CAT — Reading Comprehesion
128 questions, free to view. Click any question to see the answer and explanation.
Often the well intentioned music lover or the traditionally-minded professional composer asks two basic questions when faced with the electronic music phenomena: (1) . . . is this type of artistic creation music at all? and, (2) given that the product is accepted as music of a new type or order, is not such music "inhuman"? . . . As Lejaren Hiller points out in his book Experimental Music (coauthor Leonard M. Isaacson), two questions which often arise when music is discussed are: (a) the substance of musical communication and its symbolic and semantic significance, if any, and (b) the particular processes, both mental and technical, which are involved in creating and responding to musical composition. The ever-present popular concept of music as a direct, open, emotional expression and as a subjective form of communication from the composer, is, of course still that of the nineteenth century, when composers themselves spoke of music in those terms . . . But since the third decade of our century many composers have preferred more objective definitions of music, epitomized in Stravinsky's description of it as "a form of speculation in terms of sound and time". An acceptance of this more characteristic twentieth-century view of the art of musical composition will of course immediately bring the layman closer to an understanding of, and sympathetic response to, electronic music, even if the forms, sounds and approaches it uses will still be of a foreign nature to him.
A communication problem however will still remain. The principal barrier that electronic music presents at large, in relation to the communication process, is that composers in this medium are employing a new language of forms . . . where terms like 'densities', 'indefinite pitch relations', 'dynamic serialization', 'permutation', etc., are substitutes (or remote equivalents) for the traditional concepts of harmony, melody, rhythm, etc. . . . When the new structural procedures of electronic music are at last fully understood by the listener the barriers between him and the work he faces will be removed. . . .
The medium of electronic music has of course tempted many kinds of composers to try their hand at it . . . But the serious-minded composer approaches the world of electronic music with a more sophisticated and profound concept of creation. Although he knows that he can reproduce and employ melodic, rhythmic patterns and timbres of a traditional nature, he feels that it is in the exploration of sui generis languages and forms that the aesthetic magic of the new medium lies. And, conscientiously, he plunges into this search.
The second objection usually levelled against electronic music is much more innocent in nature. When people speak—sometimes very vehemently—of the 'inhuman' quality of this music they seem to forget that the composer is the one who fires the machines, collects the sounds, manipulates them, pushes the buttons, programs the computer, filters the sounds, establishes pitches and scales, splices tape, thinks of forms, and rounds up the over-all structure of the piece, as well as every detail of it.
The goal of the author over the course of this passage is to:
differentiate the modern composer from the nineteenth century composer.
differentiate between electronic music and other forms of music.
defend the "serious-minded composer" from Lejaren Hiller and Stravinsky.
defend electronic music from certain common charges.
defend electronic music from certain common charges.
Throughout the passage, the author addresses two charges against electronic music, that it is not music at all, and that it is inhuman, and systematically refutes both. The discussion of Stravinsky's definition, the communication problem, and the composer's creative role all serve to defend electronic music from these criticisms.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: Differentiating modern from nineteenth century composers is only a supporting point used to establish a broader definition of music, it is not the goal of the passage itself.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The author is not primarily distinguishing electronic music from other forms but defending it against those who would deny it musical status altogether.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The author is not defending the serious-minded composer from Hiller or Stravinsky, both of whom are cited approvingly to support the defence of electronic music.
Why Option D is Correct: The passage addresses both common objections to electronic music head-on, arguing that electronic music qualifies as music under a modern definition and that the inhuman charge overlooks the composer's active creative role.
Key Takeaway: Identify the overall argumentative stance of a passage by checking what both the opening question and the closing paragraph are doing, since they typically frame and close the same central defence.
What relation does the "communication problem" mentioned in paragraph 2 have to the questions that the author recounts at the beginning of the passage?
Unfamiliar forms and terms might get in the way of our seeing electronic music as music, but this can be overcome.
Its unfamiliar "language of forms" and novel terms mean that we cannot see electronic music as music since it does not employ traditional musical concepts.
None; they are unrelated to one another and form parts of different discussions.
The communication problem is what allows us to see electronic music as music because music must be difficult to understand.
Unfamiliar forms and terms might get in the way of our seeing electronic music as music, but this can be overcome.
The author acknowledges the communication barrier created by electronic music's unfamiliar language of forms and terms, but frames this as an obstacle that can be overcome once listeners fully understand the new structural procedures. So the communication problem relates to the first question about whether electronic music qualifies as music by noting that unfamiliar forms are a temporary barrier, not a permanent disqualification.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This overstates the passage's claim, the author does not say the unfamiliar language means electronic music cannot be seen as music, only that it presents a communication difficulty that can be resolved through understanding.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The communication problem is directly connected to the passage's opening questions, specifically to whether the listener can recognise electronic music as music, making them clearly related.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The author does not argue that music must be difficult to understand, this inverts the passage's actual claim that the barrier can and should be removed through understanding.
