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@jessoc Yes generally! Though it also depends how strong the language is in the stimulus
I supported C though this:
Policy experts tend to focus on aggregate lives at stake; laypeople care a great deal whether a risk is undertaken voluntarily.
@dflesch833 I know this comment is old now but here's another way to think about C and E:
C- even though precision and rigor are not quite synonyms, i thought about this as a sort of set (rigor)/subset (precision) relationship. Generally speaking, rigor requires some sort of precision
E- you have to think about this literally. i think this is a decent trap because it literally mentions rigor and you would intuitively think that "means of data collection" is supported by "modes of inquiry" in the passage. But the "variable across cultures" is just not something that's discussed nor is it the focus of this passage. A lot of trap answers have wrong qualifiers, where the majority of it could be supported and spot on, but then test writers will add a random qualifier.
@Sam123 Sorry, follow up question: Is this how you did it during your initial take too or just during review? I'm trying to get quicker with simplifying language like this during my initial takes (bc writing the lawgic out here didn't help me) but I'd love some perspective!!
@Sam123 Thank you for simplifying!! I got way too in the weeds of this... I think the best way to do some of the tough MBTs where we can't necessarily connect into an inference chain is to really take a step back
@soleluna883 AH omg, answering my own question but I realize now that I used the literal meaning of the words instead of conditional logic (sigh). Even if we are told that weapons PRECEDED war, the statement is conditional so we know that weapons are actually NECESSARY for each war in the last 200 years.
So the correct way would be:
E: War (200 yrs) --> weapons
-------------------------------------
C: /Weapons (now) -c-> /War
The diplomat takes the contra and says, "well, if we remove weapons, then we'll remove the wars."
The way the answer was written confused me because it seemed to pick on a sufficiency/necessity error (my error) but it's actually picking on a causal error.
In sum: The dip NEVER establishes that there's a causal relationship between weapons and wars but acts like there IS a causal relationship. That's precisely what A points out.
Wait am I tripping or is this also a confusing sufficiency/necessity flaw on top of the time piece? I wrote it out like this, and I thought A picked on that, but I'm not seeing it in the explanation.
E: Weapons --> War
----------------------
C: /Weapons -c-> /War
I think you're totally good. I'm aiming for T-14s and have an objectively horrible score on my record but I didn't see a point in cancelling. I think the only way it would've mattered is if school averaged your scores, otherwise I literally think it's a waste of $$$
What's confusing about this stimulus is that they give an either/or condition in the 1st sentence but then they split it in the last two, so then you have to reconnet it into the first two sentences.
Personally, I get too confused to do this in my head so writing it out helps.
@TugraAktas Thank you!! I need to try simplifying bc this took me way too long and then i wasn't consistent with the shortcuts for my variables which threw it off.
@antitrust_fan I'd rather they test us on writing than this crazy format change they're doing. I'd imagine the writing would be tested a bit more subjectively.
This is actually very simple. It makes a shift from a belief to reality.
Belief: politicians PROMISE to provide assistance
Reality: Assistance --> $$--> taxes --> intrusion
----------------------------------------------
Reeality: intrusion (/decrease)
Assumes that if politicians promise assistance that they will provide that assistance in actuality. This would then trigger the chain that leads to intrusion.
@Sevyy This is just a comparison flaw. The conclusion is implicitly about ALL other fabric-softeners. This is seen in the superlative statement that "X is the most effective". This means that you have to automatically think of what X is being compared to (most effective against what?)
If this had been a proper experiment, then it would've compared it against ALL other fabric softeners. However, the argument doesn't compare it against anything at all.
So the gap is between the EVD failing to compare X against any fabric softener and then making a conclusion that compares X to EVERY fabric softener.
Argument gives us a conditional rule:
Flat --> /soil erosion --> /terraces
Then it gives us a fact: (DC) terraces (this then kicks off the contra of the chain)
(DC) terrace --> soil erosion --> /flat
The assumption is in the middle, that the terraces in Dooney County were in fact built to prevent soil erosion. Th Au concludes the end of the chain but doesn't explicitly state the middle.
@soleluna883 Okay replying to myself because I figured it out and maybe it would help someone. The word motive is actually supported by the stimulus where it says:
the government would confiscate such wages in order to fund an account to compensate burglary victims.
"In order to" implies a motive, aka the government has some motive for confiscating the wages. I initially thought of this sentence as a pure conditional and didn't make the connection that it could also imply a motive, but if one does X in order to Y, that means one had some motive for doing X because they had the expectation that it would lead to a certain outcome.
The reason I eliminated C is because of the word "motive." Motives are implied in the stimulus but we never actually talk about motive here. Sure, it's an assumption, but I thought it was too far of a jump to make.
Can someone tell me whether I'm just overlooking something?
Why are the first 10 Qs on this exam harder than the last half of the exam? Am I doing something wrong lol?
I missed articulating this as an argument by analogy during my initial take but jumped straight to the timing issue that didn't align (modern technologies vs. 5 years ago). If we're comparing two situations and there's a time difference between the two, then the argument is assuming that nothing changed over those 5 years
Hi! Would anyone who is scoring in the upper 160s / low 170s want to meet a few times to check our process? I've plateued in the low 160s and I just can't figure how to break out of it, so I'm hoping some exposure to different ways of thinking at a higher level will help. I figure it would help the other person too to verbally explain their process. We can meet in the study room on here!
Totally missed the word "suspects" in B, but also got thrown off by "effective" interview in C because I thought these tactics applied to all police interviews, regardless of whether they are effective. I think "seek to maximize" is one way of supporting "effective" in the AC, because if they're seeking to maximize, then that leans toward effective.
Guys, I'm doing so much worse on Qs 1-10 because I overthink them (like you would with Qs 15-25)
Careful and high-lvl reading is the key on this. I got so focused on the details with the conditional outcomes that it completely detracted from the CAC.
Both of the speakers agree that there is only ONE way of getting the Council to approve the Mayor's road proposal (i.e. to agree to the tax increase).
However, they disagree on the outcome, aka what the mayor will actually do.
So we have a scenario of X-->Y. Durham says the mayor will do X. Espinoza says the mayor will NOT do X.
I'm trying to get better at sorting this out in the moment and not BR.
The absolute keyword here is hasty inference. "Hasty" means kind of careless or without thought. By definition this means that the author thinks the person making this argument is not thinking through all the factors for this conclusion. C basically summarizes the stimulus.
B was definitely attractive until I really thought about what hasty meant. Don't underestimate what could seem like filler words at first sight....
I sort of hesitated on C because it strengthens via a conditional, and I questioned the order of the conditional (in a mistaken reversal sense) and thinking about necessary & sufficient terms (which I haven't usually seen in causal STN/WKN answers).
The way C works is that it strengthens by making the cause (corporations' meddling) a NECESSARY condition for the effect (gov't funding is curtailed). So if we know that funding has dropped, then the corporations MUST have somehow meddled.
The conditional strengthens the causality because it makes it 100% likely that when the cause is there, the effect will also be there.
And for those like me who got caught up in thinking that this was not in the right order (i.e. the effect comes before the cause in this conditional relationship), that doesn't matter here because it's enough to strengthen when both cause and effect are present together.
Takeaway: we can strengthen via a conditional statement and the order in which the cause/effect are presented doesn't matter in correlation/causation arguments.