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"pollution exists at location → pollution is a problem at location" is an invalid inference,
"pollution is a problem at location → pollution exists at location" is a valid inference.
The argument makes the latter inference.

correctly identified the conclusion and somehow still got it wrong what the hell

I dont think anyone checks the classic comments anymore but figured I would share. Just because fossils have been discovered that are devoid of biomarkers doesnt say that there is another thing (other than plants and animals) that could have placed the biomarkers.

I get where the confusion comes from though i actually think this one is incredibly stupid bc it says "not from living material" and we are asked basically to say "are bacteria living material?" Which is why I initially ruleld out d

The sole purpose part is an intermediate conclusion based off of the following premises, so the weakener is really attacking the link between that and it's premises

I thought the same. (B) confused me during the PT, but it was because I didn't read it carefully. I thought it pointed out the other mistake in this reasoning, which is that the complex system could be really conservative and almost never trigger an inflation. But (B) says "any failure," which is way too strong. The flaw in the argument is that it doesn't show that the new system causes more accidental inflations.

The problem here is that you're assuming the board of tourism is calculating a tourist as an attraction pass holder. The stimulus clearly differentiates between the attraction and hotels, so the average length of stay for tourists could be based on reported figures from the hotels, independent of whether or not they hold a pass.

Consider this example:

Previous Period:
Attraction reports 100 pass holders
Hotel reports 100 hotel guests, 3 day avg. stay

Current Period:
Attraction reports 100 pass holders (+0)
Hotel reports 125 hotel guests (+25), 3 day avg. stay (+0)

So the average length of stay could remain unchanged while visitors were indeed illicitly selling or sharing the passes. Hope this helps!

The curriculum says that "only" is a Necessary Condition indicator. Here, JY says it is a sufficient condition indicator. Which one is it?

This also really confused me so I thought I would write it out to try to make sense of it. The point of the question is asking what the sufficient assumption actually is that bridges the premises to the conclusions, so if we take the contrapositive of answer choice A, which is:
/reduce taxes --> /benefit consumers
and the conclusion is:
/reduce (textiles)
we would have to assume the necessary condition, which would not be accurate because if we assume the necessary condition there is no reason to believe that the sufficient condition would fall within that bracket (if we're thinking about it in sets and supersets, there is no reason to believe that this scenario would fall within the set of the sufficient condition within the necessary condition), and for that reason would commit the sufficiency-necessity confusion that would cause answer choice A to seem right. Following this video, it is the more accurate path to follow the sufficient assumption as the principle that bridges the necessary condition to the conclusion, because that is the assumption that makes the conclusion valid. Not sure if that made a lot of sense but it was my only way of understanding the answer choice in case anyone else was confused by it at all!

i fully agree. does anyone know why C is better than A & E in that regard? JY?

#22 is an absolutely flawed question and should have been removed from scoring

This is an amazing explanation! Thanks!

see i agree, so i thought C made most sense... while E kind of addressed 3, it's not a direct link to saying that that was the cause for increased sales for the two retailers.

but E can also co-exist i feel like

I understand what E is doing by implying that whatever could have possibly caused the increase in accidents outside the city limits (if there was one), it (alternative causes) was prevented by a later start time (avoiding any possible assumption like the one JY did about a start time in the outer city limits). However, I feel like this opens the door to the possibility of an alternative cause that could explain a change in accidents (the cause no longer existed in the city limits and shifted to the outer limits). But this again is an assumption. If E had stated that there was no drop or increase in the outer limits and there was a drop in the city limits, then it would strengthen the idea that the start time was a plausible explanation.

I will miss cringing at lsat_sus comments when I'm done studying.

i thought C was right because in the sentence "some people would pay a dollar each to read [articles/etc] online even where social customs do not support such a practice," the social customs referred to for this specific practice of paying to read online stuff. Author A acknowledges that this is novel, but there is social custom for other SIMILAR practice (i.e. physical service), and Author B says that the fact people aren't paying right now--aka no social custom for paying to read--shows it won't succeed.

"Clearly he was high as shit when he died"

#help I chose that the statement was the main conclusion (B) because I thought that the last statement lended support to it. Wouldn't the statement that "As a result, a price increase will allocate goods to the people with the most money, not to those with the most need" support the advocate's statement (in opposition to the economist) that "willingness to pay is not proportional to need". I understand the correct answer if, like J.Y. was saying, there is a missing conclusion that is left unstated. As it is, however, I don't see how the last sentence could be the conclusion of the entire argument when it doesn't really engage with the context (economist's position) that the advocate is going against.

The first sentence says that MOST ant species leave a trail of chemicals called pheromones. The stimmy then qualifies certain ant species that potentially don't use pheromones (because these ant species live in the Sahara Desert where pheromones immediately evaporate). All this is to conclude that SOME ant species DO NOT use pheromones. Where's the support? It's embedded in the quantifier language that when you have MOST of something you also can have SOME NOT of the same thing. In this case MOST ant species allows for SOME NOT ant species (those that live in the Sahara Desert).

LMAO

every day i log onto this website and wonder how i made it this far in life without knowing how to read

OMG same now I'm reading again and I was like wtf how did I read it as "today"

I feel like that a most committed person of an electorate would vote is a more reasonable assumption than the one related to AC D (it's a much larger demographic than that addressed by A too)