Why Option A is Correct: This correctly captures the passage's position, that the unfamiliar language of forms does get in the way of seeing electronic music as music, but this barrier is not insurmountable and can be overcome once the listener is familiar with the new structural language.
Key Takeaway: When a passage identifies a problem and then frames it as surmountable, the correct answer will reflect both the existence of the barrier and the possibility of overcoming it.
The mention of Stravinsky's description of music in the first paragraph does all the following EXCEPT:
help us determine which sounds are musical and which are not.
respond to and expand upon earlier understandings of music.
complicate our notion of what is communicated through music.
allow us to classify electronic music as music.
help us determine which sounds are musical and which are not.
Stravinsky's definition describes music as "a form of speculation in terms of sound and time," which is broad enough to include electronic music, thereby expanding what counts as music, responding to the earlier emotional-expression definition, and making musical communication seem more abstract. However, this definition says nothing about which specific sounds are musical and which are not, it redefines what music does, not what materials qualify as musical.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The Stravinsky quote does respond to and expand upon the nineteenth century emotional definition of music, broadening the concept significantly.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Moving from an emotional to a speculative definition of music does complicate our notion of what is communicated through music, shifting it from feelings to something more abstract.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: By defining music in abstract terms of sound and time, Stravinsky's definition becomes broad enough to classify electronic music as music, which the author explicitly points out.
Why Option A is Correct: Stravinsky's definition broadens what music is at a conceptual level but does not provide any criterion for determining which specific sounds are musical versus non-musical, so it does not help with that distinction.
Key Takeaway: When asked what a quote does not do, check whether each function listed is actually performed by the quote in context, rather than broadly related to the topic.
From the context in which it is placed, the phrase "sui generis" in paragraph 3 suggests which one of the following?
Particular
Generic
Unaesthetic
Indescribable
Particular
The passage states that the serious-minded composer feels that it is in the exploration of "sui generis languages and forms" that the aesthetic magic of the new medium lies, contrasting this with merely reproducing traditional patterns. The phrase is used to describe languages and forms that are unique and distinct to the medium itself, that is, particular to electronic music.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: "Generic" means common or ordinary, which is the opposite of what "sui generis" means in this context, where the composer is seeking out what is distinctively unique about the new medium.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Nothing in the passage suggests the composer considers these languages unaesthetic, in fact the opposite is true since they are described as containing the "aesthetic magic" of the new medium.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: "Indescribable" does not fit because the passage describes these forms in terms of exploration and aesthetic value, not as something beyond description.
Why Option A is Correct: "Particular" captures the sense of unique or distinctive, meaning languages and forms specific to electronic music that are not simply borrowed from traditional music, which is exactly how the phrase is used.
Key Takeaway: Use the surrounding context, especially contrasts and comparisons, to determine a phrase's meaning rather than relying solely on prior knowledge.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward-looking.
My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking - full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. . . .
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. . . .
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
Which one of the following statements is not true about migration in the Indian Ocean world?
The Indian Ocean world's migration networks connected the global north with the global south.
Geographical location rather than geographical proximity determined the choice of destination for migrants.
The Indian Ocean world's migration networks were shaped by religious and commercial histories of the region.
Migration in the Indian Ocean world was an ambivalent experience.
The Indian Ocean world's migration networks connected the global north with the global south.
The passage describes the Indian Ocean world as connecting the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia, and describes it as a south-south interconnection. The passage never mentions the Indian Ocean world's migration networks connecting the global north with the global south. The connections described are entirely within and between southern regions.
On the basis of the nature of the relationship between the items in each pair below, choose the odd pair out:
Indian Ocean novels : Outward-looking
Postcolonial novels : Border-crossing
Indian Ocean world : Slavery
Postcolonial novels : Anti-colonial nationalism
Postcolonial novels : Border-crossing
The passage explicitly associates Indian Ocean novels with being outward-looking, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. Postcolonial novels are described as land-focused and inward-looking, supporting anti-colonial nationalism. Border-crossing is specifically a quality of Indian Ocean novels, not postcolonial novels, making the pair postcolonial novels and border-crossing a mismatch.
All of the following statements, if true, would weaken the passage's claim about the relationship between mainstream English-language fiction and Indian Ocean novels EXCEPT:
the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by a postcolonial nostalgia for an idyllic past
the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by an Orientalist imagination of its cultural crudeness.
very few mainstream English-language novels have historically been set in American and European metropolitan centres.
most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white, male experience of travel and adventure.
most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white, male experience of travel and adventure.
The passage's claim about mainstream English-language fiction is that it centres Europe and the US, assumes a background of Christianity and whiteness, and features places like Paris and New York. Option D, stating that most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white, male experience, actually reinforces the passage's claim rather than weakening it.
