Heads up: JY's lawgic for (E) is not right (also see below for comments made by @Heart Shaped Box ). He was misreading the "the more complex a novel's plot, the less likely the novel is to be made into a movie".

Stimulus' lawgic goes like:

Premise one: C(older)---L---> Crm

Premise two: C---m---> /Crm

Conclusion: C(new) ---L---> /Crm

So there are two mismatching lawgic in (E), which are:

Premise one: N(complex) ---L---> /Nmm

Premise two: N---m---> /Nmm

Conclusion: N(simple)---L---> Nmm

For me, I often add an "if" to make these conditional logics more clear. For this one, I would translate it as "If the manuscripts are not frequently consulted, then they will not be restored."And because we are in the "manuscripts" world, I would only write down the lawgic as "/fc→/r", the contrapositive is "r→fc".

So you see it links up to other conditional sentences successfully in the stimulus.

An argument is composed by two indispensable component: premise and conclusion. When the stimulus ask you to "weaken" an argument, you attack the "link" between premise and conclusion, not by attacking the conclusion directly.

In a way, attacking the conclusion does weaken the argument, BUT, it rarely happens in the LSAT world. More often the time, the LSAT is "creating the illusion of attacking the conclusion" rather than "really attacking the conclusion". (like Ac(C), JY explained how it's actually not attacking the conclusion)

So if you though you found an answer choice is attacking the conclusion, it's usually the trap answer choice.

In the group's first appeal, The court granted the church the right to public hearing on the station's request for a long-term license, and the the FCC just dismissed much of the public input (in the public hearing) and the FCC granted a long-term license to the station.

So it's not that "the court ruled that the FCC had ultimate authority to decide." The court ruled on other things (public hearing), and after the showcase hearing, the FCC granted the license anyway.

In the group's second appeal, the court revoke and not remanding the right to the FCC.

#help

What confuses me the most is the word "since".

I thought the sentence that starts with "since" is in a past perfect tense, which means people have been trying to domesticate animals that worth domesticating since ancient time UNTIL NOW but failed. So I don't see the argument as analogical (past vs. present), because it's not a clear cut between past and present but a continuous phenomenon. I was then specious about the answer

A, which might be related to the dichotomy conclusion (which is totally unreasonable).

Am I misunderstanding the grammar? For instance, if it is the past perfect tense, should the sentence be "people undoubtedly have tried"? Or it IS a simple past tense, and "since" is functioned as "for"?

Why D bothers me is I thought "overstaffed"a constant fact. So even with the workloads that comes high and low as pointed out in D, it IS STILL "overstaffed"; not to mentioned its reinforced tone "obviously"overstaffed.

Congrats!

Interested! Please do let us know hot it goes!

The thing is, as you scroll down the commenting areas below each question, there must be some sager's comments you would be expected and heavily depended upon, @lexxx74569 is one of the names I would be looking for. From him, I learned that LSAT is hard but learnable, and it only reward those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory. I highly recommend everyone who's looking for a change in prep to have a talk with him, it would be one of the most well spent time during the journey in LSAT.

I have a question regarding part-to-whole flaw:

Here, first set aside the difference between scientist "personal career advancement" and the science community "enhancing the status of the community", which are not actually equal as @tams2018 pointed out below. I still don't get why this feature of this part, can't ascend to the whole:

Part: most scientists are directed toward personal career enhancement, and only some directly toward the pursue of truth (say, 100 scientist forming this science community, 51 are pursuing personal career instead of truth).

Whole: the science community are largely directed toward enhancing the status of that community as a whole, and only some directly toward the pursue of truth.

Why can't we justify this as a ok part-to-whole PC? 51/100 scientist is the bigger part of the community, why it's not ok to say this community is indeed largely directed toward, since most member within this group are indeed directed toward this purpose?

#help

First, find premise and conclusion, this is a comparative then conclusion-drawn stimulus

P: Method A (Hatha+consulting) fight craves as much as did those who went on Method B (traditional+consulting)

C: Hatha is an powerful tool for helping people quit smoking (Method A)

Stimulus translation: because Method A functions as much as Method B, so we know that one element in Method A is an important tool to help people quit smoking. Please note that I don't even assume "A reduced smoking and cravings for tobacco as much as B" as A=B is of great deal of help for people quitting smoking: we don't know as much as is of great deal A=B=90%, or just A=B=1% of helps. NOT until the conclusion we know Hatha of Method A is an important tool to fight against the crave. In order to make this argument (A must be a good stuff, because A functions as much as B), we know the author must assume B is good stuff, otherwise the comparison-conclusion won't hold.

Thank you! that clears things up!

For #7 ac (c) and (b), what bothers me the most was not not seeing “but not at the expense of cultural identity” indicating an attitude of cautious, but misreading it is the author addressing issues on Mexico, not on Aztec (we know her loves Marxism and revers Aztec glory, but we had zero knowledge on knowing whether Aztec runs planned economic or not). So I can totally relay to what @Accounts Playable saying “She seems very extreme for her disapproval of current Mexican development and big time in favor of an Aztec/Marxist economic style.”

