ducks

Question 11 is truly some mental gymnastics

The second rule is:

If a person could not reasonably have foreseen the misfortune, then the person should never be blamed for unwittingly bringing it about

In lawgic:

RF --> B

Contrapositive is:

B → RF

But (C) concludes that G should be blamed for it. The rule doesn't stipulate that if the person could have foreseen the misfortune, then they should be blamed. That's a sufficient/necessary condition mistake.

I think B would be supported if it said "I can be reasonable for the city to spend money to try to convince ..."

B sounds like it's the underlying logic beneath the parents' and students' perception that low tuition = low quality education. However, that doesn't have to be actually the case (and irl we know that is not the case) for the argument to make sense, so long as that's what the applicants believe.

This is underrated

(B) confuses "having access to more than one newspaper" (i.e. having access to at least 2 newspapers) as the sufficient condition for getting all sides of important stories, when it's a necessary condition

Imho taking the two premises to mean two different modes of argumentation makes the question unnecessarily complicated. I interpreted the stimulus to just be an argument by analogy, a very fine one in my opinion, in that all the relevant elements can be mapped on to their analogous counterpart. The flaw is the missing link between computational skills and “our most important intellectual skills.” I think if you see the “most important” bit in the conclusion (D) would be so obvious. Had the conclusion said: “Therefore, it’s reasonable to infer that computation skills might similarly be devalued by electronic data-processing technology” it would be a pretty good argument (not perfect, since argument by analogy eventually falls apart at some point).

Random observation but I feel like "insure" should be replaced by "ensure" here. "Insure" makes more sense in the context of insurance, like my car is insured. Really weird choice of word here

(C) is true only for a country that carries high international debt (as far as this passage is concerned), and is using export production as a means to alleviate that debt. The author might very well think in an economically healthy country, increasing export will lead to an increase in domestic spending.

I think A doesn't make a distinction between the two types of preservation. It only talks about one legal precedent that happens to be recovering the artifacts from the ocean. Even if such a distinction is implied, it definitely does not "play a key role" in passage A.

What if the small design companies bribed the award institutions and they actually have really bad designs

Fair point - I feel like nothing in the stimulus really tells us which kinds of orbiting it is. I kind of just assumed that it's orbiting the black hole like the ring of Saturn orbiting Saturn - at least that's how I imagined it.

I think this argument actually has a pretty uncommon structure and I second the previous comments re: how you should use your intuitions more than formal logic in this instance.

Conclusion: there are exceptions to the general rule that peoples should practice what they preach

Premise: (it is implied that physicians don’t need to have healthy lifestyles in order to treat people) and it’s no more necessary for logicians to be logical in their discussions of logic

The main example offered here is logicians, and the physicians work as a frame of reference that people are more familiar with, which the argument compares/ analogize logicians with. A typical way to weaken an argument by analogy is just to point out that the two things being compared differ in this relevant way, which is what (A) does.

(B) is consistent with the argument since the argument doesn’t assume “physicians don’t need to be healthy at all”

(C) doesn’t do anything because 1. we don’t care about “physicians who are incompetent” but we care about “physicians who don’t have a healthy lifestyle” 2. Even if we change (C) to “physicians who don’t have healthy lifestyles can cause more harm than logicians who discuss logic illogically,” and assume that “causing more harm” means “it is more necessary practice what they preach,” it’s perfectly consistent with the argument.

(D) we are not concerned about the difficulty. We care about the necessity rather.

(E) straight up concedes that logicians don’t need to be logical; that doesn’t weaken the argument in any way.

I don't care what they say SAVE THE SEA OTTERS

(B) is perfectly consistent with the author’s argument:

Author says: surveys show that many people do not claim $$$ to be their No. 1 concern in looking for jobs

(B) says: when all else is equal, people like to choose the job that pays better over the job that pays less

(B) only shows that $$$ is one of the considerations people have because it has ruled out all the other competing factors, and as to how high $$$ ranks among other factors (say location, work environment, etc ect), (B) is agnostic. Since the author is not trying to argue that $$$ doesn’t matter at all, (B) doesn’t do much.

(C) however, points out an illicit term shift in the author’s argument (from “financial rewards” to “salary”) by saying that, maybe a job that pays mediocre salary gives insanely good bonuses. That makes the surveys that the author cited much less supportive of their conclusion.

I think the first part of the stimulus is just there to confuse you. The question becomes less convoluted if we just look at the part after “but”:

Some people (e.g. babies) utter words that they do not know the dictionary definitions of

(utter ←s→ know the dictionary definition)

---

If some babies understand all the words they utter, (utter →understand)

Then “knowing the dictionary definition” is not required for understanding a word

(understand ←s→ know the dictionary definition)

Therefore (E) is the correct AC.

JY I love you

I think the comparative statements in both arguments can be very confusing. To parse them out, Marianna says:

Drunk driving vs. Non-drunk driving

Quality being compared: which one is more likely to cause accidents involving death/serious injury

Winner: drunk driving

But David is saying:

Drunk driver vs. sober driver

Quality being compared: who is more likely to be seriously injured in an accident

Winner: sober driver

To explain in simpler terms, Marianna is saying, drunk driving increases the odds of serious accidents overall, and David is saying drunk drivers are less likely to be hurt in such accidents. They’re talking about completely different things. Therefore (D) is the correct AC.

other people's argument

The problem with the argument is that, the researcher attempts to make a comparative claim about children and office workers when he provided no information on the second group. Anything that points out a relevant difference between the two groups would be able to weaken the argument: something along the line of "The placement of office computer and keyboard are very ergonomic and do not cause any stress on workers" will also weaken.

If we suppose the hypothesis was true, we would expect to observe (A) in the wild. That is a typical strengthening factor, an empirical observation that conforms to predictions according to the hypothesis.

good lord