@PowerUp_Tutoring

Consider this argument: This cup of tea is really cold. One scientist proposes the reason is that the cup of tea was made three days ago and has been sitting out for a long time. Another scientist proposes it's cold even though it was made only 10 minutes ago, because a fairy came over and blew magic dust on it. We know fairies aren't real, so the explanation that it was made 3 days ago is likely valid. That's a terrible argument which I'm putting forth to illustrate that if two explanations are not explicitly mutually exclusive, discounting one does NOT strengthen the other. Similarly, D's discounting the second theory does NOT strengthen the first one.

As for your proposed alternative reason for rejecting D: "Directly proportional to their distance from one another" is a universal statement. It's not qualified to no longer apply at very large distances (i.e. billions of light-years), so that disqualifier doesn't work.

Here's an analogy for how I'm thinking about this question: Children hate bitter foods but love sweet foods. Therefore when cooking brussels sprouts you should add honey to them so they like them more. The PSA supporting it is more accurately "You should sweeten foods that are normally bitter when children eat them" rather than "You should add honey to all foods for children." The honey suggestion as used in the argument is for the purpose of making it sweeter, not that honey in itself is the most critical operative thing you need to resolve the issue.

@RoadRunner The answer key seems to say that B is actually correct and D is wrong.

@EzraG This is super helpful, thank you for sharing!

What were your adjustments?

As someone who actually had to read this book for a history class I'm pretty fucking sure communists of ANY ERA would have said B! That's a pretty basic principle of the ideology!

Blind review every time, have a militant wrong answer journal, do single-section drills more than full PTs, and proactively predict the answer before you even look at the options, for every single question.

Hi, interested!

All the information presented following the “After all” marker is a hypothetical about the future after a satellite collision occurs. After such a collision happens (and that itself is up in the air), there is a chain reaction where each fragment of a collision can cause more collisions, with exponential growth that leads to space becoming cluttered. This is a hypothetical scenario that is used by the argument to support an assessment of future risk. The risk prediction does not say that satellite collisions WILL happen in the future, it’s saying that they’re more LIKELY to happen because the risk of at least one collision happening compounds the more time passes, and increases significantly once at least a single collision has happened.

You cannot make the claim of risk goes up support the claim that the Earth will become cluttered with debris (as D suggests) without disregarding the way the argument slots these things together. You can't turn the endpoint of a hypothetical into the main conclusion. As an analogy, consider the argument: “The risk of traffic accidents is likely to increase dramatically next year when the state lowers the driving age to 12. After all, the more 12-year-olds there are on the road, the more drivers will want to play bumper cars, and once one bumper car crash goes viral all the 12-year-olds will start a trend and do it all the time for fun, cluttering the roads with broken cars and obstacles.” The argument’s main conclusion is obviously not that the roads will become cluttered because of bumper cars, but that the risk of traffic accidents will increase once a policy changes. In fact, the hypothetical scenario of cluttered roads itself supports the risk prediction of increased collisions (the actual conclusion).

It's time to start a war. https://www.lsac.org/send-us-your-feedback/confirmation

Update for anyone following, I tried using external monitor + keyboard + mouse + camera plugged into a docking station that was plugged into a closed laptop computer. It passed the first 6 "compatibility" checks where it makes sure your operating system, screen resolution, camera, etc. are compliant, but then ProProctor said it couldn't "secure" the testing interface and forced me to quit.

I tried a second configuration with just the external camera and mouse plugged in, and that both passed the compatibility checks and did not trigger an error message. Fingers crossed that will be enough and the proctor won't make me pretend to be a giraffe for 3 hours.

@mkos99 That is actually really reassuring to know, and that you can double check everything with both proctors before starting the clock. My camera is totally fine on every other app and also from the ID verification setting of the ProProctor app. Thanks so much for the info!

I didn't find either video explanation to provide a super helpful methodology for not getting a question like this wrong in the future. Here's my shot at one:

This question is weird because the conclusion actually talks about completely separate terms from the premises.

· Premise: Global warming –[c]→ higher temperatures –[c]→ greater % precipitation is RAIN than snow

· Conclusion: more rapid + earlier mountain snowpack melting –[c]→ more spring flooding + less storable water

The premises would only establish a conclusion that talks about the precise ideas in it. The conclusion goes beyond the premises. Hence, the conclusion needs to be supported in an almost independent way, perhaps by an answer choice that shows the conclusion does in fact happen in the real world. Answer choice B supplies this.

