These new LSATS are garbage. We have to assume a bunch of shit for E to be right. But we're taught to look out for assumptions in arguments. Yet, we can make assumptions all day long

I'm just speechless at this point. All the other answers are garbage but where in the list of common fallacies or even any list of fallacies does it say that if you make a mistake, you are now an unreliable source of information about the mistake that you made. So a pilot makes a mistake, now he is unreliable to tell us information about the mistake, so we have to assume that the pilot will lie or is not aware of his mistake which is why he would be unreliable? Correct? #help

These new RRE questions are absolute garbage. The shit we have to assume for them to be right is absurd.

So it says the wolves "prospered" which initally im like wtf does "prospered" mean in this context. Then I read C and was like "ok so I have to assume now these moose had diseases, and these diseases were enough so that all the wolves prospered. All of them? All of them prospered? So there is some kind of crazy disease that allowed for the wolves to eat them, but somehow this disease didnt spread enough to the rest of the moose. Like come the fuck on.

This question is fucking trash. How does them finding food resolve 'avoiding predators' or 'competition in mating' HOW SWAY. HOW #help#help

Why couldnt communal objects be passed from one generation to another and be in tombs? Why are those two things in conflict with each other. Also it says "normally passed", ok what if this communal object was old hence why its in a tomb, or its special, idk. I hate how the LSAT teaches you to be extremely critical but sometimes when you are you think you're way out of an answer.

#help So we're just gonna pretend that E says "infection" and not "serious infection". Like... alright so I have to pay incredible amounts of attention to detail on all the questions and then on some its like nah, who cares, infection and serious infection, same thing. Right

E sucks so much ass

Conclusion: What we said in the advertisements had an effect, although a small one, on the number of people in the locality who smoke cigarettes.

Why

Because one year after the advertisments, the number of people in the locality who smoke cigarettes had declined by 3 percent.

So to strengthen we can add a premise that supports the argument or block another premise from coming in. So D gets at that. D says well Merchants had reduced the price of cigarettes by 20 percent and people still smoked less. So it blocks the alternative that there was another reason why people smoked less.

A, doesn’t matter. At first I thought this blocked the alternative that people are just chewing tobacco and snuff more, but that’s not really an alternative, whether the usage of that increases or not is compatible with smoking declining or increasing.

B. Smoking less isn’t what it was about, it was about smoking in general, not the frequency of those that do smoke.

C. No

E. Have no idea what this does.

Conclusion: The advent of television helps to explain why the growth in homidice rates in urban areas began significantly earlier than the growth in homicide rates in rural areas

Why

Because TV became popular in urban areas 5 years earlier than rural areas and urban homicide rates began increasing in 1958, about four year earlier than a similar increase in rurual homidice rates began.

So we’re given a correlation, to strengthen the correlation between TV and increased homicide rates we can add or block information. B blocks the altnerative that TV was an effect of the violence in society and says that TV is a cause of violence, which would corroborate our conclusion

This really played on my biases

Conclusion: Conflicting information received by the brain about the body’s motion causes motion sickness

Why

Because in the case of astronauts, they see their own motion relative to passing object, but while they are weightless their inner ears indicate that their bodies are not moving. So we have seeing movement/ while body is not registering movement.

A says you don’t see that your moving, but you know that you’re moving. So this conflicts and causes you to get motion sickness. I didn’t like this because just because you don’t have a view, doesn’t mean your not seeing movement, you could see things around your cabin move. But thats a further assumption that needs to be made.

C has no conflict. I chose C because thats how people in the real world get motion sickness, but this doesn’t strengthen the argument that conflicting info is what causes motion sickness.

Conclusion: Additional restrictions should be placed on driver’s licenses of teenagers

Why?

because teenagers lack basic driving skills

Why do they lack basic driving skills?

Because even though drivers of 19 and younger make up only 7 percent of registered drivers, they are responsible for over 14 percent of traffic fatalities.

So with multiple support structure arguments, they can go for either support structure, whether its premise to conclusion, or supporting premise to premise.

