Over the course of the twentieth century, humans built, on average, one large dam a day, hulking structures of steel and concrete designed to control flooding, facilitate irrigation, and generate electricity. Dams were also lucrative contracts, large-scale employers, and the physical instantiation of a messianic drive to conquer territories and control nature. Some of the results of that drive were charismatic mega-infrastructure—the Hoover on the Colorado River or the Aswan on the Nile—but most of the tens of thousands of dams that dot the Earth’s landscape have drawn little attention. These are the smaller, though not inconsequential, barriers that today impede the flow of water on nearly two-thirds of the world’s large waterways. Chances are, what your map calls a “lake” is actually a reservoir, and that thin blue line that emerges from it once flowed very differently.

Damming a river is always a partisan act. Even when explicit infrastructure goals—irrigation, flood control, electrification—were met, other consequences were significant and often deleterious. Across the world, river control displaced millions of people, threatening livelihoods, foodways, and cultures. In the western United States, dams were often an instrument of colonialism, used to dispossess Indigenous people and subsidize settler agriculture. And as dams slowed the flow of water, inhibited the movement of nutrients, and increased the amount of toxic algae and other parasites, they snuffed out entire river ecologies. Declining fish populations are the most evident effect, but dams also threaten a host of other animals—from birds and reptiles to fungi and plants—with extinction. Every major dam, then, is also a sacrifice zone, a place where lives, livelihoods, and ways of life are eliminated so that new sorts of landscapes can support water-intensive agriculture and cities that sprout downstream of new reservoirs.

Such sacrifices have been justified as offerings at the temples of modernity. Justified by—and for—whom, though? Over the course of the twentieth century, rarely were the costs and benefits weighed thoughtfully and decided democratically. As Kader Asmal, chair of the landmark 2000 World Commission on Dams, concluded, “There have been precious few, if any, comprehensive, independent analyses as to why dams came about, how dams perform over time, and whether we are getting a fair return from our $2 trillion investment.” A quarter-century later, Asmal’s words ring ever truer. A litany of dams built in the mid-twentieth century are approaching the end of their expected lives, with worrying prospects for their durability. Droughts, magnified and multiplied by the effects of climate change, have forced more and more to run below capacity. If ever there were a time to rethink the mania for dams, it would be now.

There is some evidence that a combination of opposition, alternative energy sources, and a lack of viable projects has slowed the construction of major dams. But a wave of recent and ongoing construction, from India and China to Ethiopia and Canada, continues to tilt the global balance firmly in favor of water impoundment.  

Correct Option: 3

Rationale: The passage states that small dams are not inconsequential but does not compare their safety with that of large dams. Therefore, the claim that smaller dams are safer than large ones is not supported by the text.

Why other options wrong: Options 1, 2, and 4 are all directly or indirectly supported by the passage’s discussion of colonial control, economic cost, and continued construction despite opposition.

Difficulty: Easy

Imagine a world in which artificial intelligence is entrusted with the highest moral responsibilities: sentencing criminals, allocating medical resources, and even mediating conflicts between nations. This might seem like the pinnacle of human progress: an entity unburdened by emotion, prejudice or inconsistency, making ethical decisions with impeccable precision. . . .

Yet beneath this vision of an idealised moral arbiter lies a fundamental question: can a machine understand morality as humans do, or is it confined to a simulacrum of ethical reasoning? AI might replicate human decisions without improving on them, carrying forward the same biases, blind spots and cultural distortions from human moral judgment. In trying to emulate us, it might only reproduce our limitations, not transcend them. But there is a deeper concern. Moral judgment draws on intuition, historical awareness and context – qualities that resist formalisation. Ethics may be so embedded in lived experience that any attempt to encode it into formal structures risks flattening its most essential features. If so, AI would not merely reflect human shortcomings; it would strip morality of the very depth that makes ethical reflection possible in the first place.