All of the following claims contribute to the "remapping" discussed by the passage, EXCEPT:
Indian Ocean novels have gone beyond the specifics of national concerns to explore rich regional pasts.
the world of early international trade and commerce was not the sole domain of white Europeans.
cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.
the global south, as opposed to the global north, was the first centre of globalisation.
cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.
The passage's remapping involves showing that the Indian Ocean world was the first centre of globalisation, that it is centred in the global south rather than the global north, and that non-European, non-white characters played active roles in world history and trade. Claiming that cosmopolitanism originated in the West and spread east through globalisation directly contradicts the passage's argument that the Indian Ocean world, which is in the global south, was the original centre of globalisation and cosmopolitan culture.
. . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment. Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.
The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the "American system" using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the "small is beautiful" movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.
There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.
For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the "agile" manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise "individuals and interactions over processes and tools". By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.
But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.
History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don't get too organised.
We can infer from the passage that medieval crafts guilds resembled mass production in that both:
did not necessarily promote creativity.
discouraged innovation by restricting entry through strict rules.
did not always employ egalitarian production processes.
focused excessively on product quality.
did not necessarily promote creativity.
The passage states that medieval craft guilds were hierarchical, with long apprenticeships that may have knocked the innovative spirit out of young workers by the time they could set up on their own. This shows that guilds, despite being associated with crafts, did not necessarily foster creativity, just as mass production, focused on efficiency and consistency, also does not necessarily promote creativity. Both systems, in their own way, suppressed individual creative input.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Mass production is not described in the passage as restricting entry, this is a feature specific to guilds, not something shared by both.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage does not discuss egalitarian production processes for either guilds or mass production, this is not the basis of comparison being drawn.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Mass production is associated with efficiency and consistency, not necessarily an excessive focus on quality, so this is not a shared trait between the two systems.
Why Option A is Correct: Both guilds and mass production are shown to not necessarily encourage creativity, guilds through their hierarchical apprenticeship structure, and mass production through its prioritisation of efficiency over individual judgment.
Key Takeaway: When comparing two systems mentioned in a passage, identify the precise shared outcome the passage implies, rather than assuming surface-level similarities that aren't explicitly supported.
Which one of the following statements is NOT inconsistent with the views stated in the passage?
We need to support the crafts; only then can we retain the creativity intrinsic to their production.
Creativity in the crafts could be stifled if the market for artisan goods becomes too organised.
The Arts and Crafts movement was initially inspired by the "American system" of production.
The agile movement in software is a throwback to the tenets of the medieval crafts guilds.
Creativity in the crafts could be stifled if the market for artisan goods becomes too organised.
The passage ends by stating that craft workers can thrive in the modern era only if they don't get too organised, drawing on the example of guilds becoming monopolistic and hierarchical. This directly supports the idea that an overly organised market for crafts could stifle the very creativity crafts are meant to nurture.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not suggest that support for crafts is the only way to retain creativity, it instead cautions that crafts and creativity are not automatically linked, especially if crafts become too organised.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage states the Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction against the American system of standardised mass production, not inspired by it.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The agile movement is presented as a positive contrast to the hierarchical structure of medieval guilds, not as a throwback to their tenets.
Why Option B is Correct: This aligns directly with the passage's closing caution that craft workers can thrive only if they avoid becoming too organised, implying that excessive organisation could stifle creativity.
Key Takeaway: For "not inconsistent" questions, find the option that directly echoes a specific claim in the passage rather than one that contradicts or misattributes a causal relationship.
The author questions the ability of crafts to create substantial employment opportunities presently because:
the low scale of crafts production will not be able to absorb the mass of redundant labour.
regulatory requirements could make it difficult for small crafts outfits to compete.
workers made redundant by automation are unlikely to opt for crafts-related work.
crafts guilds tend to resist new entrants and are unlikely to accept large numbers of trainees.
regulatory requirements could make it difficult for small crafts outfits to compete.
The passage states that in a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage, implying small crafts outfits will struggle to compete under such regulatory requirements, limiting their ability to scale up and create substantial employment.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not frame the issue in terms of absorption capacity for redundant labour directly, it specifically raises regulatory hurdles as the structural challenge.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage raises a question about whether workers in automated sectors can be retrained for crafts, but this is posed as an open question, not stated as the reason the author doubts crafts' employment potential.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This refers to a separate historical point about guilds resisting new entrants, not the specific present-day employment concern the author raises about regulatory hoops favouring large companies.
Why Option B is Correct: This matches the passage's specific point about regulatory hoops giving large companies an advantage, directly explaining the author's doubt about crafts' ability to create substantial employment.
Key Takeaway: Locate the exact reasoning given in the passage for a stated doubt or concern, rather than a plausible but unstated alternative explanation.
