For people like me that ruled out C because the stimulus says "there is nothing new in this idea of restricting growth", there's a difference between new ideas in the proposal and new reasons for the proposal

Here's an absurd example that's hopefully more illustrative:

Alice: I don't like people having fun; we should ban people swimming in the lake

Bob: That's dumb. City council is justified in deciding against that proposal

five years later

Carol: There was a toxic waste spill into the lake; we should ban people swimming in the lake

Dave: Since there is nothing new in this idea of banning swimming, I oppose the regulations.

Dave's argument does not make sense since the circumstances around the proposal have changed.

This is one of those questions where I get frustrated and confused about how literally we're supposed to read the stimulus and answer choices. Because based on what the stimulus says, I don't think any of the ACs are right.

Looking at the explanation for D (emphasis mine):

The author assumes that the association between Jennifer’s presence and winning, which is something that has been true about the team’s past games, will continue to be true in the future.

Nowhere does the stimulus indicate that there is an association between Jennifer and winning, only not Jennifer and losing. It's possible that they haven't won a single game and Jennifer hasn't played. I know that sounds like a stretch based on, like, the way language works and people talk, but I swear there have been assumptions even more subtle that you have to read very literally to come to the right answer.

I get why E is a better answer than A, but it's hard to evaluate that when you're being timed. It's also something we shouldn't have to evaluate according to the lessons because "There is only ever one right answer choice and four massively, horrendously, embarrassingly, wrong answer choices." (That same lesson also says "You're not going to find anything new that tens of thousands of people just like you only with way more riding on the line haven't found before." so if anyone can explain to my why my reasoning is wrong—or any tips for how to read literally but not too literally—I would be immensely grateful)

@lastminlsat Hypothesis 2 argues for an period of very intense bombardment following a period of declining bombardment:

They claim that the Moon's evidence merely provides a view of the period concluding billions of years of a continuous, declining heavy bombardment throughout the inner solar system. According to them, the impacts from the latter part of the bombardment were so intense that they obliterated evidence of earlier impacts.

While not explicitly stated that the impacts toward the end were more intense than the impacts throughout the period during which bombardment is decreasing, the way the statements are written lend more credence to that interpretation than to the interpretation that the impacts that "were so intense [so as to] obliterate evidence of earlier impacts" were actually the weakest impacts of the whole period.

I just want to point out how useful the "Split Method" is even for questions where it seems like you can't know what to eliminate on just the information in Passage A. If you look at the answer explanations, you can see that answer choices A,B, and C can all be eliminated almost entirely on the basis on Passage A alone. The explanation for AC B is the only one that mentions Passage B, but only referentially (if you remove "...in Passage B" the explanation still makes sense). You can also get a good sense that D will be wrong, since Passage A talks about how more recent scholarship focuses more on the significance of gender, so D runs in the opposite direction of author A's argument.

It's worth mentioning that, according the the analytics (as of the time of writing), only 51% of people answer this question correctly and the two most frequent wrong answers are A and C. That means that if you can eliminate those options on the first pass, you make this question significantly easier for yourself than the 5 star difficulty it's labeled as.

@JoyelleBaek You should be able to cross out A, B, and C. If you read the given answer explanations, you can see that they can be eliminated almost entirely on the basis on pA alone. The explanation for AC B is the only one that mentions pB, but only referentially; it's still possible to eliminate it without reading pB at all.

@RobertWay Yes, but the logic is the same. You could write it (and the contrapositive) as

SAS → /AA

AA → /SAS

But this says nothing about /AA, so the argument is still invalid.

Something I noticed about the way negating works with these indicators is that the structure of the conditionals will always be the same based on whether one, both, or neither of the conditions are negated, regardless of which condition is sufficient or necessary

If neither is negated (eg. You will fail unless you study) only the sufficient will be negated

/X → Y

If both are negated (eg. You will not get lost unless you don't follow directions) only the necessary will (still) be negated

X → /Y

If only one is negated (eg. You can not play games unless you finish your homework) then either both conditions are the negated or neither are.

X → Y

/Y → /X

Note that X and Y are not interchangeable on this last one, so it's not as useful as the others for quickly translating, but it could still be helpful as a sanity check

I don't know how helpful this will be to anyone (myself included) so if this is more confusing, please ignore it

@pinky One of the ways they phrased the translation rule in the video at the start of the lesson was: (paraphrased)

"'unless' indicates a necessary condition with a negated sufficient condition"

So

A unless B

becomes

/A → B

The reason the "take either one" rule works is because when you take the contrapositive—negate both conditions and swap their relationship—you negate the condition we just negated

/B → //A

But the double negation cancels out so you're left with

/B → A

Which is the same as if you had followed the "take either one" rule, which is why it's nice to use as a shortcut so you don't need to think about this every time.

Are the 6 indicator words listed the only ones that come up on the LSAT? When learning conditional logic (albeit for discrete math) we we taught to say A->B as "A implies B".

Ex:

If you have eyes, you can see.

Having eyes implies you can see.

Having eyes -> You can see

Does it not being one of the 6 listed mean it doesn't really show up on the LSAT, or is list of words given supposed to be non-exhaustive?