Still, many have tried to formalise ethics, by treating certain moral claims not as conclusions, but as starting points. A classic example comes from utilitarianism, which often takes as a foundational axiom the principle that one should act to maximise overall wellbeing. From this, more specific principles can be derived, for example, that it is right to benefit the greatest number, or that actions should be judged by their consequences for total happiness. As computational resources increase, AI becomes increasingly well-suited to the task of starting from fixed ethical assumptions and reasoning through their implications in complex situations.

But what, exactly, does it mean to formalise something like ethics? The question is easier to grasp by looking at fields in which formal systems have long played a central role. Physics, for instance, has relied on formalisation for centuries. There is no single physical theory that explains everything. Instead, we have many physical theories, each designed to describe specific aspects of the Universe: from the behaviour of quarks and electrons to the motion of galaxies. These theories often diverge. Aristotelian physics, for instance, explained falling objects in terms of natural motion toward Earth’s centre; Newtonian mechanics replaced this with a universal force of gravity. These explanations are not just different; they are incompatible. Yet both share a common structure: they begin with basic postulates – assumptions about motion, force or mass – and derive increasingly complex consequences. . . .

Ethical theories have a similar structure. Like physical theories, they attempt to describe a domain – in this case, the moral landscape. They aim to answer questions about which actions are right or wrong, and why. These theories also diverge and, even when they recommend similar actions, such as giving to charity, they justify them in different ways. Ethical theories also often begin with a small set of foundational principles or claims, from which they reason about more complex moral problems.

Correct Option: 3

Rationale: The passage compares ethics with physics, where multiple theories coexist and apply to different domains. For such a system to function in practice, there must be a principled method for deciding which ethical framework applies in a given case. Option 3 captures this necessity.

Why other options wrong: Option 1 contradicts the passage’s emphasis on divergence. Option 2 introduces an unrealistic restriction not argued for. Option 4 contradicts the analogy with physics, which maintains multiple theories rather than collapsing them into one.

Difficulty: Hard

Correct Option: 4

Rationale: The passage argues that ethical theories diverge and are often incompatible, and that reducing ethics to clean procedures removes essential contextual judgment. Option 4 contradicts this by suggesting convergence on a single ethical system and dismissal of context.

Why other options wrong: Options 1, 2, and 3 are all supported by the passage’s warnings about divergence, loss of lived experience, and oversimplification of moral reasoning.

Difficulty: Hard

Different sciences exhibit different science cultures and practices. For example, in astronomy, observation – until what is today called the new astronomy – had always been limited to what could be seen within the limits of optical light. Indeed, until early modernity the limits to optical light were also limits of what humans could themselves see within their limited and relative perceptual spectrum of human vision. With early modernity and the invention of lensed optical instruments – telescopes – astronomers could begin to observe phenomena never seen before. Magnification and resolution began to allow what was previously imperceptible to be perceived – but within the familiar limits of optical vision. Galileo, having learned of the Dutch invention of a telescope by Hans Lippershey, went on to build some hundred of his own, improving from the Dutch 3x to nearly 30x telescopes – which turn out to be the limit of magnificational power without chromatic distortion. And it was with his own telescopes that he made the observations launching early modern astronomy (phases of Venus, satellites of Jupiter, etc.). Isaac Newton’s later improvement with reflecting telescopes expanded upon the magnificational-resolution capacity of optical observation; and, from Newton to the twentieth century, improvement continued on to the later very large array of light telescopes today – following the usual technological trajectory of “more-is-better” but still remaining within the limits of the light spectrum. Today’s astronomy has now had the benefit of some four centuries of optical telescopy. The “new astronomy,” however, opens the full known electromagnetic spectrum to observation, beginning with the accidental discovery of radio astronomy early in the twentieth century, and leading today to the diverse variety of EMS telescopes which can explore the range from gamma to radio waves. Thus, astronomy, now outfitted with new instruments, “smart” adaptive optics, very large arrays, etc., illustrates one style of instrumentally embodied science – a technoscience. Of course astronomy, with the very recent exceptions of probes to solar system bodies (Moon, Mars, Venus, asteroids), remains largely a “receptive” science, dependent upon instrumentation which can detect and receive emissions.

