This question is crazy man I would have never gotten came to this particular understanding of it on my own. And I like SA questions

I got A by probably the completely wrong reason. The only time beauty pops up is in the conclusion, when we are told that there must be a difference between beauty and truth. The argument then goes on to say that the most realistic art is the most truthful and so many of the most realistic, ie truthful, are not the best.

The only metric we are able to go on in this argument to prove that there is a difference between beauty and truth is art and what art is the best. So if we take answer choice A it gives us a difference between beauty and truth, supporting the conclusion. Beautiful art is the best and many truthful artworks are not. If we negate A and say beautiful art is not the best, that just shows that beautiful and truthful have a similarity, that they are not the best, which bones the conclusion.

D just threw me off because it sounded too strong. If beautiful, MUST be the best? I don't think the argument hinges on all beautiful arguments being the best.

This might be completely illogical but it worked for me.

I also did a double take on C in BR. I mostly think it's incorrect because the stimulus talks about sugared beverages generally while AC C talks about beverages with large amounts of sugar.

I also think making the distinction between athletes and dehydrated athletes is good, but I mostly think it's wrong for the distinction between amount of sugar.

The way I got to AC C was by translating it. Whenever I come across a weird double negative I almost always just translate it so it actually reads like english. In this case I translated C to "All sources for historical understand must be considered best by historians or must be neglected by them". So basically that if it's a source it has to fall into one of two categories.

This made C way more clear to me. Since none of the historians point to XYZ as the BEST, then they must neglect them entirely. But that's way too strong. Maybe the historians love architecture but just don't rank it among the best sources for historical understanding.

Might not be the most perfect way to get there but helped me.

Not necessarily. We're told that certain regulations are necessary for democracy when transitioning from totalitarianism and then the conclusion follows that. If we take B to be necessary it basically just tells us that to really be a democracy you must have little to no regulations. Or the less regulations you have the more democratic you are. But that's not what the argument tells us.

Plus, B doesn't have anything to do with the new ideas mentioned in the conclusion and the premise that comes before the conclusion. I was reading this and was like why tf are we now talking about totalitarian regimes and people who are mad about rules?

We're supposed to conclude that the people who bemoan regulations are being hasty but that conclusion does not follow from the premise about regulations necessary to transition away from totalitarian regimes. If we want to draw this conclusion we have to assume that the people in question must be making that necessary transition toward democracy.

I think it helps to identify new ideas when it comes to NA questions.

B says that no justification is provided for the statement there could have been microbial life on Mars, but there is certainly justification for that statement: Mars escaped the bombardment, and so (our statement). Additionally, the statement does not ensure the conclusion's truth. It doesn't demonstrate the necessary causal link that actually exists in the argument. The argument talks in terms of possibilities, so it's entirely possible that life on Earth could have started some other way, and saying that life may have existed on Mars doesn't ensure that Mars could have carried life to Earth.

Compare that to the language used in C, "required in order to the establish the main conclusion", C is definitely the better answer because in our argument, there potentially being life on Mars is necessary for the conclusion to be established. If life on Earth could have started from meteorites that came from Mars, well then it's necessary for our argument that there at least exists a possibility that microbial life existed on Mars that could have been sent down to Earth.

Short answer: support is provided, and life could have started from Mars only if life existed on Mars, not the other way around.

I eliminated A not only because it doesn't talk about specifically epic poetry but because the function of epic poetry is to transmit values, not to give meaning and direction. Meaning and direction is causally connected to imitating role models. I saw them as a bit too far from each other to draw a meaningful inference. I could be wrong about this but it just didn't follow as strongly as I would have liked for a MUST be true.

The conclusion is about assessing the value of a discipline based on it's blemished origins. They then use Chemistry as an example of a discipline with blemished origins. So we can infer from this that whoever is making this argument would consider these origins when assessing the current value of Chemistry as a discipline. I didn't get what the flaw was until I saw the answer choices.

a. unblemished? what does this have to do with unblemished? It's out of scope. Additionally, "scientifically valuable" imo is different from "assessing the value". We aren't told anything about whether a discipline is valuable or not, just that blemished origins are important in assessing it.

b. yeah, if chemistry's current practices are different from it's origins, then why should we assess it's current value based on it's blemished origins? Maybe it is completely dissimilar.

c. not contradicting it's used to support

d. doesn't need to prove. It tells us that blemished origins are important for assessing value and gives us an example of why. We don't have to cover most other discipline's to make the argument that this is making.

e. no

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hey, not sure if this is answering your exact question, but we know that AT is required for HP, so HP→AT. The conclusion then goes on to say that HP does not depend on having HTE, so HTE is not necessary for HP.

