Saying "no" would have been an evaluation. It's a management function. If someone comes to you and says "We want to rewrite everything so it runs on a Raspberr

Saying "no" would have been an evaluation. It's a management function. If someone comes to you and says "We want to rewrite everything so it runs on a Raspberry PI powered by a hamster wheel" you don't need to ask about the engineering spec of the hamster wheel. The Max MCAS was only marginally more plausible in overview. Details were never going to rescue it.