From the stimulus, we have the following... (CA = correctly addressed)

1) CA ‑m→ 2 days

2) CA_2+ → damaged

3) mail → 3+ days

Now... There is a big deduction that needs to take place in order to get this question right. You need to realize that "mail" = "CA + /CA".

What does this mean? It means that mail can only be correctly addressed or incorrectly addressed. Is this a wild assumption? Nope. This has to be true (what other option do you have other than getting that address right or wrong?).

Note: this does not mean that other things that can happen to mail are ignored. But when it comes to addressing your mail, you can only do two things: get it right, or get it wrong. Any other thing you can happen to your mail (it gets lost in transit, it gets damaged, it gets eaten by an alien, it gets destroyed by your nemesis, etc.) does not matter, because any of those events have to happen on either your correctly or incorrectly addressed mail!

So, let's rewrite 3) to be...

3) CA + /CA → 3+ days

What has to be true now? Given 1), which states that most CA take 2 or under days to be sent, it must be true that the size of /CA must be >>> CA in order for (CA + /CA) to take 3+ days. This is exactly (c). Anything else, doesn't have to be true.

THANK YOU!

I am not sure why JY didn't use lawgic for this, but lawgic really helped me a lot with eliminating answers.

Definitely the first pass you can eliminate (A), (C), and (D) because of the fact that the argument isn't about the person's profession (i.e. not scientist argument about scientists, etc).

Now, you have (B) and (D). Let's use some lawgic to understand the stimulus.

Stimulus breakdown:

1) Linda says that, as a scientist, she knows that no scientist appreciates poetry.

No = Group 4, let's convert this to: AP → /S and S → /AP.

2) And, since most scientists are logical,...

Let's convert this to: S ‑m→ L.

Let's combine 1) and 2), since both have S →. Now we have (pardon my poor attempts at combining arrows!):

→ /AP

|

S

|

‑m→ L

The only logical conclusion we can draw from this is: /AP ←s→ L.

3) at least some of the people who appreciate poetry are illogical.

Aha! Here's the flaw. The (wrong) conclusion in the stimulus is: AP ←s→ /L (instead of /AP ←s→ L).

So the flaw we are looking for is that it negates the thing that is most (L), instead of all (AP).

Now, let's look at (B) and (E).

(B) ECB = eat candy before bedtime. F = Father. A = adult.

ECB → /F and F → /ECB

F ‑m→ A

--------------

ECB ←s→ /A wrong conclusion again, because it negated A (the thing that is most) instead of ECB (the thing that is all).

Correct answer.

(E) CE = corporate executive. LPT = likes to pay taxes. H = honest.

LPT →/CE and CE → /LPT

CE ‑m→ H

-------------------------

LPT ←s→ H wrong conclusion again, but this time because of a slightly different reason. Here, it didn't negated the thing that is all, and also didn't negate the thing that is most.

Very tricky, but the lawgic indicates where the flaws diverge.

Let's break down the stimulus.

The most successful economies have been, and will continue to be, those that train as many people as possible in the human skills require to research, to develop, and to apply new technology.

Japan is a model for this sort of training.

Europe as a whole is in a weaker position: there is a shortage of skilled labor trained to use the new technologies, and there are not enough scientists able to develop and apply the technology.

However, even in Japan, there is a shortage of technically qualified people, and like most European countries, Japan has far too many workers qualified to perform only menial tasks.

What can be properly inferred?

Honestly, this required for me process of elimination.

(A) this is totally out of scope. We know nothing about the breakdown of skilled labor.

(B) we have no idea. We only know Japan is a "model" for this training.

(C) We have no idea whether the base of highly skilled labor in Japan is "uncommonly" narrow. That's too strong.

(D) Ehhh. This makes sense, but it's not still an awesome answer. We know that Europe is currently not as economically strong as Japan, and we know its technology training effort is weaker. So it would make sense that to improve its economic success, it should improve its tech training efforts. The only thing that makes me pick this is because the other answers are just worse.

