PT128 · S2 · Q20 Geologist: A new method for forecasting

The phrase "even if" is not conditional. It basically means "irrelevant". If you were diagramming, "Even if A, B", you'd basically just say "B." Even if it rains, = I'm coming I'm coming to your show to your show. So we don't really need to consider it part of the "rule" this answer is providing. The word "unless" is conditional. The idea attached to the unless goes on the left side, but in negated form. We use the shorthand "if-not" to remind ourselves "Left side - negated". Here, it said "unless predictions are reliable", so we would put "if predictions are not reliable" on the left of the arrow. predictions are ? method is not likely not reliable to be useful The right side matches the Conclusion, so this is worth considering. But does the left side match the Evidence? Were we told that the new method makes unreliable predictions? No, the first sentence says the new method "reliably predicted" several earthquakes.

This ends up giving us the same conditional rule as (A). The words "until" and "unless" work the same way (if-not). So we put the idea attached to until on the left, but negated. If a forecasting method has not been has not been used to ? shown to reliably predict a large be useful number of earthquakes Does the right side match our Conclusion? Not quite. We're supposed to be proving that the new method is unlikely to be useful. This is only proving it has not yet been shown to be useful. That's way weaker. That's just an agnostic statement of, "We don't know whether it is or isn't useful." Since the right side of this rule doesn't actually give us an idea as strong as the Conclusion (unlikely to be useful), we can throw out this answer. For what it's worth, it feels pretty fair to say the Evidence does match the trigger. This new method has only reliably predicted several earthquakes, so it doesn't seem like it has yet reliably predicted a large number of earthquakes.

Since this answer isn't providing a proving mechanism for the Conclusion wording, "If X is true, then unlikely to be useful", it's worthless to us.

This answer is worth considering, since it's providing a mechanism to prove "probably be of little use", which is equivalent to "unlikely to be useful". Like (A), we can ignore the "even if" qualifier, which adds nothing. The word "if" is always a sufficient indicator (put on Left). The models predictions never distinguish between ? probably be imperceptibly small and of little use catastrophically damaging Do we know that this model's predictions never distinguish between imperceptibly small and catastrophically damaging? No. That's a very strong idea that we weren't told. We know it can't differentiate between marginally perceptible and considerable damage, but that's not the same as knowing it never distinguishes between imperceptibly small and catastrophically bad. If real numbers help, an earthquake that is 4.0 is barely noticeable. A 6.5 is bad, but not leveling-the-city bad. It just means things will violently shake. Some property will be damaged. Meanwhile, an imperceptible quake would be like 3.0 or lower (unless you're right near the epicenter), and a catastrophic quake would be like 7.0 or higher. This method can't distinguish between two numbers that are within 2.5 of each other, but it still might sometimes be able to distinguish between two numbers that are at least 4.0 away from each other (like an imperceptibly small and catastrophically bad one).