PT68.S3.Q20 - scientist: given the human tendency

stcaitmokyu

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-68-section-3-question-20/
I was not sure between B and D.
I thought B is correct because it bases its conclusion on premise which contradicts one of its premise...
(It says "the odds are overwhelming that we would be alive during this period too" while also says "because we are not alive during this period")
Is B wrong because they are both premises and one of them is hypothesis?
By the way regarding D...isn't that "not alive during this period" seems true because how can ppl live so long? (It would take centuries right?) The question is not asking flaw in the argument, but I was just wondering whether the argument is valid or not.
Thanks,

Accounts Playable

Those two statements don't contradict each other. It just so happens that we are living in the low probability period. If the first statement stated that it would be impossible to live in anything other than the high probability period, that would be contradicted.

Answer D is correct because it describes the reasoning correctly. An event is taken to be likely (the odds are overwhelming), the hypothesis hasn't occurred (we aren't alive during this period), and we infer that the hypothesis is false (colonization won't happen).

The author's reasoning isn't very good, and one part of the argument is demonstrably wrong in my opinion. We do have reason to think our time is unrepresentative since the sample size he is using is only ours (one). Plus, we haven't colonized anything yet, so doesn't that make our time different anyway? If the vast majority of people are going to live in a time that has been colonized and we then use a non-colonized time to make a prediction about the likelihood of colonization, that seems like a weird thing to do.

stcaitmokyu

Thanks!