(E) This is way too strong. We only know Europe is weaker than Japan in training for technology. No idea how they compare to most other countries.

I also chose (E) at first instead of (C).

I definitely don't agree with JY's interpretation of why (C) is right, but I do now see why (E) is wrong, which means picking (C) for me would involve process of elimination.

(E) is saying: novel = true work of literature → satisfy novel genre's requirements.

But if we look again at the quote in the passage, it's only saying:

"enjoyable novels are held to be somehow slightly lowbrow"

enjoyable novel → low brow

"...and a novel is not considered true literature unless it is a tiny bit dull"

g3 /dull → /true literature ==> true literature → dull

So nowhere in the passage does it establish a connection between true works of art and satisfying requirements.

(C) is a shitty answer choice because it assumes that we would understand that "place demands upon its readers" SOMEHOW translates to "dull" (I'm sorry, but that's a stretch). That said, as it compares to the other answer choices, it is the best choice because the others are just more wrong. -_-

Also struggled with this question for a while. Here's my best shot...

Stimulus:

"...fear of retaliation makes a would be aggressor nation hesitate before attacking and is often sufficient to deter it altogether from attacking."

Fear of retaliation ==> deter attack.

"Clearly, then, to maintain military deterrence, a nation would have to be believed to have retaliatory power so great that a potential aggressor nation would have reason to think that it could not defend it self against such retaliation"

=

"if you make people believe that you're so aggressive that another nation can't defend itself against you, then you can maintain military deterrence"

believed to have retaliatory power ==> deter attack

(C)

"One nation's failing to attack another establishes that the nation that fails to attack believes that it could not withstand a retaliatory attack from another nation."

=

"if you deterred an attack, that means that you they must have believed you to have retaliatory power"

deter attack ==> believed to have retaliatory power

This is sufficiency/necessity confusion.

(D)

"It is in the interests of a nation that seeks deterrence and has unsurpassed military power to let potential aggressors against it become aware of its power of retaliatory attack."

=

"If you want to deter, then you want your potential aggressors to believe your have retaliatory power"

deter ==> believed to have retalitory power

The hardest part about this question is the translation from english to Lawgic. I think if i tried to do this question again, I would ditch completely using lawgic and just use intuition, because intuitively, (C) doesn't make sense (there could be other reasons for not attacking), but (D) is a pretty solid parallel to the stimulus.

Super helpful tips...thank you so much!!

Stimulus:

P1: extreme insomniacs ‑m→ drink lots of coffee

P2: Tom = drinks lots of coffee

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C: Tom = (likely) extreme insomniac.

This argument is flawed, because it reversed P1 to get its conclusion. The correct argument structure to get the conclusion Tom = (likely) extreme insomiac would be:

P1: drink lots of coffee ‑m→ extreme insomnia

P2: Tom = drinks lots of coffee

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C: Tom = (likely) extreme insomniac.

So we are looking for an AC that indicates that that this reversal took place. Obviously, upon first glance, no answer (at least to me) SCREAMED pick me. But...upon a second pass..

(C) "It relies on evidence that does not indicate the frequency of extreme insomnia among people who drink large amounts of coffee."

Frequency tripped me up at first, but it does still capture that we don't know the number of people (aka frequency, percentage, proportion, etc) in the group drinks lots of coffee who also have extreme insomnia. In other words, the argument doesn't mention whether drink lots of coffee ‑m→ extreme insomnia.

Let's break down the stimulus:

1: "To hold criminals responsible for their crimes involves a failure to recognize that criminal actions, like all actions, are ultimately products of the environment that forged the agent's character."

This is equivalent to stating:

1) "To hold criminals responsible for their crimes involves a failure to recognize that criminal actions are ultimately products of the environment that forged the agent's character."

2) "To hold people responsible for their actions involves a failure to recognize that actions are ultimately products of the environment that forged the agent's character."

TRANSLATION 1:

1) It's wrong to hold criminals responsible for crimes, because their decisions are a product of their environment.

2) It's wrong to hold people responsible for their actions, because their decisions are a product of their environment.