The most recent revival in interest in the crafts is a result of the emergence of all of the following EXCEPT:
support for individual creations as opposed to mass-produced objects.
concerns about the environmental impact of mass production.
a niche market for discerning buyers of quality products.
a greater interest in buying locally produced goods.
support for individual creations as opposed to mass-produced objects.
The passage attributes the most recent crafts revival specifically to growing awareness of the environmental impact of conventional industry. Support for individual creations over mass-produced objects is mentioned earlier as a general appeal of crafts and a separate market category, not specifically as the cause of the most recent revival.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage explicitly attributes the emerging third crafts movement to environmental impact concerns about conventional industry.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage explicitly mentions a market of consumers willing to pay a premium for quality goods, a niche market for discerning buyers, as one of the existing reasons crafts persist.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage explicitly mentions consumers wanting to support local workers as one of the markets driving interest in crafts.
Why Option A is Correct: Support for individual creations over mass production is a general, ongoing appeal of crafts mentioned earlier in the passage, not specifically identified as a cause of the most recent revival, making it the exception.
Key Takeaway: Distinguish between general, long-standing appeals of a phenomenon and the specific, recent causes the passage attributes to its latest resurgence.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free." . . .
What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . .
The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.
According to this passage, which one of the following statements best describes the significance of archaeology for historians?
Archaeology helps historians to locate the oldest civilisations in history.
Archaeology helps historians to ascertain factual accuracy.
Archaeology helps historians to carry out their primary duty.
Archaeology helps historians to interpret historical facts.
Archaeology helps historians to ascertain factual accuracy.
The passage states that the historian is entitled to rely on auxiliary sciences like archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics for establishing basic facts such as dates and locations. This is described as a necessary condition of the historian's work, not his essential function, meaning archaeology helps establish factual accuracy rather than carrying out the historian's primary interpretive duty.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not mention locating the oldest civilisations as a function of archaeology in this context, this is a general association with archaeology that the passage does not make.
Why Option B is Correct: The passage explicitly classifies archaeology as an auxiliary science used to establish basic facts, meaning it helps historians confirm accuracy of dates, places and events.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly distinguishes between establishing facts, for which auxiliary sciences are used, and the historian's primary function, which is interpretation and selection. Archaeology helps with the former, not the latter.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage does not associate archaeology with interpretation, interpretation is what the historian does after the basic facts are established, and it is this interpretive function the author considers the historian's essential role.
Key Takeaway: When a passage distinguishes between a necessary condition and an essential function, the auxiliary tool belongs to the former category and cannot be credited with the latter.
All of the following, if true, can weaken the passage's claim that facts do not speak for themselves, EXCEPT:
the truth value of a fact is independent of the historian who expresses it.
a fact, by its very nature, is objective and universal, irrespective of the context in which it is placed.
facts, like truth, can be relative: what is fact for person X may not be so for person Y.
the order in which a series of facts is presented does not have any bearing on the production of meaning.
facts, like truth, can be relative: what is fact for person X may not be so for person Y.
The passage argues that facts do not speak for themselves because the historian selects, arranges and contextualises them, giving them meaning. Options A, B and D, if true, would all weaken this claim by suggesting facts have objective, independent meaning regardless of how they are presented. Option C, saying facts can be relative and subjective, actually supports the passage's claim that facts are not objective and self-evident, rather than weakening it.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: If the truth value of a fact is independent of the historian expressing it, this would suggest facts have an objective truth that exists outside the historian's framing, weakening the passage's claim that historians give meaning to facts through selection.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: If facts are objective and universal irrespective of context, this would directly contradict the passage's claim that context and arrangement determine what facts mean.
Why Option C is Correct: If facts can be relative and vary between individuals, this reinforces rather than weakens the passage's argument that facts do not carry universal, self-evident meaning, making this the exception.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: If the order in which facts are presented has no bearing on meaning, this would directly contradict the passage's specific point that it is the historian's selection and arrangement of facts that shapes their meaning.
Key Takeaway: In "weaken except" questions, find the option that supports the passage's claim rather than contradicting it, since supporting a claim cannot weaken it.
If the author of the passage were to write a book on the Battle of Hastings along the lines of his/her own reasoning, the focus of the historical account would be on:
exploring the socio-political and economic factors that led to the Battle.
producing a detailed timeline of the various events that led to the Battle.
deriving historical facts from the relevant documents and inscriptions.
providing a nuanced interpretation by relying on the auxiliary sciences.
exploring the socio-political and economic factors that led to the Battle.
The passage argues that the historian's essential function is not factual accuracy but interpretation, selection and arrangement, giving floor to the facts that matter and deciding their context. An account written along these lines would focus on why the battle mattered, exploring the socio-political and economic factors that led to it, rather than cataloguing dates and timelines.
