Can anyone explain why JY says "if that's crater's in the ocean then Trent's argument is screwed"? Because it wouldn't kick up dust? But Trent doesn't say that dust in the atmosphere is the only thing that could have caused the extinction. He doesn't even say that dust in the atmosphere is the only mechanism by which an asteroid impact could have caused extinction. (Maybe the asteroid impact would have boiled all the water for a hundred miles in any direction, thus changing ocean temps and currents, and affecting weather patterns? Or maybe somehow the asteroid contained a substance that poisoned the oceans?)

I eliminated choice A because it seemed like Trent was assuming something about timing/duration, and the location of the crater(s) didn't seem relevant to that. Choice E, on the other hand, is relevant.

#help

Maybe I'm alone in this but I found E really hard to parse just for the language, let alone any logical considerations. "...consequences for our interests of undertaking that action." At first I read that as consequences for [our interests of undertaking that action], which makes no sense. Even the prepositions seemed wrong. Now I see that it should be read as consequences [for our interests] of undertaking that action. Some commas would have helped me!

I looked at AC E for a long time during BR. I went with B because it seemed better (it talked specifically about impacts), but I couldn't really articulate what was wrong with E. After thinking about it more, I see two ways that E goes farther than it needs to for a necessary assumption question.

1. It gets too specific about which foods and drinks people will consume, and how much.

1a. We don't really care about what foods become popular. Rather, we care about whether they are consumed more an as a result of the TV shows. What if a certain junk food was already popular, and then after it was featured prominently in a TV show, it became even more popular? On the flipside, what if a certain junk food is barely ever consumed, and then as a result of being featured prominently in a TV show, it consumption increased slightly, but not enough for any reasonable person to call the food popular? In both cases, the claim by the health officials would be correct: the TV shows had a negative impact on dietary habits. But in neither case has the particular food become popular.

1b. What if the foods and drinks on TV do have a bad effect on viewers' diets, but not in a predictable way? For instance, we see someone drinking Coke and that makes us drink more cola in general, but not necessarily Coke. Or we could go even farther--what if we see characters drinking cream soda, and that reminds us of how much we like the flavor of vanilla, so we go out an buy a bunch of vanilla ice cream? Both would be negative effects, but hard to predict.

2. AC E is about what the health officials know, but the truth of their claim doesn't actually depend on what they know. They could be completely ignorant about the true causes and effects going on, but their claim could still be true. (I.e. they got it right, but for the wrong reasons.)

This might be easier to see if we we remove the health officials from the equation. We would have a simpler presentation of the stimulus's claim: "Seeing people eat junk food on TV has a negative effect on the public diet." And AC E would be simpler as well: "We can predict what the public will eat based on what people eat on TV". The logical relationship between the stimulus and the AC are unchanged, but hopefully it's a little easier to see why the AC is not necessary. Our knowledge has no effect on whether or not the claim is true.

Is there any lesson that talks about the difference between a conditional relationship and a causal one?

#help

This is still confusing to me. I see how the author misunderstands the psychologists’ argument by confusing “best” and “only.” I think he exhibits this confusion when he writes “then there would be no way st all to achieve understanding”. (If he thought that was the only way, and that way is impossible, then the author’s statement makes sense).

But I still don’t see how the author’s final sentence is wrong, or how AC C describes the final sentence. If the author has shown that the “best” way is actually impossible, doesn’t that mean it’s not the best way? Isn’t he right when he says that the psychologists are wrong?

JY specifically refutes this line of reasoning in a comment 8 years ago. He wrote: “We just can’t do it. It doesn’t mean that it’s not the best way.” Huh? How can anyone claim that an impossible method is the best method? If a X is impossible, then surely X will not accomplish Y. And if that is the case, how could we ever claim that X is the best way accomplish Y?

#help (Added by Admin)

Everyone should scroll down to Benjipants’s analysis below. I believe JY misidentifies the assumption mentioned in choice A. Benji’s explanation is better.

Am I misunderstanding something, or does JY get the explanation wrong starting at 2:48? (A usually dangerous train of thought, I know...) It's not relevant to this question, but it is relevant to the very next question in this lesson (LSAT 26, S3, Q23) because they share a stimulus. Here, JY says Kay can't vote for any of these candidates according to her principle. But that's disproven by the correct answer choice in the next question: she CAN vote for Medina. Kay disagrees with Medina on 0 issues; she disagrees with Legrand and Norton on 1 issue. Therefore she can vote for Medina, because nothing in the principle prevents Kay from voting for a candidate she agrees with on all important issues. JY says as much in his explanation for the following question.

#help

I'm struggling with why B can't be correct. B says that the emergence of new sounds appears to be random. If so, of course we would need to abandon sound-change theory. (Unless the theory says "there is no pattern at all" which doesn't seem plausible.)

If we have a theory that says A change to A' according to certain predictable patterns, and then we learn that the changes to A are completely random, then we would need to abandon the theory, right?

I do see now that choice D is better, because it more directly connects to the premise. I was trying to answer the question quickly and didn't read D closely enough. But I still don't see how choice B is irrelevant to the argument in the stimulus.