Answer D does nothing to the argument, the argument wasn’t about the seriousness of the accidents, it does mention fatalities but what “more serious” means is vague. If anything it strengths the argument.

Conclusion: The first Eurasian settlers in North America probably came from a more distant part of Eurasia.

Why


Because we thought this human made projectile and it doesn’t look like any projectile found in part of Eurasia thats closest to North America

Weaken: Yea well that projectile isn’t seen in distant parts of Eurasia either so.

Hmm.. Well yea the support to the conclusion is weakened now.

Conclusion: The government should therefore institute a program under which tissue samples from the dead birds are examined to determine the amount of toxins in the fish eaten by the birds.

Why?

Because the fishing industry would then have a reason to turn in the turn in the bird carcasses, since the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contained with toxins.

B. Correct. Yea but, what if the fishing industry only needs to catch a couple of fish to know if they are contaminated, then they don’t need to count all the fish

A. Still leaves open the possibility that the industry would turn in the bird carcasses

C.So what

D. Ok good, so what.

E. It’s not about the fish.

Conclusion. I disagree that the Sun’s luminosity essentially controls land temperatures on Earth.

Why

Because any professional meteorologist will tell you that in a system as complicated as that giving rise to the climate, no significant aspect can be controlled by a single variable.

You can’t just reject the conclusion because of professional meterologist’s authority on the matter. And it doesn’t give any counter arguments besides well no significant aspect can be controlled by a single variable, well why not?, Also the sub conclusion to premise here is where the answer choices focus on.

SC: no significant aspect can be controlled by a single variable

Why

Meterologist said so.

So we still go back to the meterologist as the main support, and thats where the flaw is.

Conclusion: IT is law abiding people whose actions, and nothing else, make them alone truly responsible for crime.

Why

Because all actions are ultimately products of the environment that forged the agent’s character.

Flaw: well then law abiding people would also not be responsible because their environment forged their character.

A. No the term is fine

B. Even if it did distinguish between actions that are socially acceptable and socially unacceptable that wouldn’t be the flaw.

C. I really don’t even know what this question is saying which is why I picked it. I think the argument does do this, but this doesn’t get at the support to conclusion that we need to get at it. The reasoning is that environment absolves people of their actions basically, so no one is ever really responsible, except the environment if you follow that logic. My mess up was that I thought the people were the environment, but they are not, they only “do most to create and maintain the environment”.

D. What statistical evidence?

E. Yup, very subtle. Makes you think one step ahead, which you usually dont have to do but this gets at the support of the conclusion.

Conclusion: It is impossible for there to be real evidence that lax radiation standards that were once in effect at nuclear reactors actually contributed to the increase in cancer rates near such sites

Why

Because Who can say if a particular case of cancer is due to radiation, exposure to environmental toxins, smoking, poor diet, or genetic factor.

Umm.. you can say a lot about a particular case, just because there could be a lot of factors at play doesn’t mean that through evidence, some causes dont outweigh others. The author presumes here that there just can’t be real evidence because “who can say”.

You can’t just dismiss evidence as not real, aka “fake news”, doesn’t work like that.

A points to this. The argument fails to recognize that there may be convincing statical evidence.

Yup

B. Doesn’t do that

C. The columnist doesn’t even believe in the evidence.

D. The argument identifies too many possible causes, and thats the problem

E. Doesn’t do this.

Conclusion: The claim that there is a large number of violent crimes in our society is false

Why

Because: Crimes are very rare occurences, and newspapers are likely to print stories about them

Two flaws here, one is that it uses it presuppose the truth of its conclusion, but also the assumption that newspapers are over reporting crime, which is what I was looking for.

At first I didn’t see the connection between “very rare” and “large number is false”, but B is correct.

A. Not the same as over reporting

B. Yup

C. What. NO

D. I picked this because I recognized it as part of the common flaws but I didnt like it. With B I didnt like it because I missed the rewording of the conclusion in the form of “very rare occurences”. But D isn’t doing any part to whole so its wrong.

E. No, there’s not temporality issues.

Conclusion: arms control agreements will preserve peace

Why

Because before every major war in the last 200 years there has been a sharp increase in the attainment of weapons.