The right way to break the above thought, is to judge from the context. “K portrayed Aztec images..., thereby heightening the clash between modern material and indigenous tradition; similarly, she favored planned economic development, but not at the expense of cultural identity.” Watch out the “;” between “therefore...similarly”, they are criticizing the same thing—modern Mexico. The first sentence conveys a vague idea of clashing values (which is Mexico now & old Mexican cultural value), so naturally when talking about “favored planned economy but not at the expense of something”, is that she agrees on part of the modern Mexican way of doing things but warns about going too far.

Only from the context then we know more of her comparison views on the economic development of Mexico. Otherwise from the previous paragraphs, there were indeed only “condemnatory” comments from her for the now Mexico economy.

from my understanding, if I simplyfie your stimulus into lawgic:

A-->B-->C

?

..................

A--->D

We're looking for the inference that can link C to D, so we can link all elements up to: A-->B-->C-->D. If getting this, all inference are included (A-->C, A-->D, B-->C, B-->D).

However, what you're suggesting would be:

A-->B-->C

B-->D

..................

A-->D

Of course you can get a A-->D, but you're also getting a B to C and D. C and D under this scenario is not related, whereas in the A-->B-->C-->D world, C-->D.

Hope this helps.

In order to save time, I was using POE and arbitrarily deleted (D) when seeing it starts with "a conclusion". I ended up choosing (C) even though I have deep doubts on the wording "indirectly." Lesson learned.

Here: https://classic.7sage.com/webinar/active-reading/

If the stimulus is saying A+B→C, then A and B are both needed to conclude C. However, here we have A→C in the stimulus, and a B+A→C in the answer choice, B's appearance won't stand in between A's sufficiency to C.

The difference between “premise-conclusion” vs. “phenomenon-hypothesis/explanation” stands out in this question. More often a time it’s not so important to discern them from each other. They’re both listed as AC here, however, we need to take their differentiation more seriously.

The phenomenon: From the second sentence “This is not surprising, because…” we can tell the first sentence is an observed phenomenon. We would definitely be expecting an explanation/hypothesis in the following sentences.

The explanation/hypothesis: because the more…the more aware its members are the…. [notice] the following sentence “Specifically, people realize…drawbacks.” is just an add-on details to Sociologist’s explanation (because the more technological… drawback). It's not yet another new condition/conclusion/premises.

As for why JY write down P/C on the left, is just a low resolution of the paragraph arrangement, since in a broader sense, the phenomenon is a kind of premises and leads to what the writer really wants to tell (aka the conclusion), but to precise it’s an explanation/hypothesis. Rather than concluding something, it's more of an explanation to a phenomenon. Explanation isn’t 100% equal to conclusion, though most of the time they serve the same purpose, which is to reveal the speaker's point.

That’s why A is incorrect, and B is the correct answer.

For why D is not weakening the arguments, I’ve found quite a few reasons as follow:

(1) JY’s version: Find out premise, main premise/sub-conclusion, and main conclusion. While checking each of their relationships, we found the link between premises and sub-conclusion is weaker, so we attack from here. Thus the answers could be attacking minimum wage→can’t afford to continue to employ as many workers for such jobs. D is then a side information, not to weaken the relationship mentioned above.

(2) Forum:

a.“Most” represents 51%, which means 49% are not earning more than the minimum wage, which is quite a larger amount of people, and could lead to the raise of unemployment rate still. Not weakening the argument, and even affirming it.

b.Beware, the stimulus says "raising the minimum wage significantly will cause an increase in unemployment," it does not say "raising the minimum wage will significantly increase unemployment." → under the circumstances of not knowing how much MORE as “most workers earning more than the minimum wage,” what if the “more” is just a marginal plus (ex. earing 50 cents more than the minimum wage), while raising significantly is larger than the 50 cents? This still leads to the raise of unemployment rate, not weakening the argument.

C: F was widely unpopular among his subjects.

P1: remove financial support for arts

P2: many satirical plays write about him

Here I want to say more about why A is incorrect:

P2 says: concluded from the large number of satirical plays that were written about him during his administration.*

→Among satirical plays, the # of F in vs. the # of F not in

(A) says: fails to consider the % of plays written during F’s administration that were not explicitly about F.

→Among all kinds of plays, the % of F in plays vs. the % of F not explicitly in plays;

It’s no use to think about “"Out of all the plays written during his administration, what % were about F, and what % were not about him?"” which is what (A) does.

If to correct (A) as a right answer, we are thinking about making the sample size up→ cases (satirical plays about F) up, thus "a large number of satirical plays written about him" is nothing, for the sample size just get bigger. (A) should be changed to: "fails to consider the # of plays written during F’s administration that were explicitly about F." OR "fails to consider the increase # of satirical plays written during F’s administration."

Hope this make sense.

Does a cancelled score/test included??

#help In previous video, JY said it's up to us to do 4 or 5 sections PT. But since there must be 5 sections on the real test day, and we can't distinguish the five from which one is not scored, we should take all five as equally serious as possible. So my question is, why is taking 4/5-section PT is still optional?

Thank you so so much! So detailed and I learned a lot!

#help

JY says in (C) that causation logic is not conditional logic, can someone kindly point out what lesson am I missing here? Cuz I tend to draw causation into conditional relationships when doing lawgic.