#1 - The government’s tax collection agency has not followed

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

It's very difficult to tell how often this comes up. There are 471 Weaken questions, representing 2,355 Weaken answer choices. Of those, a certain number are wrong answers that actually strengthen the argument by making the conclusion more likely while at the same time undermining a premise. There is no straightforward way to classify those without a time-intensive brute-force search. I think it makes the most sense to be aware of this general concept in the future, as specific examples aren't really necessarily to understand the point that a wrong answer to a Weaken question that undermines a premise may do so in such a way that is strengthens the conclusion. As part of your evaluation of answer choices for Weaken questions anyway, you're always going to be looking at the impact of the answer on the conclusion. If that impact seems positive, the answer is wrong. Whether, in addition, it weakens a premise doesn't seem like useful extra info - if it is good for the conclusion, it doesn't weaken, and that's enough to reject the answer.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Robert,
Thank you for that, I'll try to remember to keep that in mind. Because the example provided on Lesson 3 in Lesson Book Weaken question, is from older PT. Would you say that this pattern of having answer choices that undermine a premise/assumption but doesn't weaken the conclusion, is less common in the more recent PTs. For example, I didn't see this pattern in Weaken questions in this PT #90 and this is one of the most recent PT available. I'm trying to ID Weaken patterns and how often they frequent in old vs. newer PT.

Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

PT 90 is one test with apparently 6 weaken questions, including the experimental. It's really impossible to make any broad generalizations from one instance. Again, weaken the conclusion and you will weaken the argument. That's all you need.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Thank you Robert!