Critical Reasoning

lunarpower wrote:here's how to do the "spoiler" thing i just talked about:

type
[spoiler]
before the text you want to hide, and
[/spoiler]
after that text.
the text will then be displayed in black on a black background, rendering it unreadable unless it's highlighted.

lunarpower wrote:

svaradhan wrote:I have a doubt with answer choice A. It states - "Because of the comparatively high wages they must pay to attract qualified workers, California banks charge depositors more than banks elsewhere do for many of the services they offer". But the argument is based on high interest rates for personal loans right? Where did depositors come into picture? Is this not out of scope? Please clarify

this is a 'weaken the conclusion' part. to weaken the conclusion of a passage, you have to do the following 2 things:
* identify an assumption that holds in the passage - THIS must remain within the scope of the argument
* find a piece of OUTSIDE information that strikes down that assumption - THIS generally must come from OUTSIDE the scope of the original argument

in this problem, the questionable ASSUMPTION is the logical inference that the shortage of competition must be responsible for the higher interest rates; that is indeed within the scope of the passage.
HOWEVER,
to weaken the conclusion, you HAVE to bring in outside information: viz., an alternative explanation for the higher interest rates. obviously, an alternative explanation is going to have to come from outside the scope of the original passage
in fact, the only way a correct 'weaken the conclusion' answer can stay completely within the scope of the original passage is to directly contradict one of the passage's premises; this pretty much doesn't happen (too simplistic, and not in keeping with the generally sacrosanct nature of the factual statements put forth as premises), so you should essentially always be looking outside the passage for statements that weaken the conclusion.