#help

Why are your odds of survival 18.5%? Aren't your odds 0.9^8? Which is 43.1%, not 18.5%. 0.9^16 is 18.5%, but I don't see why you would double the exponent.

#feedback

I think this is a weird video that makes the question much harder than necessary. Instead of trying to get us to differentiate between causal and non-causal logic (I'm not really even sure what that means in this case), why not just have us look at it exactly like any other question:

Does the answer make the argument stronger or weaker?

What would this look like? Well...

The conclusion of the argument is:

"Thus, for most people the generally more expensive long-term training is unwarranted."

Okay, so I've got to look for an answer that points toward a warrant (reason) for the long-term training that the study overlooked, or that undermines the premise that the short term length is good enough for anyone.

Ok, so off to the answers:

(A) A decrease in symptoms of anxiety often occurs even with no treatment or intervention by a

mental health professional.

If this is true, it makes the argument much stronger. Why pay for expensive long-term training when you'd do better by getting on with your life?

(B) Short-term relaxation training conducted by a more experienced practitioner can be more expensive than long-term training conducted by a less experienced practitioner.

The explanation given in the video makes perfect sense. The conclusion just says "generally." So of course there can be exceptions.

Right answer (C) Recipients of long-term training are much less likely than recipients of short-term training to have recurrences of problematic levels of anxiety.

Oh! Great! If this is true, it gives a great reason to do long term training, even if it is more expensive. Those old premises don't seem to bring you to that conclusion very well anymore.

(D) The fact that an individual thinks that a treatment will reduce his or her anxiety tends, in and of itself, to reduce the individual's anxiety.

If this is true, it makes the argument maybe a little stronger, certainly not weaker. Don't pay for expensive training when all you really need to do is pay for anything you think will be effective. Since you just heard this argument that said short term time frame is all you need, why wouldn't you go with the cheaper short term training? Of course, (D) would not convince someone who insisted that the only thing that would work for her would be the long term training, but that is fine. Our conclusion doesn't need everyone to be on board. It's just generally.

(E) Short-term relaxation training involves the teaching of a wider variety of anxiety-combating relaxation techniques than does long-term training.

The fact that the short-term training involves a wider variety of techniques gives me no reason to take the long-term class in violation of the argument's conclusion. Not weakened. (Okay, okay, so maybe there is one guy who hates learning more than 1 or 2 techniques. So he can take the long-term course. Good for him. Generally, though, I assume most people don't have that kind of aversion to learning a couple extra techniques, and thus would have no reason to reject the conclusion after learning this new fact.)

It's all about how the premises support the conclusion, and how the addition of another fact (one of the answers) changes the strength of the relationship between premise(s) and conclusion(s). Causal, non-causal; potato, potato.

I agree with your general point, and I dislike the explanation given in the video (#feedback). So here is my best attempt at an explanation.

The hypothesis is:

"...the bacteria's exposure to the heavy metals in the sewage sludge has somehow promoted their resistance to antibiotics." (I have bolded the subject, verb, and object for clarity.)

(C) says:

"Antibiotic resistance of bacteria that survive in sewage sludge in which heavy metals are concentrated contributes to their resistance to heavy-metal poisoning." (Bolded for clarity.)

In the above "Lawgic" translation we get: Rab → (causes) → Rhm

So, I imagine, your thought goes:

Take a colony of bacteria swimming around, enjoying life in sewage sludge without any heavy metals. Perhaps a few of them, due to random mutations, will happen to have antibiotic resistance (which contributes to heavy metal poisoning resistance), others won't.

Now dump a bunch of heavy metals into their idyllic environment (in order to test the hypothesis above).

All of a sudden, all the bacteria without resistance to heavy metal poisoning die. (Eek!) Among those left are probably a greater share of the ones who happened to have antibiotic resistance, since those lucky fellows benefited from the resistance to heavy metal poisoning that antibiotic resistance conveys. Probably there will be some other bacteria that happened to get their heavy metal poisoning resistance some other way, but surely the share of surviving bacteria with antibiotic resistance will be much greater than it was in the population before exposure to heavy metals.

So, in effect, answer (C) provides the content for the "somehow" in the hypothesis, the causal mechanism explaining why the hypothesis identifies a relationship that is more than correlation.

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If you accept this setup, then the real question is whether raising the share of bacteria that have some level of antibiotic resistance in a colony counts as a result of heavy metal exposure entails that heavy metal exposure promoted resistance to antibiotics (the verb in the hypothesis).

Promote is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as:

1. To raise to a more important or responsible job or rank.

2. To advance (a student) to the next higher grade.

3. To contribute to the progress or growth of; further. synonym: advance.

My sense here is that the third definition is the relevant one. And I think that our scenario doesn't fit it. Exposure to heavy metals has not in fact made antibiotic resistance any stronger, greater, nor progressed it. It has only raised the frequency of it in the population as a whole. There is no guarantee that selection pressures will select for greater ("promoted") resistance with time.

Recall that what the premises note is "strong resistance" to antibiotics, not just any old resistance to it. We need a mechanism for strengthening resistance, which does not appear here. You would have to assume that the greater the resistance to antibiotics, the greater the resistance to heavy metal poisoning, which (C) does not provide as given.

If C instead said: "The stronger the resistance a bacterium has to antibiotics, the more likely it will be to have resistance to heavy metal poisoning and survive exposure to heavy metals." then I think it would be a slam dunk. In fact, that would almost just restate the hypothesis as true. But it doesn't say that.

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Another objection you could level is that my scenario isn't accurate because C doesn't say how much help antibiotic resistance is to resisting heavy metal poisoning. Sure, it contributes, but by how much? Enough actually to have a selection pressure when exposed to the high levels of heavy metals concentrated in sewage sludge? Maybe not.