2: "It is not criminals but people in the law-abiding majority who by their actions do most to create and maintain this environment."

TRANSLATION 2: People's actions create and maintain the environment that influence criminals' (and other people's) actions.

3: "Therefore, it is law-abiding people whose actions, and nothing else, make them alone truly responsible for crime."

TRANSLATION 3: Law abiding people take actions, and only those actions create and maintain the environment that influences criminals' actions. Therefore, law-abiding people are responsible for criminals' actions.

BUT WAIT. There's more ;)

Based on TRANSLATION 1: 2, this extends to law-abiding people as well: Law abiding people take actions, and those actions create and maintain the environment that influences law abiding people's actions. Therefore, law-abiding people are responsible for law-abiding people's actions.

What?? That makes no sense. It's basically saying everyone is responsible for everything so no one is responsible for anything.

This is essentially what (E) says - the principle implied when you extend criminal actions to be like all actions, makes this argument very flawed (and confusing).

I chose (C) as well, and had to spend a couple minutes convincing myself why (A) was right instead. I think that the way to justify why (C) is wrong is that it should say

"people decide which political candidates to vote for more on the basis of their opinions than on the exact positions of the candidate on the candidate's appearance of being fair-minded and trustworthy".

The issue with (C) as is, is that "the exact positions of the candidate" isn't what the stimulus argues about. It argues about the order of the arguments and, by consequence, the appearance of being fair-minded and trustworthy.

From this, I think by process of elimination we can pick (A) as the best answer.

If you're like me, you realized that this is a sufficiency/necessity issue, but then had difficulty finding an AC that stated that this was the issue.

I personally found JY's video kind of confusing, so I needed to spend wayyyy more time trying to understand the more general principle he's trying to say.

So generally, JY says:

A → B is consistent with (B and /A). This can be written as B ←s→ /A.

Does this make sense? I needed to prove this with an example. If you are happy, then you are smiling. Can you be smiling and not happy? Yeah.... :)

So, for this particular question, we have AA → UA → CS. From this, we can properly conclude AA → CS. However, the author concluded CS → AA instead.

So, the correct answer needs to indicate that the author got their sufficiency/necessity wrong. You can indicate this by:

1. [EASIER] Saying that they got their sufficiency/necessity conditions reversed/wrong.

2. [HARDER] Showing what should be the correct sufficiency/necessity setup.

A quick scan of the ACs shows that we are in no such luck in finding #1. So that means it's probably #2.

So to show the correct sufficiency/necessity setup, you could do this by:

1. [EASIER] Showing the correct "lawgic".In this case, that'd be AA → CS.

2. [HARDER] Showing other variations/implications of the correct lawgic (be it the contrapositive, other logical indicators producing the same lawgic, or this nasty little B ←s→ A situation we discussed earlier).

Naturally, since this is a 5 * difficulty, we got the hardest of the hardest. Given that the correct lawgic is AA → CS, this is consistent with CS ←s→ /AA.

This is exactly what (B) says.

I found this question to be REALLY difficult and I got it wrong the first time. The language is so distracting, and as someone coming from STEM, the only way I was able to parse through this was by stripping the language and converting it into some form of "lawgic" (in quotes because it's not actually lawgic).

Note: ----- means related to

"Not all works of art represent something, but some do..."

Art = [Art that represents something] + [Art that doesn't represent something]

"...and their doing so is relevant to our aesthetic experience of them;"

[Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art

"...representation is therefore an aesthetically relevant property."

This is basically a repeat of the previous sentence and is a sub-conclusion..It's saying that representation is a property of art that is relevant to our aesthetic experience of the art. Let's keep it as:

[Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art

"Whether a work of art possesses this property is dependent upon context."

"This property" = referential phrasing = aesthetically relevant property

[Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art context

"Yet there are no clear criteria for determining whether context-dependent properties are present in an object..."

it's basically saying that context is hard to pinpoint in art.

context → no clear criteria., so let's chain it:

[Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art ----- context → no clear criteria

"...so there cannot be any clear criteria for determining whether an object qualifies as art."

