the company. If it said, The company is old. SO the members of the company are old.

@CaseyLiu just checking if I understand where you're coming from -- you're thinking that P1 and P2 mean the same thing but are the reverse of each other?

If that is what you're trying to figure out, then that's not what's happening.

Let's just assign random letters any time we have a new idea.

So P1) a is illegal --> people are deterred from doing a

And P2) a-->b -->c

Let's look at this expanded now

if car phones illegal --> people deterred from using car phones

car phone usage --> (distracted)--> threat to safe driving

Saying that using something and being deterred from using something are the same might be tempting as a contrapositive, but making something illegal the equivalent to being a threat to safe driving shows an underlying assumption-- that all things that are dangerous or threaten safety should be illegal.

This is actually a gap in the argument too. We know this law would make things safer, but there's nothing in the argument that says laws that make things safer should be adopted. That's outside assumptions coming in. And I definitely made that assumption until I sat through with this q during my blind review and caught myself. Hope this helps!

ridicule --> undermine pleasure

praise --> increse pleasure

---------

c: artistic merit depends on the artist and those who critically eval it

Wait, where does it say anything about pleasure being connected to merit? No. We need something that connects that bridge.

a) does that exactly

b) brings up why we might look to critics, but that doesn't explain why pleasure and merit are related

c) we still don't know the grounds for artisitc merti and how that correlates to pleasure

d) again, this still doesn't tell us pleasure and merit are related, though this is tempting. this is tempting because it feels like, yeah if they would look at what a critique says then it would influence the way ou feel about something but that points to our gap-- the argument is missing that artisitic merit comes from how much a piece of art can make you feel something (pleasure)

e) this isn't what we need, we need pleasure connected to merit. if we have that, then we have our a--> b--> c

@catqing From my understanding--

rule: hard and fast. something triggers some other specific thing, one leads to another.

principle: more general.

I think for our purposes it's to remember that most of the PSA questions will look like rules and what we've done so far. There will be specific conditionals, or logical bridges from our premise to the conclusion that we have to connect.

But, if there is a question where an illustration comes up, it's still PSA, just a more generalized version of that question type. We're looking for a pattern that we can apply broadly.

@rjon27 From my understanding, I think your lawgic is right for the second rule. But the first rule isn't that. The first rule is ONLY if, so that's a logically different indicator for whatever comes after that being the necessary conditions.

So that's Justified --> business operations

Then, the next rule says, in addition, if something else happens, then you can also still be justified.

If the second rule said, "In addition, one must also..." then that would look like the way you diagrammed it, then you could combine those to after the justified. But it just said if this other thing happens then you can also get to that same result. This isn't necessary, just sufficient to get there.

That's why we separate them.

@dreph25 it's because we have to assume that the other group of people didn't also change their diet and eat more cheese and baked goods or add that into their diet. I feel like the written explanation does a really good job of addressing this!

@StanHolt If it helps, I would think about what we actually know about this study.

We just know there was a comparative study done about stories in the past and present.

The comparison is looking at past and the present storytelling. I think the trap here is in that and taking the jump that because they happened in both times and in this comparative study, there has to be more or less or equal to in all these times. But is there anything about that in the stim?

No, there isn't. All we know is that this study is being used to prove the argument that storytelling is a universal aspect of past and present cultures.

So the argument doesn't care about how much, it just cares about "was this present or not?" because all the argument is trying to prove is that storytelling is universal. It just has to apply to all the cases. You don't need a million stories from every single period ever for storytelling to be universal. Even if you had one story from every era and every culture, you could say it's universal because it's everywhere. I think the second trap is here-- making universal and important the same box. They are different things. Sure, things in our life that are universal tend to be important, but that's a bit of a stretch from what we know in the stim.

From the stim, all we know is that storytelling was present. We don't know how much it was present or how important it was. So, can we say anything about that? We can't, because we don't know. If we looked at that study we probably could, but since we don't know, this can't be most strongly supported when there are better choices. This stays in the realm of could be true, could be false. Hope this helps!

@tariksoliman7 it's funky because it's structured strange but basically, if we break it down

context: Gov intervention can have negative effects.

This is just like medicine! (principle)

(what?) Yeah, most medicines have bad and good things, so the ONLY time it's okay to use medicine is if it would be worse to not.

SO, gov intervention is okay ONLY when....

Hope that helps!

@ayoubiii I think it helped when I translated it! So let's say there are some snakes that really only exist in Hawaii (endemic species). Even in Hawaii, they are mostly in Maui in one forest in big numbers. Like NYC population equivalent numbers(hot spot). But these snakes right, they need their homes in the forest, but hotels keep trying to build chains there. That would destroy their homes(vulnerable to habitat loss bcz of commercial development). Real bad for the snakes, right? Turns out, these types of scenarios with endemic species that all died out are where we get MOST of the extinctions in the last 100 years (modern-day extinctions). Environmental orgs like WWF are trying to help, but they have so many ops!!!! They have to deal with global warming, and there are also snails and monk seals and dolphins and whales-- nature orgs are BUSY. They can't be doing everything (limited number of battles that can be waged). When we take all of that into account, what makes the most sense? Hopefully this helps!

@kythax If it helps, I knew A was wrong because it was outside the frame of the argument. If you look at the whole passage, they are only talking about the specific group of species that are threatened with habitat loss. It's the endemic ones that are in hot spots. A is too broad to be right when B is more spot on. I just figured, look, we're talking about endemic species in hot spots for a reason, and A is casting way too large a net.

I'm probably not the best person to answer since I'm still working on it, but something that's really helped me with making inferences is doing blind reviews seriously. I break down every piece of the argument into my own words and work through why I would choose and would not choose an answer without knowing what is right or wrong. It's helping me pick up on patterns in the way the LSAT operates, and it might be helpful for you too!!

@Allen20 which question are you referring to?

I feel like b was a trap answer for me. I assumed the rest of the context was all the conclusion, but that's not what the argument was saying. The argument is saying, so these critiques you're making? That's too fuzzy bro. The only one that does that is (A). (B) is just a repeat of what critics say. That is just context without the real conclusion, it's half of the real picture. When we take that with the idea of it being too fuzzy, that's the conclusion.