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For these two reasons, plus the rather gimmicky reason that (C) doesn't disprove any alternative hypothesis or correct an experimental oversight (which it seems are the most common ways to strengthen an argument on the LSAT), I think it is reasonable to conclude (B) does a lot more than (C).

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A final note on why I dislike the explanation:

It hinges on a spurious insistence that the hypothesis is about "where resistance came from," as if exposure to heavy metals is supposed to create antibiotic resistance. That's just bad science. Unless the argument is that somehow heavy metal resistance has CRISPR-like abilities and edits the genes of bacteria to make them antibiotic resistant, then all we are talking about are selection pressures. In other words, the hypothesis means: "...the bacteria's exposure to the heavy metals in the sewage sludge has [introduced some selection pressure that, for whatever reason, selected for bacteria with greater antibiotic resistance--NOT made each individual bacterium more resistant to antibiotics].

Bacteria are not like people. They don't learn to become resistant to heavy metal poisoning in their lifetimes (say, by shielding their bodies with some protective tool they built). They just get lucky with the right mutation, and the ones with that mutation get to reproduce. (C) attempts to explain what this selection pressure is, and were it successful, I think it would clearly strengthen the argument by offering a causal relationship explanation. The problem is that it fails to do this.

Of course, I make a (very reasonable, I think) assumption that normal evolutionary rules apply here. But this is, after all, the LSAT, not the MCAT. You might just say that lawyers shouldn't have to know enough to make this assumption, and call phooey on the whole thing. It might be a case, in other words, that you know too much about what they are talking about.

I agree. I do not think B presupposes E. To me, the likelihood of disease transmission is just way more variable than carbon dioxide levels. Everyone breathes the same today as in 1980. So if the rate of replenishment goes down, the levels go up, with needing to control for far fewer things than in B (like do people wear more masks on flights now? Is there more cultural disapproval of flying while sick? Have general levels of airborne illnesses changed?)

You might, I imagine, ask why I don't like the other explanations for why not B.

The primary objection I have is that many explanations seem to suggest that noting the relative severity of cases is not a valid way to criticize Moore's dependence on the relative number of cases.

This claim is preposterous. Moore does not argue that the number of cases is the same, he cites that claim from a study to argue that sunscreen is not effective.

Imagine a more extreme version of severity:

Moore says: These sunscreens are not effective because the number of skin cancer cases doesn't change from users to non users of sunscreen. (Important to distinguish between premise and conclusion here.)

I reply: Ridiculous. Every person who didn't use sunscreen died of skin cancer (more severe). Every person who did use the sunscreen got a fleck of skin removed from her left cheek and lived to 120 (less severe). Of course sunscreen is effective!

My reply, I think anyone would agree, is perfectly legitimate. It certainly would convince me not to listen to Moore and to wear sunscreen despite his objections!

The video explanation does not commit this fallacy. But I do not think it is very helpful in explaining that a "failure to distinguish" objection is itself a fallacy in this case (noting the existence of another method analysis does not itself invalidate the first method of analysis, see above).

Of course, there may be other times when "failure to distinguish" is a problem. (Maybe an argument like: "Dragonflies in Asia are dying of poaching. Therefore, we had better crack down on dragonfly poaching in South Africa." This is a stupid argument. But it clearly fails to distinguish between risks to dragonflies in Asia and South Africa.)

#feedback

The real explanation for B

I do not think the video explanation or any of the comments that I read accurately capture why B is wrong.

I submit that B is wrong because of its framing, not its content.

B says: The argument fails to distinguish between the relative number of cases of skin cancer and the severity of those cases in measuring effectiveness at skin cancer prevention.

The problem here is that B suggests there are 2 different ways to measure effectiveness (not that one is superior to the other):

1) the relative number of skin cases

2) the severity of those cases

It then submits that the reasoning is flawed because it does not treat each of these measures independently. However, this line of argument claims that both methods are acceptable for measuring effectiveness.

If both methods are acceptable, then Moore can reply that he used a method of analysis that is acceptable for measuring effectiveness--and thus that his argument is still valid.

In order for B to be a correct answer, it would have to claim that method 1 above (relative number) is not valid for measuring effectiveness, not that there is another equally good way to measure effectiveness.

What would that answer look like?

Imaginary B: The argument overlooks the possibility that people who consistently use sunscreen lotions develop much less severe cases of skin cancer, on average, than people who do not.

I think this answer, were it an option, would be clearly correct. At a higher level, it is an apples to oranges claim: you thought you were comparing like cases, but in fact you are comparing different cases. This is, one might note, the exact same general claim as E. Apples to oranges. Just instead of noting a time difference, you note a severity difference.

This question, then, for me, is a reminder that the content of reasons is not sufficient to make a good answer. The way in which the information is presented, and how it is framed to address the argument, matters. Personally, I like Imaginary B as an answer much more than real E (the right answer). I think Imaginary B is much more rigorous, and reminds me of exactly the kind of thing an anti-sunscreen lobbyist would try to pull over on us. That is why I picked real B. (Perhaps that is why they put real B on in the first place.) But of course that doesn't matter. Imaginary B isn't an option. And real B doesn't cut it.

To reiterate, as it currently exists, B commits the fallacy of saying "there is another way of doing this" (a different measure of effectiveness) to argue that "your way of doing this is wrong." Of course, you can't do that. So B is wrong. And so was I when I picked it.

If you have thoughts, please feel free to comment. I hope this is a clearer explanation than the ones I was reading and watching before.

#feedback There is a grammatical error. Research team is singular, not plural.

Not true. To claim all cute animals like to swim does not mean everything that likes to swim is cute.

As in:

All dogs have four legs.

A table has four legs.

Therefore, a table is a dog.

That is not a valid argument.