Hi! I am interested in 1 on 1 tutoring

@am4ndapanda made the same mistake unfortunately

@markymymarkymark768 great analogy, thank you!

I got this right, but is it a fair assumption that we are taking the test as if it's the year 2026, and so we could therefore safely conclude that 100 years has passed?

A parallel argument:

Starbucks added a double shot espresso drink to their menu. Caffeine addicts reported no increase in energy, whereas casual coffee drinkers reported a significant increase in energy.

MSS: the typical effects of Starbucks' new drink cannot be reliably inferred from observing the effects on caffeine addicts.

Premise: survey results indicate that most people who listened to an audio of a certain best-selling novel enjoyed it, while most people who read that same novel did not enjoy it.

Conclusion: a person who listens to an audio of any novel is more likely to enjoy it than a person who reads it.

Notable assumptions/issues: The argument jumps from a finding of a specific novel in question to a conclusion about all novels. How do we know if the novel in question is representative of all novels?

In order to weaken the argument, we need to point out that the novel in question is not representative.

I thought that since this was a weaken question, we needed to prove that someone who listens to a tape reading is no more likely to enjoy it. However, we can also weaken the argument by pointing out the author's assumption that allows him to jump from the "certain novel" to "all novels."

That is why AC E is correct- it draws a distinction between this novel and all other novels, which weakens the author's argument.

I thought at first that E strengthened the argument because both E and the author's conclusion would point towards an audio version being more enjoyable. But E points out how the author's conclusion is unwarranted by stating the novel in question is "unlike most novels."

Takeaway: to "weaken" an argument, you don't necessarily need to prove the antithesis of the author's conclusion; rather, pointing out a key assumption their argument relies on is another way to weaken.

@epayne17 Questions similar to this appear on every test where you have to chain up multiple premises from the stimulus, and pick an answer choice that either triggers one of the sufficient conditions or denies one of the necessary conditions to guarantee the argument's conclusion.

I struggled with this at first but if you just drill SA questions several times, you'll start to notice the patterns that repeat.

Takeaways for future main conclusion questions going forward:

1. Fully read the answer choice. Because I was skimming and looking for an AC with the word "disappointed," I quickly picked B and moved on, but B is incorrect- the stimulus mentions nothing about nutrition.

2. Sometimes the correct AC will be a paraphrase of the stimulus but not be a direct excerpt. That is the case here.

3. Identify the support used for the conclusion. Here the support is that people will be disappointed because they are unknowingly consuming more calories. This helps us pick AC D as the correct choice.

The correct answer in a weaken question should, in some way, advance the argument's conclusion. Here, the stimulus says that the development raises this "possibility," so we would want to pick an AC that says there is no such possibility. AC B does not eliminate the possibility, which makes it incorrect.

For Weaken Questions (especially difficult ones), the best approach is to use POE rather than try to anticipate the right answer. Moreover, the correct answer doesn't necessarily need to squash the argument- but rather inch the needle closer towards "anti-supported."

That is what AC E does- if we don't know whether certain medieval thinkers were actually epistemologists, then the author's solution doesn't always apply.

A few ways to catch the flaw here:

1. The stimulus shows that the company failed the sufficient condition to give bonuses. This does not mean there are no other possible reasons for why the company should give out bonuses.

2. The author concludes that because the company did not act unfairly as others claim, it therefore acted fairly. However, providing one reason that a company isn't unfair does not mean the company is fair. That's like saying "High-sugar cookies aren't bad for you because they fill glycogen stores. Therefore, they are good for you" - that's too extreme of a conclusion to draw.

3. The author attacks the premises of an argument and then uses that to reject the argument's conclusion. However, the conclusion can still be true independent of the premises. This is similar to the flaw of rejecting a conclusion on the basis of the fact that inadequate support has been given to it.