Why Option A is Correct: This matches the author's view that the historian's primary function is to give meaning to facts through interpretation, contextualisation and selection, which in a book about the Battle of Hastings would mean examining the factors that made the battle historically significant.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Producing a detailed timeline is precisely what the passage associates with the auxiliary sciences and with getting basic facts right, which the author describes as a necessary condition but not the historian's primary role.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Deriving historical facts from documents and inscriptions is what positivists do, and the author explicitly critiques this as the common-sense view that reduces history to a corpus of ascertained facts rather than meaningful interpretation.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: While the author mentions auxiliary sciences like archaeology, their role is limited to establishing factual accuracy, not providing a nuanced interpretation. The interpretation comes from the historian's own analytical work.
Key Takeaway: When asked how an author would apply their own argument, identify which approach most closely mirrors the method the author explicitly champions rather than the methods they criticise.
All of the following describe the "common-sense view" of history, EXCEPT:
real history can be found in ancient engravings and archival documents.
only the positivist methods can lead to credible historical knowledge.
history is like science: a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality.
history can be objective like the sciences if it is derived from historical facts.
history is like science: a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality.
The common-sense view of history, as described in the passage, is associated with positivism, the belief that facts are objective, found in documents and inscriptions, and form the hard core of history. The passage attributes the description of science as a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality to Professor Talcott Parsons, and uses it to argue that the historian is necessarily selective, which is actually the author's own counter-argument against the common-sense view.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states that historical facts are available in documents, inscriptions and so on, directly associating the common-sense view with finding history in such archival sources.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage describes the positivists as contributors to the cult of facts and the common-sense view, so the positivist method is directly associated with this view.
Why Option C is Correct: This describes the author's own counter-position, not the common-sense view. The author uses Parsons' formulation to argue that history, like science, is selective and interpretive, which directly contradicts the common-sense view that history is a corpus of objective facts.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The common-sense view treats history as something that can be made objective by grounding it in facts, mirroring scientific method, which is why positivists sought to claim history as a science.
Key Takeaway: Be careful not to attribute to the view being critiqued the very counter-argument the author uses to critique it, since these belong to opposite sides of the passage's argument.
In 1982, a raging controversy broke out over a forest act drafted by the Government of India. This act sought to strengthen the already extensive powers enjoyed by the forest bureaucracy in controlling the extraction, disposal and sale of forest produce. It also gave forest officials greater powers to strictly regulate the entry of any person into reserved forest areas. While forest officials justified the act on the grounds that it was necessary to stop the continuing deforestation, it was bitterly opposed by representatives of grassroots organisations, who argued that it was a major violation of the rights of peasants and tribals living in and around forest areas. . . .
The debate over the draft forest act fuelled a larger controversy over the orientation of state forest policy. It was pointed out, for example, that the draft act was closely modelled on its predecessor, the Forest Act of 1878. The earlier Act rested on a usurpation of rights of ownership by the colonial state which had little precedent in precolonial history. It was further argued that the system of forestry introduced by the British—and continued, with little modification, after 1947—emphasised revenue generation and commercial exploitation, while its policing orientation excluded villagers who had the most longstanding claim on forest resources. Critics called for a complete overhaul of forest administration, pressing the government to formulate policy and legislation more appropriate to present needs. . . .
That debate is not over yet. The draft act was shelved, though it has not as yet been formally withdrawn. Meanwhile, the 1878 Act (as modified by an amendment in 1927) continues to be in operation. In response to its critics, the government has made some important changes in forest policy, e.g., no longer treating forests as a source of revenue, and stopping ecologically hazardous practices such as the clearfelling of natural forests. At the same time, it has shown little inclination to meet the major demand of the critics of forest policy—namely, abandoning the principle of state monopoly over forest land by handing over areas of degraded forests to individuals and communities for afforestation.
. . . [The] 1878 Forest Act itself was passed only after a bitter and prolonged debate within the colonial bureaucracy, in which protagonists put forward arguments strikingly similar to those being advanced today. As is well known, the Indian Forest Department owes its origin to the requirements of railway companies. The early years of the expansion of the railway network, c. 1853 onwards, led to tremendous deforestation in peninsular India owing to the railway's requirements of fuelwood and construction timber. Huge quantities of durable timbers were also needed for use as sleepers across the newly laid tracks. Inexperienced in forestry, the British called in German experts to commence systematic forest management. The Indian Forest Department was started in 1864, with Dietrich Brandis, formerly a Lecturer at Bonn, as the first Inspector General of Forests. The new department needed legislative backing to function effectively, and in the following year, 1865, the first forest act was passed. . . .
Which one of the following best encapsulates the reason for the "raging controversy" developing into a "larger controversy"?
The 1982 draft forest act replicated colonial measures of control and regulation of forest resources.
