why is D wrong? it says that because slightly overweight is healthier than being underweight, therefore slightly overweight is healthy. so if they lack being underweight, then they must be healthy.

but i don't understand how we equate "reduce family's prosperity" to no finanical prosperity. even if the business has reduced financial prosperity it could still very likely bring financial prosperity?

I was stuck between A and E, and ultimately picked A.

(E) This AC says that the argument draws conclusions about the intentions of a group of people. However, the stimulus never concludes that people who read labels do so to reduce fat calories in their diets or to eat healthier, it just concludes that its a cause of their behavior.

(A) The correlation in the stimulus is between reading nutrition labels and having lower fat calories in their diet. From this info, the argument concludes that reading labels makes people eat healthier.

@ZahidAli I think the reason I wouldn't say it suggests it definitively is that the question says "the argument fails to take into account the possibility". So it's not that oh A is true, it's just saying that A COULD be true, and then the stimulus totally falls apart.

I got this one wrong and then right in blind review:

The stimulus says that people w/ clinical depression have less left frontal lobe activity than right frontal lobe activity. And characteristically good-natured participants (who we know do NOT have clinical depression) have more left frontal lobe activity than the clinically depressed people. To be clear, it doesn't specify if they have more left frontal lobe activity than right or if both lobes are equal, it ONLY specifies their left frontal lobe is more active than the left frontal lobe of someone who is clinically depressed.

It then says that because of this information, someone's general disposition is a result of the activity of one's frontal lobe. General disposition here would be their mood/how they feel, such as if they are depressed/not depressed in this case.

We want to find out which one does NOT weaken, so we can either find something that DOES NOT AFFECT the argument or that STRENGTHENS the argument.

(increased) left lobe activity --> mood

An example of mood is depression.

(e) This says that social interaction stimulates the left lobe, and that depressed people do not participate in this social interaction. This is essentially saying that:

If you're depressed, you probably don't engage in social interaction, and so your left lobe isn't stimulated.

depression --> social interaction --> (decreased) left lobe activity

We want to show the other way around, that lobe activity would affect mood (such as depression). (decreased) lobe activity --> depression

So we can eliminate this since its the opposite of our stimulus and would weaken it.

(d) This says that the brain's limbic system (not frontal lobe) is what causes frontal lobe activity and mood (such as depression)

The stimulus says the frontal lobe is what causes mood, not that they are both caused by something else. This weakens so you can eliminate.

(c) This says that frontal lobe activity doesn't change in the way that general disposition (feelings/mood, such as depression) does.

If there's no correlation between these two things, then it weakens the argument. You can eliminate.

(b) This says that clinical depression can cause excessive sleep, which can cause less frontal lobe activity.

depression --> excessive sleep --> (decreased) left lobe activity

This is the opposite thing we are trying to say. The stimulus is saying that lobe activity causes mood (such as depression), not the other way around. You can eliminate.

(a) This says many medications to help depression increase left lobe activity.

So this is essentially saying that, according to many medications, if we change lobe activity, we can change mood (basically that mood is caused by lobe activity) This is supportive of the stimulus, saying that mood is the result of lobe activity.

@Hanifa I think it's saying that shipping costs are reflective of how far fossils fuels need to be shipped (more distance = more money). And the next part is separate.

So they're saying that these two things decreased:

1. Shipping costs (which reflect the cost of how far fossil fuels need to be transported)

2. Loss of materials in transit

So factory owners had less potential losses of material (so they lost less money from damaged goods) and also had to pay less for shipping.

I got this wrong initially and in blind review, but later I noticed something when watching the explanation that helped explain why D is correct.

D. I was originally confused because what does this have to do with employment. If there are people who survive, how do we know that they didn't already have a job and now they keep the same job?

When I reread the stimulus I saw that the conclusion was this: "The earnings (income) of these people (people that survived) would result in a substantial increase in country X's gross national product (total value generated from job earnings in the country), and the taxes paid on those earnings (job earnings get taxed) would substantially augment government revenues."