Contemporary biology displays a quite different instrument array and, according to Evelyn Fox-Keller, also a different scientific culture. She cites her own experience, coming from mathematical physics into microbiology, and takes account of the distinctive instrumental culture in her Making Sense of Life (2002). Here, particularly with the development of biotechnology, instrumentation is far more interventional than in the astronomy case. Microscopic instrumentation can be and often is interventional in style: “gene-splicing” and other techniques of biotechnology, while still in their infancy, are clearly part of the interventional trajectory of biological instrumentation. Yet, in both disciplines, the sciences involved are today highly instrumentalized and could not progress successfully without constant improvements upon the respective instrumental trajectories. So, minimalistically, one may conclude that the sciences are technologically, instrumentally embodied. But the styles of embodiment differ, and perhaps the last of the scientific disciplines to move into such technical embodiment is mathematics, which only contemporarily has come to rely more and more upon the computational machinery now in common use.

Correct Option: 4

Rationale: The passage explicitly contrasts the two disciplines to illustrate different styles of scientific embodiment. It describes astronomy as largely a “receptive” science (dependent on detecting emissions) and contrasts it with contemporary biology, which it describes as having an “interventional” culture (using techniques like gene-splicing). Option 4 accurately reflects this distinction made by the author.

Why other options wrong: Option 1 is incorrect because the passage argues that both receptive and interventionist sciences are “instrumentally embodied,” just in different styles; it does not suggest they are mutually exclusive categories of “embodied” vs “interventionist.” Option 2 is incorrect because the “new astronomy” is explicitly defined as opening the full electromagnetic spectrum (radio, gamma, etc.), which happened in the 20th century, long after Newton. Option 3 is incorrect because the passage attributes the observation of the phases of Venus and Jupiter’s satellites to Galileo, not Newton.

Difficulty: Moderate

Understanding the key properties of complex systems can help us clarify and deal with many new and existing global challenges, from pandemics to poverty . . . A recent study in Nature Physics found transitions to orderly states such as schooling in fish (all fish swimming in the same direction), can be caused, paradoxically, by randomness, or ‘noise’ feeding back on itself. That is, a misalignment among the fish causes further misalignment, eventually inducing a transition to schooling. Most of us wouldn’t guess that noise can produce predictable behaviour. The result invites us to consider how technology such as contact-tracing apps, although informing us locally, might negatively impact our collective movement. If each of us changes our behaviour to avoid the infected, we might generate a collective pattern we had aimed to avoid: higher levels of interaction between the infected and susceptible, or high levels of interaction among the asymptomatic.

Complex systems also suffer from a special vulnerability to events that don’t follow a normal distribution or ‘bell curve’. When events are distributed normally, most outcomes are familiar and don’t seem particularly striking. Height is a good example: it’s pretty unusual for a man to be over 7 feet tall; most adults are between 5 and 6 feet, and there is no known person over 9 feet tall. But in collective settings where contagion shapes behaviour – a run on the banks, a scramble to buy toilet paper – the probability distributions for possible events are often heavy-tailed. There is a much higher probability of extreme events, such as a stock market crash or a massive surge in infections. These events are still unlikely, but they occur more frequently and are larger than would be expected under normal distributions.

What’s more, once a rare but hugely significant ‘tail’ event takes place, this raises the probability of further tail events. We might call them second-order tail events; they include stock market gyrations after a big fall and earthquake aftershocks. The initial probability of second-order tail events is so tiny it’s almost impossible to calculate – but once a first-order tail event occurs, the rules change, and the probability of a second-order tail event increases.

The dynamics of tail events are complicated by the fact that they result from cascades of other unlikely events. When COVID-19 first struck, the stock market suffered stunning losses followed by an equally stunning recovery. Some of these dynamics are potentially attributable to former sports bettors, with no sports to bet on, entering the market as speculators rather than investors. The arrival of these new players might have increased inefficiencies and allowed savvy long-term investors to gain an edge over bettors with different goals. . . .