#help

One point I don't see discussed below is the passage says that still life artists invariably chooses, modifies, etc. And that makes it the best. Perhaps some other representational artists, do that as well, but they don't invariably do it. That's exactly what D says.

I'm struggling with why A is correct. JY starts out by saying that David conceded Carla's 2 premises about the benefits of research. So how can we then claim that he is ignoring them? #help

I see why D is right (I mistakenly eliminated it at a glance because it seemed to far removed from the other material i the stimulus), but I still think A weakens. Can someone point out where I'm wrong?

Here's my thinking: the educator says that because siblings sometimes display very different levels of enthusiasm for sports, that must mean that family plays no role in determining the children's enthusiasm. (Contrapositive: if family played a role in a teenager's enthusiasm for sports, then siblings would always have the same level of enthusiasm.) AC A is saying "actually no, family could play a role in the teenagers' enthusiasm for sports even if the teenagers have different levels, because there are other factors to consider."

Does that weaken the relationship between a key premise (the observation about siblings) and the conclusion? It shows that the premise actually does not lead to that conclusion.

#help

Why isn’t it a problem that the correct answer choice doesn’t state that murder is morally wrong? Ordinarily I’d assume that murder is morally wrong, but ordinarily I’d also assume that lying is morally wrong. Since both the stimulus and the answer choice make a point of stating explicitly what is morally wrong, is seems problematic to assume any other actions are morally wrong.

In the stimulus, they tell us explicitly that a particular act is morally wrong, and then they extrapolate from that using the principle introduced early in the stimulus. But in choice A, we are asked to assume that murder is morally wrong. The only thing the choice tells us is that lying is morally wrong.

We could also assume that the “murder is morally wrong” part carries over from the stimulus to the answer choice, that also seems like a problem: it’s only an example given in the stimulus; it’s not the principle we’re being asked to apply to the AC.

Is this an example of older LSAT questions being a little looser in their structure and application of logic?

Is AC C saying that unless your debating technique defangs every single argument that could ever be made about any topic, you should not use that technique? It would in fact rule out ALL debating techniques. That does mean it would out attacks on your opponent’s character, because such attacks don’t defang ANY arguments, let alone accomplish the absurd goal described in the AC.

It’s just hard for me to deal with choices like C when they seem to make so little sense intuitively.

Thanks @! I diagrammed the conditional the same as you. But I think JY diagrams it differently, and I'd love to know if I'm missing something here. (Video: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/first-time-authors-pm-question)

JY writes:

(1st and /C) → /S.

But I think it should be:

(1st and S) → C.

I normally wouldn’t question JY on a logic diagram, but he acknowledges that he’s just doing this by intuition and not following any rule.

He says we don’t have a rule for diagramming “except when”, but isn’t it the same as “except if” or “except”, and aren’t those all the same as “unless”, “until”, and “without”? i.e. Group 3 (negate the sufficient)? We have 3 terms here instead of 2, which makes it more complicated. But I think if we break it down, it’s just a Group 3 statement.

(In our stimulus we’re dealing with probabilities (“generally”) but since JY ignores that and just translates this into conditional logic, I’ll do the same here.)

Let’s start with a simple form:

A except when B (which, again, seems the same as “A unless B”)

Translated to lawgic: /A→B.

Now assume A is itself a conditional statement X→Y. Then we have (X→Y) except when B.

Translated to lawgic: /(X→Y)→B

Which is the same as (X and /Y)→B.

In our stimulus, we have:

(Manuscripts by 1st-time authors→/Serious attention) except when Celebrity.

or (1st→/S) except when C

Now use the Group 3 and negate the sufficient:

/(1st →/S) → C

(1st and S) → C.

JY’s version feels right as well, so I can see why he would diagram it that way. But it doesn’t feel as right to me, and I can’t see any reason not to treat this as a Group 3 statement.

I’d love to hear other thoughts.

Am I misunderstanding something, or does JY get the explanation wrong starting at 2:48 in his explanation? (A usually dangerous train of thought, I know…) https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-26-section-3-question-22/

It’s not relevant to this question, but it is relevant to the very next question in the lesson (PT26.S3.Q23) because they share a stimulus.

Here, JY says Kay can’t vote for any of these candidates according to her principle. But that’s disproven by the correct answer choice in the next question: she CAN vote for Medina. Kay disagrees with Medina on 0 issues; she disagrees with Legrand and Norton on 1 issue. Therefore she can vote for Medina, because nothing in the principle prevents Kay from voting for a candidate she agrees with on all important issues. JY says as much in his explanation for the following question.

One thing that's confusing about this question is that it seems like a combination of a Flaw and an MBT question. On the one hand, the question stem makes it clear that it's MBT. On the other hand, the correct AC implies that the Citizen has made a bad argument. (The Citizen is saying that if everyone follows her lead, there will be change; and AC A says that’s wrong--if everyone follows her lead there will NOT be change. ) I can't think of many if any MBT questions where the answer contradicts something in the stimulus. I guess the giveaway here is that the question stem doesn't actually say "assume the above is true", unlike other MBT questions.