I misread... :( Thought C said highly pleasurable experiences don't secrete adrenaline...

As with everyone else, didn't make the in-the-moment connection that distorting history is generally the same as distorting historical awareness.

Thank you!!

Would it be OK to categorize everything before the author's opinion as context, in a way? From the way I see it, the author gave us a bunch of context about these three sides, then basically went "in light of that", and gave their new observations.

The lesson on split approach mentioned transforming the question stems, and that's what I've been doing.

As such, I just transformed the question from what it was to

"Passage A mentions propaganda primarily in order to"

and D fits.

My idea is that if the question asked for the primary reason BOTH passages mentioned X, it must also be the case that it's the primary reason why ONE passage mentioned X.

It's weird, but not necessarily. If it were conditional, yes you would, but correlations don't have arrows since in A --cor-- B, A can cause B (A→B), B can cause A (B→A), something else can cause A and B (X→A and X→B), or A and B are unrelated despite correlation.

As such, you can theoretically stick a correlation chain wherever you want.

It can be either or, since it's all about the way you see it; the same flaw should still be there, just 'flipped' in true or falseness.

Having issues wrapping my head around relative v. absolute probability. Will most likely have to default to PoE.

For the most part, yeah. If you replace areas where "assume" or "supposes" would be and slot in "takes for granted", the meaning or truth of the sentence does not change at all- it stays the same.

Alex assumes all NASCAR drivers have up-to-date driver's licenses.

is equal to

Alex takes for granted that all NASCAR drivers have up-to-date driver's licenses

is equal to

Alex supposes all NASCAR drivers have up-to-date driver's licenses.

This one was a doozy; I spent a good six minutes trying to figure out what the stimulus was saying, and still didn't full get it until rereading and rewatching the explanations. Here's my take on it:

This philosopher (why is a philosopher saying this?) is basically laying out a rule to start:

To explain why a society is the way it is (like a monarchy such as England or an agrarian civilization such as Egypt), we must first have data about other societies.

That's it. That's basically what the stem is asking us to explain, reworded like this, at least in my opinion, makes it a bit more obvious that it's a conclusion- or something akin to it.

The stim then goes on: (I'm not really a fan of trying to shoehorn in logic and biconditionals, but it's semi-important).

To properly say that a civilization's society was CAUSED by the area that it was built in (think Egypt's farming society with the Nile river, or Ancient China's Han River), we must find evidence that there's NO civilization that was built in the same type of area yet had a different society AND we must find evidence that there's NO civilization that was built in a different area yet had the same society as that of the original.

Imo, even this is still convoluted, so I translated further with terms and societies familiar to me.

Philosopher: To explain why Ancient Egypt had a farming society, we must first gather info about other societies.

For example: If we are to say that the Nile River caused Egypt to be a farming society, we must make sure that there is no other ancient civilization that had a similar river yet was not a farming society AND we must make sure that there is no ancient civilization that had a farming society yet had no river similar to the Nile River.

> You can probably replace 'Ancient Egypt' and 'The Nile River' with corresponding cities/states/nations and a particular feature.

>> Maybe something like Ancient China and its Han River, or something even as modern as Chicago and The Bean. (Chicago is windy because of the bean!!).

If we plug in the correct answer, it'll work on this translation:

"It is the claim that the philosopher attempts to justify by appeal to the requirements for establishing the existence of one kind of causal relationship"

Translated, this just means something like: The excerpt is the philosopher's conclusion in regard to determining whether setting affect civilizations.

and yeah, if we show that there's no case in which a farming society can show up despite not having a river closeby AND that there's no case in which a civilization has a river nearby and is yet not a farming society, then we can say that rivers close to civilizations cause farming societies.

I hope this helps, I had a lot of trouble on this and spent the good part of an hour trying to articulate.

Cheers.

To add onto A: "New technology" is very arbitrary, and part of it seemed to imply that this technology would solve most, if not all the issues- what with the transfer process being expensive and time consuming.

But for all we know, (with the negation) this technology could be barely better than current technology, or shorten the transference time, but cost an obscene amount of money per transfer.

In the end, given these possibilities, this would seem both unnecessary and insufficient.

