Sure! If the statement was simply "some amateur scientists made significant contributions", then it would be correct. However, the set we're talking about is amateur scientists who did not win the Nobel Prize. We just don't know who is in that set based on the stimulus. Therefore, we cannot make any valid inferences based on this information alone. Because this is a must be true question, we need it to be 100%. It can just as well be the case that the amateur scientists who made a significant contribution all won the Nobel Prize.

Hi the question asks for the viewpoint of CLS, rather than Meyerson, who would argue that legal cases are not like games

What you say is true, but the mere possibility that such an occurrence (a BD destroyed all of its Li beforehand) could have happened damaged the validity of the argument because the conclusion is stated as an absolute conditional statement. Had it been phrased as "it is likely not to be one of the coolest BDs", then the burden for the assumption would be weaker. For this to be an airtight argument, we cannot allow for these possibilities to occur.

what about semi-conscious incompetence, where you take a prep test immediately after you wake up, before your cup of coffee?

How does this relate to Hobbe s? I'm curious haha

I think you might have misread the question - D would weaken the argument, as it would be a 'good experiment'.

I think about it like this: (e) seems to be more like the controlled experiments (i.e., one group that goes to daycare and one that does not) which we've seen in the previous lessons, whereas (a) depicts a general trend that is not substantively different the the phenomenon described in the beginning. In other words, we can attribute the causal mechanism described in the passage better to (e) than to (a).

I think your confusion might lie in the fact that you equated M-> BI with BI->M?

You got this bro! This shit's really hard....

I think he chose not to include the contrapositive either because 1) these are if...then.... formulations, which we have already covered before or 2) he wants you to work it out by yourself entirely. 1) seems more plausible. The 'only if' placement matters only insofar as it indicates where the 'logic' lies. It being in the beginning, middle or even end of a sentence, doesn't change the structure of the argument when we use 'lawgic'. A-->B holds true regardless. Hope this helps!