Analysis: Really dumb argument. Its saying if there isn’t an attainment of weapons or an “arms control agreement” then this will preserve peace. HOW SWAY? Nations go to war for so many different reasons.

Conclusion: There are still a lot of people completely ignoring the health recommendation of reducing their intake of foods that are high in cholesterol, such as red meat.

Why

Because restaurants specializing in steak are flourishing despite an overall decline in the restaurant industry.

Analysis: Just because people are going to a steak restaurant doesn’t mean their ignoring the health recommendations of lowering their cholesterol, what if they are lowering it and when people do go out everyone wants stake because they havnt been eating it.

Conclusion: There is good evidence that Moore is a poor plumber who cannot be counted on to do a good job.

Why

Because in a small town, every complaint filed about a plumber’s work was filed against Moore.

My thought here was yea well what about people who do like him, and that could outweigh the complaints. But they didn’t go for that. Instead they said, well he’s one of a few, if not the only plumber and so these complaints aren’t good evidence because its a small sample. My question then is what’s a large sample? Also just because something is a small sample shouldn’t mean its not true, I get that it doesn’t mean its true either but the assumption in the answer is that just because its a small sample that must mean that these complaints are not good evidence. What if these people are right and he is a bad plumber…#help

#help

I don't get how just because there are fewer plumbers, the conclusion could not still hold. Ok if there are only two plumbers and all the complaints are on Moore, then yea he's a bad plumber. I'm having trouble with these representative questions because I don't get what would be an adequate representation of plumbers then, 50? 100?,

Conclusion: I oppose the regulations

Why

Because there is nothing new in this idea of restricting growth.

I made the assumption that willet was talking about there being nothing new to Benson’s regulations. Willet only says there is nothing new in the idea of restricting growth. And C says “well in the last five years there have been some new ideas”.

At first I thought ‘newness’ as a qualification was weird. What does something new have to do with it being a good idea or not. But that wasn’t it.

A. The support is that its not new, so it does offer support for its position. This is factually wrong

B. Nope

C. Yup. 10 and five years ago, but doesn’t mention the past five years which is different, even I’m a little confused trying to type that out now.

D. What? No

E. It could very well have been but how do we know that we have a different city council now, thats a further assumption that needs to be made.

OH THIS A PODCAST PODCAST :)

Conclusion: For some consumers front-loaders are superior

Why

Support: Because front loaders have controls and access in front. This is more convenient for wheelchair users, some of whom find it highly inconvenient to remove laundry from top-loaders. So far some consumers front loaders are superior.

So just because it’s convenient doesn’t mean that there are other factors that outweigh the convenience and makes top loading washing machines the overall superior machine, even for wheel-chair users. What if wheel-chair users value something more than convenience?

A gets at this

If we negate A we get, “For some consumers (the some here is what tripped me up, I didnt know if we were talking about the same some consumers, but I don’t think it matters), the convenience of front loaders does not outweigh the advantages of top loaders in assessing which is superior”. If we put this in the argument it wrecks the the argument because the support is all about why convenience makes the front loaders more superior.

C tripped me up

C is a sufficient assumption answer. Convenience doesn’t NEED to be the only important factor in determining washing machine superiority.

Conclusion: Computerized "expert systems" cannot be as good as human experts

Why

Support: Because experience is required for a proficient person to become an expert. Through experience, a proficient person gradually develops a repertory of model situations that allow an immediate, intuitive, response to each new situation. Computers don't have this experience even though computers have the ability to store millions of bits of information, the knowledge of humans, who have experience, is not stored within their brains (referential phrasing to the brains of human experts?) in the form of rules and facts.

So basically because computers aren't able to have experience they aren't as good as human experts.

A. Is about originality and is irrelevant.

B. Correct. the negation of B says "the knowledge of human experts can be adequately rendered into the type of information that a computer can store" Well if it can be adequately rendered then computers could have that same kind of experience. This would wreck our argument.

C. The negation of C repeats whats already in the stimulus.

D. Is too vague, what kinds of "greater amounts of information", we need information from experience not just "greater amounts" of it.

E. Irrelevant