One reason a first-order tail event can induce further tail events is that it changes the perceived costs of our actions and changes the rules that we play by. This game-change is an example of another key complex systems concept: nonstationarity. A second, canonical example of nonstationarity is adaptation, as illustrated by the arms race involved in the coevolution of hosts and parasites [in which] each has to ‘run’ faster, just to keep up with the novel solutions the other one presents as they battle it out in evolutionary time.

Correct Option: 2

Rationale:

The inference that the text attributes the COVID-19 pandemic rebound in financial markets solely to displaced sports bettors and treats their entry as the overriding cause of the rapid recovery across assets and time horizons is not supported by the passage. The text uses highly cautious and speculative language regarding the cause of the market dynamics. It states that the dynamics are only “potentially attributable to former sports bettors” and that their arrival “might have increased inefficiencies.” The use of the words “solely” and “overriding cause” in the option is a strong overstatement and direct contradiction of the passage’s tentative wording.

Why other options wrong:

Option 1 is supported by Paragraph 2, which states that heavy-tailed events “occur more frequently and are larger than would be expected under normal distributions,” which is the definition of complicating forecasting.

Option 3 is supported by Paragraph 5, which discusses how a shock changes the rules (nonstationarity) and Paragraph 3, which notes that this change “raises the probability of further tail events” (second-order tail events).

Option 4 is supported by the combination of Paragraph 2 (bank runs and toilet paper scrambles are examples of collective settings where contagion shapes behaviour) and Paragraph 1 (which illustrates how local changes or ‘noise’ can amplify into collective patterns that were “aimed to avoid,” meaning unintended).

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Option: 3

Rationale:

The passage describes how complex systems, like the contact tracing scenario, exhibit behavior where local, individual changes (noise) feed back into the system to generate a collective pattern that may be contrary to the intended goal. This requires a feedback mechanism driven by interdependence. The fish schooling example illustrates this: one fish’s misalignment causes further misalignment, leading to a collective, predictable pattern (schooling). The contact tracing analogy follows the same logic: individual changes in behavior (avoiding the infected) interact to create a large-scale, undesirable pattern (higher interaction between infected and susceptible). Option 3 captures this necessary condition by stating that individuals base choices on observed infections and the behavior of others, causing local responses to interact and turn small adjustments into large-scale, potentially frustrating patterns.

Why other options wrong:

Option 1 is incorrect because it contradicts the fundamental premise of complex systems described in the passage. The suggestion that interdependence is negligible would mean individual choices do not feed back to create collective patterns, which is the opposite of the author’s argument.

Option 2 is incorrect because it focuses on participation rates and data bias, which are not the necessary conditions for the paradoxical feedback mechanism described. The suggested outcome relies on the interaction of behavioral changes, not the number of users.

Option 4 is incorrect because the suggestion focuses on the collective response to information, not the accuracy of the data feed itself. The paradoxical outcome occurs even if the local information is accurate, because of the behavioral feedback loop it triggers.

Difficulty: Medium

Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies,
genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic
factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological
factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal
species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under
the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual
people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be
attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due
entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other
traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no
agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur
clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic,
rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia
remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous
farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has
no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead,
the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all
non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia
by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices
play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and
individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,”
or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any
explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some
geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic
explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other
than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological
explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist
genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a
tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among
historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But
often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit
living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other
Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of
geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire
that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.

Answer- 3

while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have
bio-geographic origins.

Stoicism CAT 2022 Slot 1 Verbal Reading Comprehension
Stoicism was founded in 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno and survived into the Roman era until about AD 300. According to the Stoics, emotions consist of two movements. The first movement is the immediate feeling and other reactions (e.g., physiological response) that occur when a stimulus or event occurs. For instance, consider what could have happened if an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers. The first movement for Marcus may have been (internal) surprise and anger in response to this insult, accompanied perhaps by some involuntary physiological and expressive responses such as face flushing and a movement of the eyebrows. The second movement is what one does next about the emotion. Second movement behaviors occur after thinking and are under one’s control. Examples of second movements for Marcus might have included a plot to seek revenge, actions signifying deference and appeasement, or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them. In the Stoic view, choosing a reasoned, unemotional response as the second movement is the only appropriate response.

