A is attractive because it seems to mirror the last sentence, but it's actually a mistaken reversal. the last sentence in the stimulus is saying "substance addictive (SC) --> withdrawal causes difficulty (NC)". AC A reverses the order of these statements, which we are not allowed to do. this is not a proper inference

i fell into thinking that "deserve" indicates a rule as well, but it's actually not. it's an illustrative claim. a way to identify the dictating rule in a stimulus is the sentence with "should" language. the stimulus then goes on to describe a particular irony, and that last sentence is just illustrating this claim further -- it's ironic that praise makes more virtuous people less virtuous, because those are actually the people who deserve praise. deserve =/ should receive

Q20 - AC A is wrong because biologists state plainly that biology doesn't have universal laws (or at least not as many as physics). the philosophers of science are uncomfortable with this uncertainty. it's not the case that the philosophers of science think biological laws are more difficult to discover -- it's just that they don't like that uncertainty; they accept the biologists' argument as-is and are uncomfortable with it. AC A is not descriptively accurate

I don't like the way that AC D is written for Q21. The lack of relevant legal precedents and public's relation to the law were brought up as challenges the current shift is facing. it seems like these points were observed AFTER the fact of this transition

AC D basically implies that despite these obstacles, South Africa will still choose to undergo this shift, which does not capture the gist of the passage that i walked away with

#help

you need a conditional statement that says, no matter what, students won't achieve a broad mastery of the curriculum if they're not being taught with methods appropriate to their learning style. the conditional statement in AC A makes "appropriate learning styles" a necessary condition for achieving "significant efforts to to their studies". you can't have latter without the former.

the stimulus alone makes possible that broad mastery can be achieved if the students dedicate significant efforts to their studies. we know that they're not being taught with appropriate methods, but our conditional statement (A + D -> B) still makes it possible for D to get us to B (remember, A or D are neither necessary conditions, they are the sufficient conditions in this stimulus). therefore, the conditional statement in AC A knocks out this possibility and validates the conclusion

SA questions get a lot easier once you've realized that some trick ACs are just restating a conditional statement in the stimulus. it tricks you into thinking that the AC is introducing a new chain of logic that will connect all the sentences, meanwhile it's just something that was already said in the stimulus but in a different form. this is how i was able to eliminate AC C.

AC D introduces a completely new idea that validates the conclusion of the argument (the first sentence).

i fell for AC D the second time but this is wrong because it doesn't line up with what the argument is stating. We know that rodents like rats and guinea pigs are in the same biological order. the comparative statement offered in AC D is ineffective here because it doesn't help to make a comparison between rats and guinea pigs, which are in the same group.

if AC C were revised to say "the Earth took billions of years to form", would this be correct? is it the "crust" that makes this AC problematic? #help

this is an example where drawing out the stimulus helps

separate the existence of quasar itself from the light that the quasar produces. a quasar can produce light that continues to travel for 500 million years, but the quasar itself will die after 100 million years. so that means you can eventually see the quasar because of its light that it produces, but this doesn't mean the quasar is still there

we're able to see the quasar mentioned in the beginning because its light arrived on Earth at 1963, and at that point, it was already 500 million years old. (remember, you're able to see a quasar only from seeing the light that it produces.) because 100 million years have passed, this means that the quasar was dead by the time its light reached the Earth, therefore quasar no longer exists

doesn't the fact that the land mammal was extinct far earlier mean that there was a lack of competition?

#help

whoops, i see now.

throughout in the stimulus, doesn't say that there were NO changes. it's just that there were no SIGNIFICANT changes. the author doesn't deny that there were some changes. it may just be the case that those changes still were not significant enough to prove the drug's effectiveness

i have a hard time eliminating AC B. the contrapositive of AC B would be: if the drug doesn't have an effect on the duration of vertigo -> there was no change in the average duration since the drug's intro.

wouldn't this directly reflect what the stimulus is saying? there was no change in the average duration, therefore it wouldn't have an effect on the duration of vertigo

i guess we could eliminate AC B on the "since the introduction of the drug" wording, but how do we eliminate plainly from the conditional logic?

#help

i got this question right because I eliminated all other ACs. i doubted AC C because it just seemed like a restatement of a premise.

however, upon review, i realized the only hard evidence we have from the stimulus is that 1) seed eating birds and nectar eating birds have the same energy requirement, and 2) that a given amount of nectar provides more energy than seeds. the author is concluding, or trying to infer from this that seed eating birds have to spend more time eating.

we need something to confirm that it indeed does take seed eating birds longer to eat. at the very least, AC C proves that nectar eating birds DON'T spend MORE time eating than seed eating birds do

I picked A initially but here's why it's wrong: we're not trying to cover up a hole relating to whether the immature artwork by Renoir and Cezanne are of inferior quality -- we have to accept this premise as true instead. the bridge we are looking for is to ensure that the REST of the board's SEVERAL paintings they're selling are actually of low quality and won't affect the overall quality. what if apart from those Renoir and Cezanne paintings, there is a very successful and well-known one? wouldn't that affect the overall quality? why would the museum want to sell that?

plus, the curator alone doesn't account for the rest of the museum board -- assume that there are other people on the boarding helping to make the decision of whether or not to sell, and if so, what paintings to sell

the progression of the argument is like this: the government claims that the nuclear industry poses no risk of accident, yet the government wants to limit the nuclear industry's liability in case of an accident because they need to protect the industry from bankruptcy. this protection is inherently the government conceding that there IS some risk of an accident, and the public therefore has reason to worry.

we still don't really know if the editor is right or if the government is right. just that the government's viewpoint is inconsistent

I picked A initially but I read the last paragraph very carefully again - "[situational ethics] are entirely relative to the circumstances in which they arise. such an extremely relativistic stance would have as little benefit for the patient or physician...fortunately the incorporation of narrative literature in the study of ethics....need not lead to the former".

though it doesn't have the exact wording of narrative literature "tends" to avoid, the author sets up a contrast between the current study of ethics vs. narrative literature. by describing this difference, the author inherently highlights a quality that narrative literature lacks -- extreme relativism

do i need to assume that pollutants are what exposes seals to the viral diseases?

why is AC C incorrect? if we negated it and said that the larger cars today (heavier, for long-distance driving) were heavier than those 2 decades ago, then the conclusion that there was a net saving in fuel use is invalid

AC E eliminates an alternative possible explanation, but doesn't help explain why there appears to be more in wet weather than dry weather. even if this were true, this doesn't tell us why there's a difference in number of beetles during wet vs dry weather. it only tells us that number of beetles may not have decreased OVER TIME, but not that the number changes along with the difference in weather

what????????

can someone explain why Question 22 is AC C? #help

i completely misunderstood the stimulus and filled in the end by myself to conclude that all living things have to be defined broadly. i didn't read the "if/but" statements as "either/or", and instead interpreted the "but" statement as an implication that the author argues we need to avoid. by default, we have to define "living things" broadly, which is how i ended up picking B instead of D.

why is E incorrect for question 7? the two supporting paragraphs (public sector vs private sector) show how the extent of information privacy varies to reflect what's appropriate for the situation. is this perhaps maybe just not the MAIN idea, but the idea that those 2 paragraphs pushed together shows?

#help (Added by Admin)

I got this correct the first time and then chose C during BR. I doubted B after reading this premise again: "the study compared the sea-bottom communities near rigs with those located in control sites SEVERAL MILES from any rigs." i assumed that "several miles" would be encompassed within the "considerable distances" as B states. therefore, i didn't think that B was bringing in any new info that could help weaken this stimulus. i thought it was redundant and contradicted that premise in a way