But what if HTE is necessary for AT? Then we can't draw the conclusion that HTE is not necessary for HP, because we know that HP depends on AT.

In other words, the correct answer gives us a conditional statement, HP→AT→HTE, which does not allow us to draw the conclusion that HTE is not necessary for HP. That's at least how I got it. This one didn't catch my eye at first but after I got rid of the others this one stuck out to me. Hope this helps

I've never bricked a passage so hard, this sets me back like two months holy

I think because part of the argument relies on the experts' testimonies rather than plain fact. I honestly think you could make a case that it is both flaws though. I could be wrong but that's how I'd look at it.

It isn't. "Lab" is in the correct answer choice, which gives us new information in order to strengthen. B elaborates on the "misleading data" by saying that it came from a lab where xyz happened.

The way I finally understood this is that the author says that for any historical explanation, economic factors MUST appeal to economic factors. Okay, so we have our necessary condition but "must" is functionally different than "only". His reasoning is flawed because he then states the doctrines must be false due to the possibility of some historical events being explained by both psychological and economic factors.

But the problem is that his premises don't exclude this possibility in the first place. All we know is that economic factors MUST occur, but others could too. Saying that the first doctrine precludes noneconomic factors is necessary for the conclusion that the doctrine is flawed. That is the "only" link we were missing.

The author saying something is "mistaken" is just referring to the statement as a whole. Meaning the historical explanations do not in fact have to appeal only to economic factors.

If we negated A, then we couldn't say that the doctrine is flawed because it very well could have other factors at play, so long as it has economic factors because we know that to be necessary.

Hope I'm on the right rack here and not making this more confusing lmao

really humbling to get a question like this wrong after studying for so long lmao

I got tripped up with D because of "next year." I guess it's a reasonable assumption but I was trying to be critical and thought that since it doesn't actually specify, the exemption might not be exactly the year after the construction is finished. Like wouldn't it technically still be "new" after a few years in building standards? definitely overthinking but still weird

I could not interpret this stimulus for the life of me I don't know why

I wish I could fist fight this question

pulmonologist is a lung doctor so it would be both

We want to know that the farmers' intentions were to build the terraces to prevent soil erosion. We're told that if their land was flat, then soil erosion wouldn't be a problem and they wouldn't build terraces with the goal of preventing erosion. But since they build terraces, their land must not be flat. But what if they're building terraces for other reasons, and what if, despite those other reasons, the terraces still somehow prevent erosion? We want to show that they had intention. Stimulus tells us: terraces TO prevent erosion. That's at least how I crossed out C.

I think you could reasonably make the argument that the urgency in which the oxygen must be administered could be considered a difference in treatment. But in my opinion your explanation of why A is correct is pretty good. We know that OMS is pretty common among mountain climbers and that the symptoms of CE and OMS very closely resemble each other. Additionally, we know that CE can be fatal. If you go to the hospital and they assume that you have OMS but you actually have CE and they treat you for OMS, then it's safe to say you might be cooked. Assuming that they might have the same treatment goes beyond what the question asks of us. I also think this is a pretty bad question but A is definitely the best answer choice here. E was the only one I got tripped up on but it was really bad when I revisited it in BR.

Unchanged means not decreasing or increasing. That's where the gap is that we have to fill. Just because it's unchanged doesn't mean it's increasing. But that's what C tells us. As long as it's not changing in the way that it's decreasing wellbeing, it's good.

If it were effective, then everyone would be using it. Everyone using it is the consequence of it being effective. Those consequences are false because not everyone is using it. Therefore it is not effective (finding the claim that it is effective to be false)

I definitely see your point, but it would be just as consistent with the argument to say that the Magdalenian group produced hundreds of thousands of one type of lamp while the other earlier group produced 100 lamps of all different kinds. Just can't assume that more kinds = more in total.

The other comment explained this better than I could, but in addition, I also don't think we are in the place to make any judgments about whether or not the author thinks hating the train is a good reason to not take it. We kind of just have to take that statement as it is. It might be a good reason or a super shitty reason. I also think the "adopting a course of action" would refer to not taking the train, so that wouldn't really point out the flaw that she potentially has alternatives that might get her to work on time. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here but that's how I'm looking at E from this comment's perspective.