The Stoics believed that to live the good life and be a good person, we need to free ourselves of nearly all desires such as too much desire for money, power, or sexual gratification. Prior to second movements, we can consider what is important in life. Money, power, and excessive sexual gratification are not important. Character, rationality, and kindness are important. The Epicureans, first associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus . . . held a similar view, believing that people should enjoy simple pleasures, such as good conversation, friendship, food, and wine, but not be indulgent in these pursuits and not follow passion for those things that hold no real value like power and money. As Oatley (2004) states, “the Epicureans articulated a view–enjoyment of relationship with friends, of things that are real rather than illusory, simple rather than artificially inflated, possible rather than vanishingly unlikely–that is certainly relevant today” . . . In sum, these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers saw emotions, especially strong ones, as potentially dangerous. They viewed emotions as experiences that needed to be [reined] in and controlled.

As Oatley (2004) points out, the Stoic idea bears some similarity to Buddhism. Buddha, living in India in the 6th century BC, argued for cultivating a certain attitude that decreases the probability of (in Stoic terms) destructive second movements. Through meditation and the right attitude, one allows emotions to happen to oneself (it is impossible to prevent this), but one is advised to observe the emotions without necessarily acting on them; one achieves some distance and decides what has value and what does not have value. Additionally, the Stoic idea of developing virtue in oneself, of becoming a good person, which the Stoics believed we could do because we have a touch of the divine, laid the foundation for the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam . . . As with Stoicism, tenets of these religions include controlling our emotions lest we engage in sinful behavior.

Option 3. This is a largely factual question. The reference to Marcus Aurelius comes in the first paragraph and his role can be deduced from the from lines: “an army general accused Marcus Aurelius of treason in front of other officers…or perhaps proceeding as he would have proceeded whether or not this event occurred: continuing to lead the Romans in a way that Marcus Aurelius believed best benefited them.”

Option 2: The implied meaning of this line is that rather than reacting on emotions, one should aim to observe them and then decide on what is important. There is no reference to any out-of-body experience.

Critical theory of technology is a political theory of modernity with a normative dimension. It belongs to a tradition extending from Marx to Foucault and Habermas according to which advances in the formal claims of human rights take center stage while in the background centralization of ever more powerful public institutions and private organizations imposes an authoritarian social order.

Marx attributed this trajectory to the capitalist rationalization of production. Today it marks many institutions besides the factory and every modern political system, including so-called socialist systems. This trajectory arose from the problems of command over a disempowered and deskilled labor force; but everywhere [that] masses are organized – whether it be Foucault’s prisons or Habermas’s public sphere – the same pattern prevails. Technological design and development is shaped by this pattern as the material base of a distinctive social order. Marcuse would later point to a “project” as the basis of what he called rather confusingly “technological rationality.” Releasing technology from this project is a democratic political task.

In accordance with this general line of thought, critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design. A hermeneutics of technology must make explicit the meanings implicit in the devices we use and the rituals they script. Social histories of technologies such as the bicycle, artificial lighting or firearms have made important contributions to this type of analysis. Critical theory of technology attempts to build a methodological approach on the lessons of these histories.

As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants. In this respect, they are comparable to laws and customs. Each of these institutions can be said to represent those who live under their sway through privileging certain dimensions of their human nature. Laws of property represent the interest in ownership and control. Customs such as parental authority represent the interest of childhood in safety and growth. Similarly, the automobile represents its users in so far as they are interested in mobility. Interests such as these constitute the version of human nature sanctioned by society.

