I became too focused on the issue of the study being about novel destinations and felt very sure that the right answer would strengthen on the basis of that.

Need to keep my mind flexible even after coming up with a good anticipation of the right answer.

E is wrong because we don't know if the method can never distinguish between an imperceptible earthquake and a considerable one. Imagine that the Richter scale goes from 0 to 10 and the dangerous earthquakes start at 6. There may be an earthquake in which the method tells you the earthquake was from 1-3.5 on the Richter scale. With this measurement you could clearly distinguish between a safe and dangerous earthquake. It would be the same if the method said that the earthquake was on a scale from 7.5-10 - the earthquake would clearly be dangerous.

Now if the method said the earthquake was on a scale from 4-7.5, then it would be true that you couldn't know whether the earthquake was safe or dangerous.

So it follows, that the method can distinguish safe from dangerous sometimes but not always. Therefore, B is correct.

Could anyone say what the argument would look like if it were corrected for the flaw in E?

Perhaps something like this:

P: Research suggests that as plagiarism goes up, the motivation/tendency to engage in professional misconduct goes up as well.

C: Reducing plagiarism will reduce professional misconduct.

Would love some thoughts on this.

#help

I thought D was wrong because it suggested to me that bacteria were present in the earth's crust when petroleum was being formed so it might have been the case that these bacteria (living organisms) turned into petroleum over the years. This would not weaken but strengthen the geologists argument since it would help to show that the petroleum did indeed form from living materials.

The reason this interpretation is wrong is that D is talking about today, not a million years ago. So its saying that even though there are biomarkers present in the petroleum, they probably got in there because there are bacteria living in the earth's crust these days so the presence of the biomarkers doesn't really indicate that the petroleum was formed from living organisms of any kind.

In summary, this was a question about timeline and not about what does/does not qualify as a living organism or anything else.

Please let me know if you think something in my reasoning is off.

I was thinking that's the AC was saying that a lack of food was not the reason the decline in population. Because if there was lots of good food available and yet the population was still decreasing (something the stimulus tells and which we can't question) then it can't be the case that lack of food caused the decline in population. So that would eliminate one possible alternate explanation.

I feel like nobody else chose D. I would appreciate some help on this.

I thought D was basically rejecting the possibility of an alternate explanation thereby strengthening the argument in the stimulus. If the residents are feeding the birds well, then the reason their population decreased was not a shortage of food.

Is this just too much of a stretch?

#help

I think the idea is that answer choice A is rejecting an alternate explanation of the difference in genetic make up and thereby strengthening the conclusion in the argument but I don't think answer choice A is necessarily rejecting an alternate explanation at all. It could have been the case that all the new fish interbred with the old fish resulting once again in a genetically uniform pool. Rejecting this possibility would not strengthen the argument.

Answer choice A should have been something like "The older salmon did not exclusively interbreed with one of the two types of sockeye salmon."

#help

This was exactly my thought. I assumed that this could very well result in a genetically uniform salmon population and so would not help to strengthen the argument that genetic adaption to the habitats was the cause of genetic variance.

@timbond97545 Yes I think you're right. I'm now trying to get into the mindset of developing the right habits rather than just getting questions right

Hi @nikitamunjal950

I'm almost exactly in the same position as you highlighted here. I don't know if you're still around here but, if so, what ended up working well for you?

Thanks.

Bringing up part of an old comment which really captures my issue with the phrasing of D

"The reason I eliminated [D] is because of the word “primarily”. The argument doesn’t assume that time on the road is the #1 consideration of car pollution. It only assume that a car will pollute more if it is on the road more.

Maybe the primary factor in a car’s pollution is the make and model. Time on the road is secondary to that, but could still result in more pollution."

Hey I would love to join as well.

I've almost been in exactly the same situation and what I've tried to do is tackle individual question types one by one - review the core lessons and then foolproof all the questions of that type you've gotten on PTs. Start with Necessary Assumption, for example.

I think you're not generally doing yourself a disservice but I'd add that you should be able to quickly make notes and conditional inferences on paper if you need to do it. I personally definitely think that some LR questions are incredibly difficult, because of their convoluted conditional language, and being able to take quick notes helps to save a lot of time. That would be the safest strategy.

I personally went through the exact same train of thought and also suspect that E is wrong as it uses the word 'cause' because we know that causation is a concept that is never captured by any of our logical apparatus.

The other thought of course is that this question is not meant to be mapped out strictly in terms of conditional statements especially since the whole passage uses the language of causes and effects which is not the same as if-then statements.

Would love to hear others' thoughts on this as well.

#help

Do you folks recommend including an experimental section to prepare for the flex tests after August?

#help (Added by Admin)

I feel like this is kind of a weak question. The author concludes that the psychologists are wrong to claim that deep empathy is the best way to understand people. If deep empathy isn't possible, the author's argument seems to make a lot of sense. How could deep empathy be the best way to understand people if it's impossible to do it.

It's like saying the best way to save someone in a building on fire is to make it snow instantaneously - oh and nevermind that its impossible!

Can't help but feel that AC A is poorly worded.

If x is true, it leads to a false consequence. Like what is a 'false consequence?' It should have said something like "it doesn't lead to the alleged/expected consequences."

Great podcast!

Are the free tutoring sessions with Sami recorded on this website by any chance?

Got this one wrong because I thought the question was asking us to be critical of the idea that the workers getting laid off caused people to spend less. The first line threw me off.

For some reason I got caught up with thinking about whether or not we can take for granted that Dr. Z is telling the truth about Dr. Q.

Note to self: always assume the truth of the stimulus passage in MBT questions.

Excellent bird's eye view of LR