What I wanna say was already said. These are all really good points.

I'll just add one thing about brain recovery, supplements, etc. I actually had very similar situation in my June test and once thought about whether I had some psychological issues. Initially I planned to get some psychological counselling, but after doctors scanned my brain, I found out from the report that my body does not produce enough glutamic acid/glutamine and dimethylaminoethanol, which are crucial substances to repair one's brain and help it recover. In addition, the report said that my brain lacked oxygen. This issue could be due to insufficient ventilation in my room or my insufficient sleep. That explained a lot why I found it harder to recover after taking a preptest than my peers who used to study with me.

Therefore I began to take these two supplements and occasionally go to other rooms in my apartment/go out just to breathe fresh air. I felt better afterwards. In the middle of a preptest I also opened the window, let the air come in, and breathe deeply. I'm now preparing for the October administration full time so that I can sleep as much as I want. Although I sleep relatively late, nowadays I sleep about 1 hour earlier than I did before. I'm also drinking tons of juice btw just to make sure my brain has enough sugar to use. These practices are really helpful personally.

The doctor also prescribed some drugs such as propanolol hydrochloride tablets, which can lower one's heart rate, and lorazempam tablets, which can alleviate stress symptoms . But I found the one that can lower my heart rate also makes me sleepy, so I'll not probably use it before the test. For the other, I think I need to try a few more times to see its effect.

Hope this provides some perspectives. Regardless of the approach, I guess the most important thing is confidence: we have the ability, and we can do it again in the actual test!

English is my second language, so I didn't get what rough voyage means. But anyways...

The third game of the international version sounds scary...I mean not the difficulty, but this game sounds like it has a scary plot behind it...I got goosebumps when doing this game. First time having experience like this lol.

I disagree on the explanation.

If C’s eliminated because “for display” implies aesthetic puposes, then I don’t think this is a “weaker” assumption (religious AND aesthetic). I don’t think this assumption is more reasonable or weaker than a potential assumption in D (yeah I wanna design a functional AND aesthetic broomstick). Of course you can assume something else (religious and aesthetic VS just functional ^ aesthetic) (religious ^ aesthetic vs functional AND aesthetic) (etc etc.......) All of them are equally arbitrary assumptions. I don't really see any reason except so called "commonsense" that makes one more reasonable than the other. But if commonsense is the reason, and the LSAT sometimes requires you to use commonsense, I don't think the requirement applies to this case. Take these following highly decorated Buddhist statues for instance: https://www.google.com.hk/search?q=buddhist+church+statues&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjVnM-smLD0AhW4rXIEHTfKBrwQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=buddhist+church+statues&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DHCFixH2D1IWgBcAB4AYABiAeIAZIOkgEJMi0yLjEuNi0xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=UcOdYZWwJLjbytMPt5Sb4As

Many of them are indeed very beautiful, but not all of them. In fact, some of them look bizarre (if you think all of them look beautiful, hmmm, well forget it, too many subjective factors…). Regardless of whether they are beautiful, I can confidently say that almost all of them were used for display for religious rather than aesthetic reasons because they are the targets for people to pray to. Well there definitely exist some religions that put on sth for aesthetic reasons, but we have to make a deeper assumption that answer choice C is specifically referring to these religions. Although that could be a better reason to eliminate C, that’s not the reason to eliminate C I saw across various forums and also in this video. Also, this kind of reasoning requires some special background and takes a lot of time, which I feel is not worth it near the end of the section.

I think a quicker way to eliminate C is that C is much weaker statement than D. What does C actually say? There is evidence that blablabla….. Well, if there is some evidence for A, does that mean A is necessarily true? Of course not. What kind of evidence? Good evidence? Bad evidence? Direct evidence? Indirect evidence? We don’t know. So essentially C is a probabilistic statement: there is evidence for A Ok, if nothing else is given, then it leans toward A being true (like 60%), but there is also some chance that A is also false (40%). So what C expresses is so uncertain. How can something so uncertain weaken an argument? Say I wanna weaken the statement that “this dude scored 180 on the LSAT”, and there is a statement saying “there is evidence/maybe/ that this dude doesn’t know conditional logic.” Well, if the evidence establishes that this dude doesn’t know conditional logic, then there is (almost) no chance that this dude could score an 180. But what if the evidence was just one tough logic question covered in philosophy class about some conditional logic (e.g.formal proof) not covered in the LSAT that this dude fails to answer correctly? Of course that cannot weaken the statement. Which is really the case? What are you really talking about? We don’t know. So this uncertain/weak/probabilistic statement does nothing to the statement.

D is a better answer choice in terms of most seriously weakens the argument.” What D points out is a concrete fact that should not be challenged (because it’s the LSAT), rather than an uncertain, weak, and probabilistic claim. Yes, there is some chance that flints used for everyday chores were designed for aesthetic reasons, or partly for aesthetic reasons (e.g. I wanna design a functional broomstick that looks pretty nice). Nevertheless, the possibility that such flints were designed just for the functional reasons cannot be denied either. The second scenario was possible; that scenario weakens the argument; therefore the answer choice can weaken the argument (although not definitely). Well, tbh I don’t think it really seriously weakens the argument because you still have to bear the assumption that 1. it gotta be the second scenario/the second scenario was more likely/whatever…, but for the five answer choices, it arguably “most seriously weakens the argument.” (For answer choice C, you have to 1. assume that the evidence establishes what it supports and then 2. make assumptions about which scenarios.) Fewer assumptions are better.

I'm going to get above 180 on the October 2021 LSAT!!!

Interested!

@ Hi, I just came across this. Could you send the recording to me? Thank you so much!