This notion of representation does not imply an eternal human nature. The concept of nature as non-identity in the Frankfurt School suggests an alternative. On these terms, nature is what lies at the limit of history, at the point at which society loses the capacity to imprint its meanings on things and control them effectively. The reference here is, of course, not to the nature of natural science, but to the lived nature in which we find ourselves and which we are. This nature reveals itself as that which cannot be totally encompassed by the machinery of society. For the Frankfurt School, human nature, in all its transcending force, emerges out of a historical context as that context is [depicted] in illicit joys, struggles and pathologies. We can perhaps admit a less romantic . . . conception in which those dimensions of human nature recognized by society are also granted theoretical legitimacy.

Option 3. Consider the following lines: “critical theory of technology regards technologies as an environment rather than as a collection of tools. We live today with and even within technologies that determine our way of life. Along with the constant pressures to build centers of power, many other social values and meanings are inscribed in technological design.” Also, “As an environment, technologies shape their inhabitants.” This makes option 3 correct.

Option 4.

1. “One can deduce from this passage that a hermeneutics of technology involves the explicit unveiling of the concealed meanings within the tools we utilize and the rituals they orchestrate.”
2. “The second passage implies that the critical theory of technology functions as a political theory of modernity, emphasizing the prioritization of formal human rights advancements, while in the background, a growing centralization of powerful public institutions and private organizations enforces an authoritarian social structure.”
3. “The passage suggests that customs such as parental authority serve the interests of childhood by ensuring safety and growth. Importantly, this notion of representation does not presuppose a fixed, unchanging human nature.”
4. “The fourth statement represents an extreme view that lacks substantiation in the passage.”

We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined.

It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . .

Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.

Option: 4. The question asks us to mark the right inference. In the first paragraph we have “universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy, and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared… In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mold and plan them” From this we can falsify option 1. Further the passage says “Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes.” …this helps falsify option 2. The passage later says “Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships.” There is no evidence from this statement that can lead us to option 3. So, option 3 cannot be inferred. Since it cannot be inferred, it would be a false inference. There is no co-relation between the institution of friendship and the institution of join-stock companies, except that one is formal while the other is informal. The last paragraph of the passage says “Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’…This helps us infer option 4. Thus 4 is the best choice.

When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single ” best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process.

Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering.

In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences. . . . Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials.

Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity.

Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this. . . . Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking.

Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical self-reflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.

Option: 1. The question asks us to pick a choice that the author would not approve. The ones that he is likely to approve will go out and the one he is not, will be the right answer. The author will certainly favor option 2 because he is in favor of considering local priorities that addresses needs of different communities, not just one. Option 3 is also likely to be supported by the author. Option 4 is also in sync with the author’s point view of because a more responsible approach means ‘including societal factors as well’. Option 1 is incorrect because in technical-social dualism you don’t integrate, you separate. So option1 is dichotomous because it suggests a solution whose principle is contrary to the intended outcome.

Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found . . . that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency.

In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ”new place” can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants.

In these same decades America experienced what has been called ”the great migration”: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation . . . Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live.

Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.

Option: 2. This question can be answered either by selection or elimination. If we go by elimination, we will have to check and verify each choice, but if we go by selection, we immediately see that option 2 says something that does not make sense. In the passage it is nowhere mentioned that African Americans were less organized, as though there were into some management set up in an organization, and were less organized than the others. It becomes the right answer right away because all the other three choices are valid inferences.

Interpretations of the Indian past . . . were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests, and also by prevalent European ideas about history, civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars, but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past. . . .

Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient, and this, it was thought, would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment. . . . [The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient.

However, this enthusiasm gradually changed, to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern. . . . There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called ‘discovery’ of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture, for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects.

German Romanticism endorsed this image of India, and it became the mystic land for many Europeans, where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east, and also, incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained, Indian values being described as ‘spiritual’ and European values as ‘materialistic’, with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years.

It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west, a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.