So we know for a FACT that the overall income of the country will increase if these people survive. We cannot even try to argue that it will stay the same, because the stimulus gives it to us as true. So why would the overall job earnings of a country increase when more people survive? Wouldn't you assume it to be the same, because they have jobs, survive, then come back to their jobs? Or maybe decrease because they are injured and cannot work anymore?

Here's where the necessary assumption comes in. The earnings of the injured people increase if they survive. This can't be true if everyone just had a job and came back to the exact job making the exact same amount of money as before, then there is no increase in the overall earnings from income in the country. It's either because when these injured people survived, some people who were unemployed got jobs or because they were all employed and got more money when they came back to their jobs. The second option is not in any of the answer choices. Therefore, some people got jobs they did not have before = increased employment, which leads to more money from employment in the country overall.

@Lauretamrizi i think this one would be fails --> caught, bc i mapped it out as IF a spy fails, it was BECAUSE they were caught. i placed it that way because they said a spy fails by being caught, not if a spy is caught they fail. us knowing they failed is enough to know they were caught. its kind of a rlly confusing one to me though.

so i originally put C for this answer and got it wrong, but then changed to E for blind review which were the two i was between, and got it correct.

originally for C, i thought that "ancestry" was the indicator of it being an earlier influence on the french language. however, when i went back, i realized that this answer choice says "share its linguistic ancestry" which means that you would study other languages that are MODERN like spanish and italian, etc. but that all STEM from one language. so this isn't telling you you must study the language it STEMS from, which you could reasonably infer came first, or else it would be the answer choice.

when i decided on E, i reasonably inferred that the mentor (Plato) would be influential. a mentor also assumes a chronological order of mentor (first) --> mentee (second). if this answer choice didn't say it was his mentor, and just said you must be acquainted with the philosophy of Plato, i think it would've been wrong because even if you are familiar with these philosophers and their relationship, you're not allowed to assume outside knowledge about history. so even if the answer choice had all the same info as it currently does but changed "Plato" to "Beyonce," it would still be correct because we cannot bring in outside knowledge. we can't say, hey Beyonce was born after Aristotle, how could she be his mentor? because we aren't allowed to make that assumption. we have to assume the information itself is true.

i honestly cant understand this and i wasnt able to diagram it. all the diagrams im seeing in the comments are confusing me more. can someone explain what the flaw is in the stimulus and how it parallels e? also other than saying that ac a makes sense as an argument, could you show me how the diagramming doesn't parallel?

this confused me because the beginning of the stimulus mentions comparing chess-playing programs to each other, meaning multiple programs.

i feel like this was confusing. the reason i didn't choose C and actually eliminated it on my first pass was because i thought it weakened the argument. if the virus is inserted randomly, isn't it just likely to be a coincidence that they were inserted in the same spot in both species?

i didn't understand that we are supposed to assume that once its inserted they are passed down in every single generation of the species, even through a divergence, and so then it's not coincidental that these two species have it in the same spot.

would this not be extra information that we are supposed to assume? i thought we aren't supposed to do that for lsat questions.

this is my explanation for why the answer is B instead of C, i got it wrong on first try but got it right in blind review.

edgar states that protecting a species of small fish is inconsequential. rafaela, however does not disagree with this statement. instead she says "you're missing the point" meaning that its not about whether the fish's survival is inconsequential. it means he is misinterpreting the point of shutting off the water supply.

in rafaela's response, she doesn't say that the threat to the species threatens our water supply. she states that the threat to the species is "A SIGN" of a threat to our water supply. meaning that shutting it down is not about the fish, its about our water supply itself. she never says if the fish are threatened, that affects our water supply. she says, if the fish are threatened, it shows us that there's another separate threat to US, which is our water supply.

that means that B is the answer because then the threat to the water supply, in addition to the threat to the fish, is a reason for shutting down the pumps. therefore the fish are not the ONLY reason for shutting them down.

i hope that makes sense, someone please tell me if you disagree with my reasoning or if it is confusing!

hi im located in la so wouldn't be able to meet in person but would do virtual!