The 1982 draft forest act was unjustifiably defended by forest officials in the face of bitter opposition by grassroots organisations.
The 1982 draft forest act violated the rights of tribals and peasants who lived in and around forest areas.
The 1982 draft forest act further enabled the commercial exploitation of forest resources by the forest bureaucracy.
The 1982 draft forest act replicated colonial measures of control and regulation of forest resources.
The passage states that the 1982 act was modelled on the 1878 Forest Act, which itself rested on a colonial usurpation of ownership rights with little precedent in precolonial history. This colonial continuity is what expanded the controversy from being about the specific 1982 act into a larger debate about the orientation of state forest policy as a whole.
Why Option A is Correct: This captures the key link the passage draws, that the 1982 act mirrored colonial control mechanisms from 1878, which is precisely what fuelled the broader debate over the entire orientation of forest policy.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This describes a detail about the controversy, forest officials defending the act, but it does not explain why the controversy grew into a larger debate about forest policy's broader history and orientation.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This restates the grassroots organisations' objection to the 1982 act specifically, but does not address why the debate expanded into a larger historical controversy about colonial-era policy.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This is a specific criticism of forest administration's commercial focus, but it is a sub-point within the larger controversy, not the encompassing reason the controversy grew larger.
Key Takeaway: When asked why a specific controversy expanded into a larger one, find the point in the passage that explicitly connects the specific event to the broader historical or structural issue.
All of the following, if true, would weaken the narrative presented in the passage EXCEPT that:
certain tribal groups in India are responsible for climate change because their sustenance has historically depended on mass scale deforestation.
before British rule, peasants and tribal groups were denied access to forest resources by Indian rulers and their administrations.
the timber requirement for railway works in nineteenth century India was met through import from China, in exchange for spices.
nineteenth century German forestry experts were infamous for violating the rights of indigenous communities that lived in forest regions.
nineteenth century German forestry experts were infamous for violating the rights of indigenous communities that lived in forest regions.
The passage's narrative blames the colonial era forest department, started under German expert Dietrich Brandis, for imposing exploitative forest policies, and broadly sympathises with peasants and tribals' rights being violated. Saying German experts were infamous for violating indigenous rights would actually support the passage's narrative rather than weaken it, since the passage's critique of colonial forestry assumes precisely this kind of rights violation.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If tribal groups themselves were responsible for mass deforestation, this would weaken the narrative's framing of villagers as having a legitimate, sustainable claim to forest resources.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If precolonial Indian rulers also denied peasants and tribals access to forest resources, this would weaken the passage's implicit suggestion that colonial control over forests had little precedent in precolonial history.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If timber needs were met through imports rather than domestic deforestation, this would weaken the narrative's claim that railway expansion caused the deforestation that prompted forest department formation.
Why Option D is Correct: This statement aligns with, rather than weakens, the passage's critical narrative about colonial forestry's harmful, rights-violating practices, so it does not contradict or weaken the passage's argument.
Key Takeaway: For "weaken except" questions, check whether each statement actually opposes the passage's framing, since one option may simply restate or support the passage's existing critique instead of weakening it.
According to the passage, which one of the following is not common to the 1878 Forest Act and the 1982 draft forest act?
Both sparked controversy and debate among the various stakeholders.
Both reflect a colonial mindset.
Both resulted in large scale deforestation.
Both sought to establish the state's monopoly over forest resources.
Both resulted in large scale deforestation.
The passage does not state that the 1878 Act caused large scale deforestation, in fact deforestation is attributed earlier to railway expansion before the act was passed, and the act was a response meant to manage forest resources, not a direct cause of mass deforestation itself.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not common): Both acts are explicitly described as sparking controversy, the 1982 act among grassroots organisations and forest officials, and the 1878 act within the colonial bureaucracy itself.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not common): The passage states the 1982 draft act was closely modelled on the 1878 Act, both reflecting the same colonial approach to forest control.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not common): Both acts are described as strengthening state control and ownership over forest resources, continuing the principle of state monopoly.
Why Option C is Correct: Large scale deforestation is attributed to railway expansion preceding the 1865 and 1878 Acts, not to the acts themselves, making this the feature not common or accurately attributable to both acts.
Key Takeaway: Be careful not to confuse a historical cause mentioned in the passage, like railway-driven deforestation, with the effects of a specific legislative act discussed afterward.
According to the passage, which one of the following reforms is yet to happen in India's forest policies?
Recognising the state's claim to forest land use.
A ban on deforestation.
Recognising the significance of forests to ecology.
Involving local people in cultivating forests.
Involving local people in cultivating forests.