Option: 2. The author says that “the so-called discovery of India (by the British) was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit”. It implies that instead of being very selective, the Oriental scholars should have widened their literary resources. Thus 4 can be inferred. Both 1 and 3 can be inferred from the passage. The passage says in the first paragraph ‘…made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them…’ Option 2 cannot be inferred because an oppositional framework will make you less sympathetic towards a culture and its people. One should try to grasp cultural differences openly and sympathetically, not by developing an oppositional framework. Thus 2 goes out and because it is an except question, it is the right answer.

Option: 4. The author will support 1 because the author agrees with it. From the last paragraph, we understand that the author would agree with option 2. From the first few sentences of the first para, we understand the author would agree with 3. Option 4 is opposite to what we have in the passage. India was spiritually superior to West, not in the technical sphere.

As software improves, the people using it become less likely to sharpen their own know-how. Applications that offer lots of prompts and tips are often to blame; simpler, less solicitous programs push people harder to think, act and learn.

Ten years ago, information scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands had a group of people carry out complicated analytical and planning tasks using either rudimentary software that provided no assistance or sophisticated software that offered a great deal of aid. The researchers found that the people using the simple software developed better strategies, made fewer mistakes and developed a deeper aptitude for the work. The people using the more advanced software, meanwhile, would often ” aimlessly click around” when confronted with a tricky problem. The supposedly helpful software actually short-circuited their thinking and learning.

[According to] philosopher Hubert Dreyfus . . . . our skills get sharper only through practice, when we use them regularly to overcome different sorts of difficult challenges. The goal of modern software, by contrast, is to ease our way through such challenges. Arduous, painstaking work is exactly what programmers are most eager to automate-after all, that is where the immediate efficiency gains tend to lie. In other words, a fundamental tension ripples between the interests of the people doing the automation and the interests of the people doing the work.

Nevertheless, automation’s scope continues to widen. With the rise of electronic health records, physicians increasingly rely on software templates to guide them through patient exams. The programs incorporate valuable checklists and alerts, but they also make medicine more routinized and formulaic-and distance doctors from their patients . . . . Harvard Medical School professor Beth Lown, in a 2012 journal article . . . warned that when doctors become ” screen-driven,” following a computer’s prompts rather than ” the patient’s narrative thread,” their thinking can become constricted. In the worst cases, they may miss important diagnostic signals. . . .

In a recent paper published in the journal Diagnosis, three medical researchers . . . examined the misdiagnosis of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the U.S., at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. They argue that the digital templates used by the hospital’s clinicians to record patient information probably helped to induce a kind of tunnel vision. ” These highly constrained tools,” the researchers write, ” are optimized for data capture but at the expense of sacrificing their utility for appropriate triage and diagnosis, leading users to miss the forest for the trees.” Medical software, they write, is no ” replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking.” . . .

There is an alternative. In ” human-centered automation,” the talents of people take precedence . . . . In this model, software plays an essential but secondary role. It takes over routine functions that a human operator has already mastered, issues alerts when unexpected situations arise, provides fresh information that expands the operator’s perspective and counters the biases that often distort human thinking. The technology becomes the expert’s partner, not the expert’s replacement.

Option: 1. This is a factual question but to arrive at the answer we have to carefully read the options. The reason for misdiagnosis according to the passage: “the digital templates used by the hospital’s clinicians to record patient information probably helped to induce a kind of tunnel vision.” So, there was no issue with the type of template. Option 3 goes out. Also, there was no issue with sufficiency of data. The sentence does not hint at any sort of lack of sufficiency of data. We must choose between 1 and 4. Now why 1 and not 4. The template did not “force them” to acquire tunnel vision. They misdiagnosed because they were led by data processed by the template. No template can force doctors to arrive at something against their wish. To induce is not the same as to force, also we have to look at the context. What did the digital template have? It had records of patients’ information. The doctor simply went by the data provided by the template without paying any attention to the patient’s narrative. 1 is the right answer.