If it makes you feel any better (I am hard coping), these are the hardest of the hardest questions. Some of the ones we've done in this section has had less than a 40% correction rate.

Not to mention that some of these questions are here for us to bomb; a teaching moment, if you will.

For some reason, I assumed A with 'applies in this case' meant that it applied for this one year of applications along with all the other years; given that, I assumed it was not relevant, as it would be possible to disregard one year of applications when seeking an explanation for overall application numbers.

Spent an extra few minutes gaslighting myself into thinking E was not right because it was 'too good'.

:|

I got E, and upon reflecting, I'd also like to add that being "of little use" as stated in E is different than being "unlikely to be useful" as stated in the stimulus and in the correct answer.

Something being of 'little use' could still be useful, maybe something like wirestrippers, which would be 'of little use' unless you're stripping wires.

Whereas 'unlikely to be useful' seem to imply that something just straight up has a better alternative or just wouldn't work for what it's designed to do. My rock-on-a-rope contraption may detect earthquakes, but it's unlikely to be useful when measuring the scale of the earthquake, which is effectively what the conclusion is stating.

Maybe they just rewrote it and shelved the old one.

Going off this, my ass is unattractive AF :(

To me, B looks like the wrong way of contraposing.

If A, then B (A→B)

Contraposed: If NOT B, then NOT A (B→A)

If the rule set out in the stimulus was

If contempt OR harm then NOT joke ( C → J H → J)

But answer B has it written as (at least to me)

If NOT contempt or NOT harm, then joke (C→J H→J)

As an additional side, B also basically says "If it's not contemptuous and harmful (DeMorgan's), you can play the joke).

But we don't know the standards for playing a joke.

Personally? Charitable interpretation and PoE.

I believe, given the nature of the stimulus and the context, that those 'assuring' us would not be some random person online, but important figures, such as scientists and the like.

PoE also ensures that every other answer is worse; even if D hardly supported the stimulus, it still did (though in this case I believe it was mildly strengthening).

I just saw it as a broader reading of the rule set by the stimulus:

IF higher speed limit reduces accidents THEN increase speed limit.

> The correct answer basically just rephrases the conditions to be more broad.

IF measure that reduces the rate of traffic accidents THEN (it) should be implemented.

Hope this helps.

I personally don't think the answer is a reflection of the stimulus, at least not in the sense that it shares the same context/premises/etc.

E is moreso a general rule that previously had no bearing, and inserting it into the stimulus would help justify its conclusion, hence it being the right answer.

E just says that IF harmful action was preventable THEN held responsible.

It doesn't say that ALL the companies actions were harmful or preventable or whatever, it just says that if there was something that is harming and is preventable, then the company should be held responsible for the consequences.

For me, the LSAT also functions as a double-edged blade where overthinking on a question (especially one whose topic you are quite familiar with) can actually make things worse.

I also got this question wrong and chose D, but after the lesson I kind of understood it as such:

The stimulus basically says that sewage with metals cause metal AND antibody resistant bacteria.

Note that ONLY the metal in the sewage causes the resistances.

Answer choice D basically states that for sewage with metal MOST of them have antibodies in them, and we are to assume that's why the bacteria have metal and antibody resistance.

Therein lies the issue: We are dedicated to finding out whether metal and metal alone in the sewage causes the two resistances, but answer choice D throws away the whole experiment and changes the premise to metal WITH antibodies.

I hope this helps.

In a similar boat. Personally, I think doing PoE on all the other choices aside from C and D led me to assume that there were less bass OVERALL as a whole in the river, leading to less bass being caught by anglers as a whole.

I suppose C and D are supposed to force you out of that view and into the realm that there are 'x' bass in the river, and the nuclear plant actually doesn't affect the bass, but instead affects the fishermen themselves.

If I were to put it in 'lesson terms', I had the naive assumption that waste water would be bad for bass. A, B, and E honors this assumption, but C and D do not. Instead, the assumption here would be that having a power plant nearby would affect the fishermen (maybe more security, the wastewater smells bad, etc.).

Agreed; was hunting for an answer that said that Walnut street was on Main Street or something similar, despite how idiotic it sounded in hindsight.