Takeaway: Be ESPECIALLY mindful of new terms that pop up in the conclusion which aren’t in the premises. Here, the conclusion was itself a causal relationship talking about things that are not mentioned in the premises. A strengthener would provide independent support for that information being posited.

fuck this passage

Not sure if anyone else had this experience, but I sunk a ton of time into this and got it wrong because I was erroneously trying to figure out which of the answer choices would possibly allow the conclusion to be valid. That's obviously the wrong approach, especially here because the argument is genuinely so shitty that I'm convinced the LSAT writers just wrote it so badly to try to waste the time of people who fall into the trap of trying to comprehend it. The benefit of the golden negation rule on NA is you don't have to comprehend it, and only C stands under that test.

@carolyn.zaccaro It would be "entirely reliable." (1) Easiest way to see this is the negation is just stripping the "not" away. (2) Imagine saying "my GPS is not entirely reliable." That suggests that it's SOMETIMES reliable, just not ALWAYS reliable. "Not entirely" already encompasses "sometimes." The negation is that it's ALWAYS reliable.

@Crisella Ok now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I do think there were a few habits I consolidated between the 169 and the 179:

LR:

1. Read and understand every sentence of the stimulus before you move on. I would sometimes speed-skim because I'm stressed and think I'm understanding it, but I'm not. Investing the extra 5-10 seconds to really deeply understand the stimulus on the front-end meant that I could rapidly reject wrong answer choices and speed through the ACs very fast without needing to re-read or double-check in like 95% of cases.

2. Predict, predict, predict for every single question. I'd previously mainly tried to predict only on weakness, necessary/sufficient assumption, parallel reasoning, and main conclusion questions because I feel like that comes more easily there. But when I started pushing myself to aggressively predict even for causal strengthening, most strongly supported, weaken/strengthen/evaluate, and all other types of questions, it honestly felt like a game-changer. I think something about forcing yourself to predict the AC makes you think in a more efficient way. Instead of trying to remember the various rules you've encountered from your wrong answer journal every time you look at each answer choice, it puts you in a state of being able to immediately see why every AC is wrong except for the right one. And at least 2/3 of the time, the right answer is exactly the one you predicted. On top of that, I saw my speed on questions (especially easy ones) increase a ton as a result. It feels really effective at preserving mental energy and making sure you don't fall for trap answer choices. I honestly think this skill probably only comes from copious drilling, but if I'd tried it sooner maybe I could've broken through sooner.

3. If you have even the slightest hint that you need to diagram, you should diagram. I was previously losing some easy points because I thought I'd gotten good enough at conditional reasoning that I didn't always need to diagram, but the LSAT is designed to exploit that feeling and make you regret it. You can spend ~3 seconds glancing quickly at the stimulus and answer choices to tell if you need to diagram, and if it's not like the world's simplest single-arrow, two-variable conditional statement (and sometimes even when it is), just diagram it.

RC:

1. 7Sage RC outlining method is generally helpful.

2. Similar to above, read and understand the purpose of every sentence, even if you're not slowing down to deeply process the information. There were times when I'd read a passage, have a very rough grasp of the factual claims it was making, but I hadn't read or dug deep enough to really understand what the author was saying or why they were presenting things in a particular way. I think that cost a lot of points.

3. At some level, you can also predict for RC questions, and I think I was just subconsciously doing that but I don't have a ton of insight into which questions that works particularly well for (maybe stated/implied?). I think the more you predict, the more you force yourself to understand the test, and that just has to be paying dividends somewhere.

@Jake1776 Darn! Something about that test!!

@Jdunni I honestly still don't know for sure. I finished each section with ample time left over and felt like I wasn't diving into the questions deep enough / falling for trap answer choices probably / not reading deep enough to really process the questions. I guess that all just boils down to test day nerves.

I think in the last 2 weeks especially, I've been drilling while really trying to practice consistently predicting the answer before I even look at the answer choices, and also slowing down to really read and understand every sentence of a prompt/passage (within reason, of course). My hope is that those skills, if drilled enough, can be a stronger baseline that holds up under test-day stress, but I guess I'll find out during my retake in June!

B says the consultant might be wrong about what caused the reduced sales.

A says the consultant might be wrong about what "ill conceived" means. It's a much weaker attack.

If C were the right answer, the argument would have had to say either of the following:

·       Premise: H → AA + CM; conclusion: AA + CM → H

·       Premise: Effective → CM; conclusion: CM → effective

It does not say those things. The argument says:

·       Premise 1: Humorous (H) → attract attention (AA) + convey message (CM)

·   Premise 2: Effective → CM

·       Conclusion: Effective → H

For people who want to voice their displeasure at the atrocious changes LSAC has made to the August format, they have a feedback form at https://www.lsac.org/send-us-your-feedback and actively monitored email inboxes at LSACinfo@lsac.org and accessibility@LSAC.org. I sent in a strongly worded complaint across both email and the feedback form yesterday and got responses from named customer service reps within 24 hours saying they'd incorporate the feedback into their design process. Who knows if they'll actually listen, but odds are higher the more vocal we are about this.