Option: 3. It is a common-sense question. When we get stuck while doing something on computer or while using a software, what do we do? We start clicking here and there with the expectation that something will come out of it by accident. Option 1 is out because the author is not trying to highlight their efficiency. The point of having or not having the skill sets does not arise because they were using the software which was meant to do all the things for them. When you click aimlessly, the idea is not to avoid mistakes but to get some way out of a problem by fluke. Option 4 goes out. 3 is the best choice.

Option: 3. The passage cites all the options except 3. The author is not at all concerned about computers replacing humans. From the doctor’s example, he highlights option 1. In the second paragraph we have ample evidence for 2 and 4. 3 is the best choice. This is a very easy question.

Nature has all along yielded her flesh to humans. First, we took nature’s materials as food, fibers, and shelter. Then we learned to extract raw materials from her biosphere to create our own new synthetic materials. Now Bios is yielding us her mind-we are taking her logic.

Clockwork logic-the logic of the machines-will only build simple contraptions. Truly complex systems such as a cell, a meadow, an economy, or a brain (natural or artificial) require a rigorous nontechnological logic. We now see that no logic except bio-logic can assemble a thinking device, or even a workable system of any magnitude.

It is an astounding discovery that one can extract the logic of Bios out of biology and have something useful. Although many philosophers in the past have suspected one could abstract the laws of life and apply them elsewhere, it wasn’t until the complexity of computers and human-made systems became as complicated as living things, that it was possible to prove this. It’s eerie how much of life can be transferred. So far, some of the traits of the living that have successfully been transported to mechanical systems are: self-replication, self-governance, limited self-repair, mild evolution, and partial learning.

We have reason to believe yet more can be synthesized and made into something new. Yet at the same time that the logic of Bios is being imported into machines, the logic of Technos is being imported into life. The root of bioengineering is the desire to control the organic long enough to improve it. Domesticated plants and animals are examples of technos-logic applied to life. The wild aromatic root of the Queen Anne’s lace weed has been fine-tuned over generations by selective herb gatherers until it has evolved into a sweet carrot of the garden; the udders of wild bovines have been selectively enlarged in a ” unnatural” way to satisfy humans rather than calves. Milk cows and carrots, therefore, are human inventions as much as steam engines and gunpowder are. But milk cows and carrots are more indicative of the kind of inventions humans will make in the future: products that are grown rather than manufactured.

Genetic engineering is precisely what cattle breeders do when they select better strains of Holsteins, only bioengineers employ more precise and powerful control. While carrot and milk cow breeders had to rely on diffuse organic evolution, modern genetic engineers can use directed artificial evolution-purposeful design-which greatly accelerates improvements.

The overlap of the mechanical and the lifelike increases year by year. Part of this bionic convergence is a matter of words. The meanings of ” mechanical” and ” life” are both stretching until all complicated things can be perceived as machines, and all self-sustaining machines can be perceived as alive. Yet beyond semantics, two concrete trends are happening: (1) Human-made things are behaving more lifelike, and (2) Life is becoming more engineered. The apparent veil between the organic and the manufactured has crumpled to reveal that the two really are, and have always been, of one being.

Option: 4.
When something is implied means something is indirectly stated in the passage. Option 4 becomes the right answer because in the second last paragraph a clear difference between genetic engineers and bio-engineers is implied. While genetic engineering is about artificial evolutions, bioengineering is about organic evolution. At least they both are not the same, if one reads the second last paragraph of the passage. 4 is the right answer. Option 1 is implied in the first paragraph. From second paragraph we can derive option 2. The passage says “philosophers in the past have suspected one could abstract the laws of life and apply them elsewhere.” Here to suspect means to believe in the possibility of something.

Question 3:
” In order to confirm their abnormal status, many of the Undead were often accorded attributes, which defied the natural order of things . . .” Which one of the following best expresses the claim made in this statement?

1. The Undead are deified in nature’s order by giving them divine attributes.
2. Human beings conceptualise the Undead as possessing abnormal features.
3. According the Undead an abnormal status is to reject the natural order of things.
4. The natural attributes of the Undead are rendered abnormal by changing their status.

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