yess exactlyyy

one thing that i used to eliminate C for Q24 was that "a few days late" doesn't have any support. The passage specifically says that the ones with "outstanding bills" will have their water shut off. I'd say that it's a reasonable inference that outstanding bills do not pile up over a few days specially that the author mentioned at the beginning of the passage that some haven't paid their bills in decades.

for 15, i know that the second explanation is more plausible in comparison to the person but logically, it doesn't make it likely?

as long as the loom isn't actually automatic and it's operated manually by a human its considered handwoven.

i think it's the word "amusement" that changes things. true that the author implies irony but he's not amused by it. Also, i found that it helps to recognize such words as emotional words and also recognize that the passage isn't emotional and is rather academic.

Also obsolete isn't quite the right word here because the author shows that there's value in performing these older techniques. obsolete can have a negative connotation that implies no value.

So, I think that I've figured it out. While correlation does not mean causation, it does provide evidence for causation. This evidence is not conclusive on its own but it is nevertheless evidence.

imagine that we're trying to test if something causes another thing and they don't even correlate to begin with.

With this being said, when AC C is says that the author ignores evidence for a causation, it is referring to the author ignoring completely that there is a correlation between cholesterol and heart disease at all.

ps. note that the second part of the first sentence is consistent with a causation relationship. i.e. it does not rule out the possibility that cholesterol could contribute to heart disease...

remember the famous nicotine and lung cancer example. There are people who have lung cancer without have ever smoked (like walter white from breaking bad) and there are people who have smoked all their lives and never got lung cancer (like my friend's grandma who passed away at 100 from old age and smoked every day).

This doesn't mean that there is no causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. it just means that maybe nicotine isn't the ONLY cause or that it's a partial cause. peace out

It was difficult for me to interpret what association with something else means. "Association" sounds so weak that it could've been indicating correlation... any tips or explanations will be appreciated :)

coming back to this 5 months later and i realize that the AC has prescriptive language

one loophole that i thought about while reading this was what if Arrian's views are so similar to Epicetetus that the two views are indistinguishable?

this question is a parallel flaw question. We know this because usually parallel flaw question stems indicate it through their wording. Here ,for example, we have the words "questionable reasoning". When we have a parallel flaw question, our goal is to find an analogous argument with the same FLAW.

When we have just parallel reasoning, then we want to find an analogous argument with a structure as similar as the stimulus.

the way i though about this is that one flaw is correlation≠causation. Then I thought, even if correlation was causation and vitamin C prevented getting a cold, that doesn't mean that taking vitamin C is the only thing needed to prevent a cold.

It could also be true that taking vitamin C AND keeping warm prevents getting a cold for example.

I was slowed down in this question because I didn't recognize that "we" is "people".

at first I thought, isn't inferring that someone believes something because it is implied by one of their beliefs a fallacy?

then I saw that all the ACs start with "some doctors believe".

thinking about it now, it's the "for this reason" that makes a different.

The stimulus implied that it's for the reason of Vit C producing collagen that doctors believe that it can be useful in treating common illnesses.

I think another thing is that it's reasonable to assume that doctors, being specialized in this topic, would actually infer AC A.

Any thoughts?

what threw me off about C was that we don't know how much of fish oil is available in the fish itself. it could be that fish also contain little fish oil but because fish oil is strong, ingesting just a little enables us to reap its effects. basically, C would require us to make the assumption that fish have more fish oil than the fillets...

for 9E, what confused me what the use of the plural word "difficulties" rather than the singular word "difficulty" or "one of the difficulties". What the author is doing with talking about that one critic is illustrate the difficulty of telling a forgery apart from the original. that's just one difficulty. why is the correct AC using a plural word?

Here are the flaws that I found in this question:

-Averages flaw (explained by JY)

-"according to some astronomers" Just because some astronomers say this doesn't mean it's absolutely true

-Just because something has happened in the past in a certain pattern doesn't mean that it will also happen the same way in the future. Specially with chance events and we don't know if the meteorites were chances events or not.

I don't understand how the flaw could've been necessity/ sufficiency confusion...

even if AT->HP, it doesn't follow that not (HP -> HTE).

can someone please explain this?

#help

D confused me because I thought "emotive states" is different from disposition or the state of someone's psychology. To me, "emotive states" is more external. it is expressed by the individual...? Whereas psychology of someone or their disposition is internal. A person may be internally feeling one thing but expressing another thing.

Can someone please clarify??

#helpppp

I chose D at first because I thought well maybe dioxin doesn't cause the problem through the hormonal change. Maybe it causes the physiological effects which is what is really causing the reproductive abnormalities. This would make it possible that the fish still have the reproductive abnormalities with dioxin present...

Well D specifically says that the physiological changes are induced by the changes in hormone concentrations. so it can't be that one is happening without the other. if dioxin is the cause and is present in the environment, it has to be that the hormonal changes and thus physiological changes are both happening.

Maybe D would make sense as a weakening AC if it said that Dioxin causes reproductive abnormalities through a short lived change in hormonal changes and long(er) term physiological changes. Then it would make sense that when dioxin is present and hormonal changes aren't, dioxin is still the cause.

But those are unwarranted assumptions. we cannot make them.

conditionals are established. they're presented like facts. They usually have conditional indicators like if/then, unless, without,... eg. if you go to law school, then you've done the LSAT.

for this you know that anyone who goes to law school must have done the LSAT. Just knowing that the go to law school establishes that fact.

Similarly (using the contrapositive) we can conclude that anyone who hasn't done the LSAT does not go to law school.

Correlations are usually accompanied by words such as more/less likely or tend to. Correlations are statistics. There's always outliers/ non-conforming data points. They're more flexible. Eg, those who do the LSAT tend to have competitive personalities.

Can we say that anyone who does the LSAT has a competitive personality? NO.

We only know that this "tends to" be the trend. there is room for those who have done the LSAT yet aren't competitive or those who are competitive and haven't done the LSAT.

We can only say that one who does the LSAT is "more likely" to have a competitive personality.

true, and to add to it. A only questions that causal relationship between nightlights and nearsightedness. The author is already skeptical of the presence of such a relationship and he accounts for that using a conditional statement "if nightlights cause nearsightedness". The author leaves open the possibility that there is not causal relationship but contends that if it does exist, then it must go away with age. This second part is what we need to focus on when trying to weaken the argument.

for some reason, I got stuck between the "and" statements and "or" statements. the stim is an "and" statement but the right AC is an "either or"... can someone clarify please?

I don't understand why A is incorrect. our premise covers information about demand and the conclusion is about salability in general. The argument doesn't take into account that salability can be influenced by other factors...

is A incorrect because it's too strong and the conclusion, using the word "generally", leaves room for other , perhaps minor, influences?

sameee

SAME!