THIS IS THE MAIN CONCLUSION (...FINALLY). It's saying

because determining context → no clear criteria,

determining whether an object is art → no clear criteria.

But WHERE is it getting this conclusion from?? All we have discussed since the very first 7 words of the stimulus is art that represents something.

And from that we built:

[Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art ----- context → no clear criteria

Which means we can only say that there is no clear criteria for what qualifies as [Art that represents something] ----- aesthetic experience of the art ----- context (aka, art that represents something and whose aesthetic experience of it depends on context).

That's what (C) basically says. It shows that that we only really know how to determine whether "an object that represents something and whose aesthetic experience of it depends on context" is art, but not any type of "art".

This question is just ridiculous. I fell for the (B) trap (or should I say bee trap ha ha ha) and finally now see where I messed up.

Henry says that because the dance of honeybees is not the way by which where food location is communicated, then there must be another explanation. As someone who uses the English language on a daily basis, I interpreted indicate that there must be another = one other = explanation. Who on earth would read this think that there could be many other explanations for why honeybees dance? If that was the case, wouldn't we have said "there must be other explanations"? This is where I disagreed with JY's explanation.

Anyway, I digress.

Winifred says in response, not necessarily. This means, she disagrees with the fact that there must be another explanation for the dance of honeybees, because most animals have several ways of accomplishing critical tasks. What is the critical task she refers to? The dance of honeybees? No. The critical task here is communicating food location. And this is the trap with (B).

(B): there is more than one valid explanation for the dance of honeybees.

Henry definitely I would argue says that there is one valid explanation for the dance of honeybees. So Henry would disagree with this.

But Winifred doesn't respond talking about why there are several reasons why honeybees dance. Instead, she says, for critical tasks (such as communicating for honeybees), there are sometimes many ways to accomplish them.

So. Subtle.

(C) is (annoyingly) right because Henry definitely disagrees with the fact that honeybees communicate location through dance. And Winifred says "not necessarily", meaning that it she believes it's possible that honeybees do communicate location of food through dance.

This is an interesting kind of Resolve-Reconcile-Explain question. I definitely fell into the trap the first time, but the lesson here is that sometimes the dissonance can be be rooted in how you define the issue.

For example, the in this case, the issue is rooted is in how you define "preservation of individual property rights". The way the argument is laid is out is to bait you into viewing preservation as the expansion of rights to do basically what you want, meaning that being "restricted to little more than cutting grass and weeding" is infringing on your rights.

But the flip side of the coin is that "preservation of individual property rights" actually protects you from losing your property rights as well. In this case, by limiting everyone from doing no more than cutting grass and weeding, it means that your property rights are protected.

This was really tricky, and I totally fell into the (B) trap. Reading other comments here really helped me realize a key fact that I completely glazed over the first time: The amount of economic activity that goes on in the mall is a part of the local economy.

I'm a numbers gal, so let's add some numbers and visualize the scenario that has this discrepancy we are trying to resolve.

Before mall: $100 million local economy.

Mall is open: $101 million local economy, $40 million of which is generated by the new mall.

In this case, the increase in the local economy ($1 million), is much smaller than the amount generated by the new mall ($40 million).

The question we should be asking ourselves is: why is it that building a new mall doesn't cause the local economy to instead be $140 million?

The only way that this is possible is that people are not spending MORE money, but shuffling their existing funds around now. So instead of buying a shirt at a boutique downtown, they now buy it at Kohl's at the mall. They don't buy both a shirt in the boutique AND at Kohl's.

(B) is saying baiting you to think that the mall is not a part of the local economy, which would explain why allllll these people are coming into town, but not contributing to the economy. But that is a HUGE assumption to make (and is wrong), because the stimulus does (albeit subtly) indicate that the economic activity contributes (slightly) to the total local economic activity.

The discrepancy is that something that makes the stingray healthy (no parasites), indicates that the environment is unhealthy. So we are looking for an AC that can show us why no parasites indicates that the environment is unhealthy.