The passage states that the government has stopped treating forests purely as revenue sources and has ended ecologically hazardous practices like clearfelling, but it has shown little inclination to hand over degraded forest areas to individuals and communities for afforestation, meaning involving local people in cultivating forest land remains an unmet demand.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage indicates the opposite has happened, the government still holds onto its monopoly over forest land rather than relinquishing this claim, this option misstates the situation as already reformed.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not mention a full ban on deforestation as a reform that has or has not happened, this specific claim is not addressed.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage states the government has stopped ecologically hazardous practices like clearfelling, which reflects movement toward recognising ecological significance, this reform has already happened, unlike what the question asks for.
Why Option D is Correct: This matches the passage's explicit statement that the government has shown little inclination to hand over forest land to individuals and communities, meaning local involvement in cultivation remains an unfulfilled demand.
Key Takeaway: Distinguish between reforms the passage says have already occurred and the one specific demand it explicitly states remains unmet.
The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call "externalities." Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.
Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.
Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called "the talking machine," would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators…discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison's original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first "programmable" loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.
We live under the gathering storm of modern history's most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.
Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….
Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.
The author lists all of the following examples as "externalities" of major technical advances EXCEPT:
build-up of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere
cooling and de-humidifying of factories through air-conditioning
application of the Jacquard loom to modern IT programming
extension of the phonograph to large-scale recording of music
cooling and de-humidifying of factories through air-conditioning
The passage identifies externalities as unintended consequences or secondary effects of technological advances. Air-conditioning's cooling and de-humidifying of factories was the original intended use of the technology, not an unintended consequence. All the other options describe secondary, unintended effects of inventions.
Which of the following best conveys the main point of the first paragraph?
The secondary effects of most major technological advances in the past, especially if they were unintended, have turned out to be beneficial.
The full impact of technological advances cannot be estimated in the short run as the ripple effects often extend far beyond the original intent.
It is important to judge an invention not by its immediate outcomes, but by the holistic impact of its secondary effects.
The entire impact of a technological advance should be evaluated by the boost its secondary effects gives to generating further technological advances.
The full impact of technological advances cannot be estimated in the short run as the ripple effects often extend far beyond the original intent.
The first paragraph uses the Gutenberg printing press example to show how one technological advance triggered a chain of consequences, literacy requiring spectacles, which drove investment in lenses, which led to telescopes and microscopes, that were far removed from the original intent and difficult to predict in advance.
Carrier, Babbage, and Edison are mentioned in the passage to illustrate the author's point that
the secondary effect of past inventions mostly resulted in the creation of new inventions.
these inventors could not have visualised the eventual impact of their inventions on society.
despite the original intention, the unintended consequences of their inventions were largely beneficial.
inventions typically end up being used for entirely different purposes than the intended ones.
these inventors could not have visualised the eventual impact of their inventions on society.
The passage mentions Carrier, Babbage and Edison specifically to show that their inventions had consequences and applications that went well beyond what they had originally envisioned, Carrier's air-conditioning transforming migration patterns, Edison's phonograph becoming a music medium, and Babbage's work inspired by toys setting the stage for programmable technology.
We can assume that the author would support all of the following views EXCEPT:
While technological advances in the past have had innocuous or beneficial outcomes, more recent advances have the potential to be more threatening globally.
The by-products of leaded fuel, rather than the fuel itself, were responsible for the build-up of carbon-related gases in the atmosphere.
It has become far easier for people today to bring out innovations with dire worldwide consequences than it was earlier.
The emissions caused by the large-scale use of leaded fuel ought to have been addressed earlier than they were.
While technological advances in the past have had innocuous or beneficial outcomes, more recent advances have the potential to be more threatening globally.
The passage explicitly states that the potential health threats of leaded fuel were visible as early as the 1920s, unlike the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon during the early Industrial Revolution. The passage's overall arc moves from innocuous or beneficial externalities in the past to increasingly threatening ones as technology becomes more accessible. The author does not claim that past advances had innocuous outcomes while more recent ones are threatening, as a blanket statement.
Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) have haunted humanity since the very beginning of the computer age. Hitherto, these fears focused on machines using physical means to kill, enslave or replace people. But over the past couple of years, new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.
Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren't inscribed in our DNA. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws. Gods aren't physical realities. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures….What would happen once a non-human intelligence becomes better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws and scriptures? When people think about Chatgpt and other new AI tools, they are often drawn to examples like schoolchildren using AI to write their essays. What will happen to the school system when kids do that? But this kind of question misses the big picture. Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake news stories and scriptures for new cults…
Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews. Although there is no indication that AI has any consciousness or feelings of its own, to foster fake intimacy with humans, it is enough if the AI can make them feel emotionally attached to it….
What will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions? Previous tools like the printing press and radio helped spread the cultural ideas of humans, but they never created new cultural ideas of their own. AI is fundamentally different. AI can create completely new ideas, completely new culture….Of course, the new power of AI could be used for good purposes as well. I won't dwell on this because the people who develop AI talk about it enough….
