I agree! I've had to return to this section to try to figure out what flaws were covered, and it's been hard to determine that without watching through all the videos or reading through the whole explanation, which just takes way too long imo, especially if you're just trying to find out what the flaw type was. #feedback

This happens to me too, and I realized the speed is just stuck on the speed you set for an earlier video. I just go back to the last video where I had those control options and set it back to normal speed there, and then return to the video I was watching, which should now be set to normal speed again.

Hi SashaSevy,

Actually, I feel like the above comment is describing a mistaken reversal, which is a flaw where you are not allowed to reverse the relationship. To explain things further, I wrote an example of a conditional relationship below: If you purchase a macbook online from the Apple website, you will receive the laptop in the mail a few days later.

The diagram would read:

purchase a macbook online --> will receive the laptop in mail

Now let's reverse this so that it is a mistaken reversal: If you receive a laptop in the mail in a few days, you have purchased a macbook online. Clearly, this is untrue, as you could have just as well purchased a laptop from Dell or some other brand. This is why it is called a mistaken reversal.

However, receiving the laptop in the mail does not have to be the only necessary condition of purchasing a macbook online. For example, you could also claim that another potential necessary condition is that the laptop charger must also arrive in the mail when you receive the package (otherwise how would you use the macbook?!). Therefore, receiving the laptop in the mail is not the ONLY necessary condition to the sufficient condition of purchasing a macbook online. In terms of how this relates to the test, let's imagine an example question that asks for an answer that must be true. If the answer choice stated something like the ONLY thing you will receive when purchasing a macbook will be the laptop in the mail in a few days, then I believe the answer would be incorrect, since there are also other things (like the charger) that you could receive in the mail as a result of purchasing the macbook. I believe a similar kind of explanation should exist to explain the other relationship as well: that there may also be other sufficient conditions. Honestly, I was also tripped up and confused by what he meant by this, but this is what I concluded after rationalizing it out. After writing all of this though, I could also just end up completely wrong haha but I hope this was helpful!

When I read the first sentence of the stimulus for the first time, because of the use of "by" I immediately thought that it might be a causal statement (was thinking that nutrient-rich sewage caused pollution of the estuaries). Now I can see that that's incorrect, but considering the time constraints, is there a simple way to make sure what you're reading is clearly a causal relationship or just a fact/statement? Do I just have to envision two things as phenomena in which the target phenomenon (effect) has definitely already happened as a result of the cause? Although I doubt this considering sometimes the language in the stimulus implies one phenomenon (cause) can only potentially cause the target one (effect). Any clarification would be great!

#help

Under the paragraph for Hypothesis 3, it mentions that the final reason why it is wrong is because it changed the target phenomenon. However, I thought that the target phenomenon would be "lung cancer" and "smoking" would be the causal phenomenon. I then assumed the causal mechanism would be a statement that explains exactly how smoking leads to lung cancer. Can someone clarify why the entire statement "smoking is correlated with lung cancer" is the target phenomenon instead? Is this because the original statement mentions that the two are correlated and doesn't explicitly state smoking to be a cause of lung cancer? I think I'm just overall still confused about what exactly constitutes a phenomenon, hypothesis, and explanation. Also, is correlation then just a statement that basically states an observation of two things, and that's why the whole sentence "smoking is correlated with lung cancer" acts as a target phenomenon?

#help

I have a question regarding the all arrows. If A --> B and A --> C lead to B some C because the all arrows can be converted into most arrows (aka the valid form: Two Split Mosts), is there any conclusion we can draw from having two statements such as B --> A and C --> A? In other words, when it's no longer the same sufficient term with two necessary terms but instead two different sufficient terms with the same necessary term. Would we just combine the two statements so that it becomes B + C --> A?

#help

I'm wondering the same thing!

I think yes, but because the standalone statements "some dogs are friendly" and "most dogs are friendly" would once again imply the possibility that "all dogs are friendly," since "all" falls as a possibility (subset) under "some" and "most" (supersets), I'm wondering if we would still need to specify that. For instance, would we need to clarify the statements by saying "some, but not all dogs are friendly" and "most, but not all dogs are friendly"? With this, I'm also assuming "some but not all" and "most but not all" are different from the statements "some are not" and "most are not" but it's really hard to visualize all this information without the videos anymore. However, I'm also thinking we might not need to specify the "not all" part, considering you can't assume a sufficient condition from a necessary one; ex: all dogs are animals, but you can't assume just because something is an animal, it is a dog. Hope this didn't confuse anyone further, but if anyone could clarify this whole negating process, that would be a really big help.

tldr: What's the difference between the statements "some but not all" and "some are not" if there is any? Is only the latter a negation against "all"?

#help

Why is “or…but not both” also a biconditional indicator? I thought it would fall under the group 4 idea of negating the necessary condition (aka the “not both” indicator)?

I think translating the sentence so that the double negatives disappear makes the most sense to me! I can't help in terms of how to diagram this (if you mean in a visual understanding sense) but for instance, my brain translates the sentence so that it becomes "If an institution is a medieval monastery, it prints books using offset printing." But yeah, in terms of just diagramming the sentence itself without translating it first into another, I'm not sure how to do that either. Hope this helps somewhat though!

The 3 contexts I’m thinking:

1) Because the prices of laptops have decreased, the public has been able to purchase more electronics than ever before. (hoping this is an argument?)

2) I want to eat because I am hungry. (explanation)

3) Because of the volcano eruption, the island is gone. (does this count as an argument or causal relationship?)

Not sure if this makes sense but it’s hard for me to distinguish when the indicators are being used in different contexts.

Can someone explain the difference in the relationship between the premise and conclusion and a causal relationship? I believe the former is concerned with support and the latter requires an event to be the cause of another but the last 2 examples are confusing me a bit. Especially because the word “because” seems to be able to be used in 3 contexts: as a premise indicator, as a word introducing an explanation, and perhaps to introduce a cause in a causal relationship?