Note: this means that /parasites is a necessary condition for an unhealthy environment (Environment unhealthy → /Parasites). If your environment is unhealthy, you know that there are no parasites. But the reverse (if there are no parasites, then the environment is unhealthy) is not what indication means (and intuitively, this should make sense to us).

(A) says that parasites require shrimp/oysters as hosts. In "lawgic" (g3): Parasites → S+O, contra: /S+O → /Parasites.

But, shrimp/oysters are environmentally vulnerable. In "lawgic": Pollution → /S+O.

Let's chain it together: Pollution → /S+O → /Parasites. This lets us logically conclude Pollution → /Parasites. This is the missing link.

The reason why (E) is right is that it indicates a change over the course of time. The answers A through D could have been true ten years ago and today, which doesn't explain the decline.

Generally, the wording about "previously produced domestically" completely tripped me up. Frankly, I still don't really love the wording, but I now understand that (C) is the best choice.

"These economists assert that planners could solve these problems effectively by trading goods or services produced by a predominantly urban population in order to obtain the agricultural products that were previously produced domestically." ==> These economists think that you can solve the issues caused by urbanization by trading goods/services made by urban population to get food produced by rural population. (the only way this can make sense in my head is if you think that "previously produced domestically" = "produced in rural areas").

So, the only way that trading goods from cities for food from rural areas can be the solution to the problem is if lack of food is actually a problem. (C) is the only answer that addresses this point blank.

I was so convinced (E) was right that I needed to spend ~10 minutes convincing myself why (A) is right.

The reason I thought (E) was right was because of how I read the stimulus. I wasn't interpreting the fact that performing good actions out of habit is "sometimes" praiseworthy as "Wow! How is it possible that they still somehow sometimes get praise!!??" but rather "Oh ok, so they don't get praised nearly as often as people who overcome powerful temptation."

I now realize that this is the wrong interpretation, because there's no discrepancy if I interpret it that way. It would fully follow that people would get less praise for things they do out of habit than things they had to overcome. But there is a discrepancy if I interpret it as confusing as to how they still can get praised for something they do out of habit.

Now, it's also possible to get there with some simple "lawgic":

Stimulus:

1. P → OPT

2. H ←s→ P

We need to look at these two and figure out a way that we can get H ←s→ P, given P → OPT.

Well, if we have OPT ←s→ H, then we have P → OPT ←s→ H, and then can say P ←s→ H.

So we are looking for something that says OPT ←s→ H, and this is exactly what (A) says.

This is so impressive!!!!!

I was today years old when I learned that there were two definitions of the word patronize.

Here is how I did this question.

Two important things to note:

1) Nowhere in the statement does it explicitly mention that there is carryover of available coal from year to year. Without this understanding, I don't think you can get this question right. However, because nowhere in the statement does it state that every year, you get rid of the previous year's supply and start with a blank slate (i.e. start with no available coal and the only coal you can consume that year is coal you mine that year), this means that available coal supply must carry over.

2) Because no coal was imported or exported, the only way to increase available coal is by mining, and the only way to decrease available coal is by consuming.

So, let's put this into a general formula:

this year's available coal = last year's available coal + (coal mined this year - coal consumed this year).

Now, let's set up the problem...

1990 available coal = 1989's available coal + (coal mined in 1990 - coal consumed in 1990)

1991 available coal = 1990's available coal + (coal mined in 1991 - coal consumed in 1991)

From the stimulus, we know that 1990 available coal is much higher than 1991 available coal. So, let's just plug in some numbers

1990 available coal = 100 lb = 1989's available coal + (coal mined in 1990 - coal consumed in 1990)

1991 available coal = 20 lb = 100 lb + (coal mined in 1991 - coal consumed in 1991)

What is the only way to go from 100 lb to 20 lb? It's to make "(coal mined in 1991 - coal consumed in 1991)" be negative.

What's the only way to make "(coal mined in 1991 - coal consumed in 1991)" negative? It's to make "coal consumed in 1991" larger than "coal mined in 1991".

Hope this helps :)