We can still regulate the new AI tools, but we must act quickly. Whereas nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, AI can make exponentially more powerful AI.… Unregulated AI deployments would create social chaos, which would benefit autocrats and ruin democracies. Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. When AI hacks language, it could destroy our ability to have meaningful conversations, thereby destroying democracy …. And the first regulation I would suggest is to make it mandatory for AI to disclose that it is an AI. If I am having a conversation with someone, and I cannot tell whether it is a human or an AI—that's the end of democracy. This text has been generated by a human. Or has it?
The author identifies all of the following as dire outcomes of the capture of language by AI EXCEPT that it could
spawn a completely new culture through its ability to create new ideas and opinions.
out-strip human creativity and endeavours in the spheres such as art and music and, in the formulation of laws.
eventually subvert democratic processes through the mass creation and spread of fake political content and news.
apply its mastery of language to create strong emotional ties which could exacerbate the polarization of political views.
apply its mastery of language to create strong emotional ties which could exacerbate the polarization of political views.
The author identifies the polarisation of political views as a danger, but not through AI creating strong emotional ties. The passage says AI could form intimate relationships and change opinions and worldviews through the power of intimacy, but it does not specifically claim this will exacerbate political polarisation. The author's concern is about AI changing views through fake intimacy, not about the polarisation that might result from it, making this a subtle step beyond what the passage actually states.
The author terms language "the operating system of our civilization" for all the following reasons EXCEPT that it
can influence political views and opinions as it engenders close emotional ties among people.
is the basis of AI tools like ChatGPT which can be used to generate academic content and opinion.
is fundamental to the articulation and spread of human values and culture in our society.
has laid the foundation for the creation of cultural artefacts through writing and telling of stories.
is the basis of AI tools like ChatGPT which can be used to generate academic content and opinion.
The author calls language the operating system of civilisation because it is the medium through which human values, culture, laws, religious beliefs and social institutions are created and transmitted. ChatGPT and AI tools are the threats to this operating system, not part of the reason language is called the operating system, so its use in generating academic content is not a reason for the metaphor.
We can infer that the author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?
People's fears of the dangers of students using ChatGPT and other new AI tools are unfounded.
The commonly expressed fear that future AI developments will fatally harm humans is unfounded.
Apart from its drawbacks, AI tools have been beneficial in boosting technological and industrial advance worldwide.
One of the biggest casualties from the spread of unregulated AI is likely to be the democratic process.
One of the biggest casualties from the spread of unregulated AI is likely to be the democratic process.
The passage explicitly argues that unregulated AI would create social chaos benefiting autocrats and ruining democracies, and that AI hacking language could destroy meaningful conversation and thereby destroy democracy. This is the most clearly stated and developed concern in the passage.
The tone of the passage could best be described as
cautionary, because the author lays out some adverse effects of the proliferation of unregulated AI tools.
prescient, as the author analyses the future impact of the use of new AI tools on crucial areas of our society and culture.
alarmist, because the passage discusses scenarios of the influence of new AI tools on language and human emotions.
quizzical, as the passage poses several questions, concluding with the question of whether or not the passage content has been generated by AI.
cautionary, because the author lays out some adverse effects of the proliferation of unregulated AI tools.
The passage methodically identifies serious risks from AI, mass production of fake political content, AI forming fake intimate relationships to manipulate opinions, destruction of democratic processes, and the need for urgent regulation. The tone is a warning about specific adverse effects, which is cautionary.
In [my book "Searches"], I chronicle how big technology companies have exploited human language for their gain. We let this happen, I argue, because we also benefit somewhat from using the products. It's a dynamic that makes us complicit in big tech's accumulation of wealth and power: we're both victims and beneficiaries. I describe this complicity, but I also enact it, through my own internet archives: my Google searches, my Amazon product reviews and, yes, my ChatGPT dialogues. . . .
People often describe chatbots' textual output as "bland" or "generic" — the linguistic equivalent of a beige office building. OpenAI's products are built to "sound like a colleague", as OpenAI puts it, using language that, coming from a person, would sound "polite", "empathetic", "kind", "rationally optimistic" and "engaging", among other qualities. OpenAI describes these strategies as helping its products seem "professional" and "approachable". This appears to be bound up with making us feel safe . . .
Trust is a challenge for artificial intelligence (AI) companies, partly because their products regularly produce falsehoods and reify sexist, racist, US-centric cultural norms. While the companies are working on these problems, they persist: OpenAI found that its latest systems generate errors at a higher rate than its previous system. In the book, I wrote about the inaccuracies and biases and also demonstrated them with the products. When I prompted Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to produce a picture of engineers and space explorers, it gave me an entirely male cast of characters; when my father asked ChatGPT to edit his writing, it transmuted his perfectly correct Indian English into American English. Those weren't flukes. Research suggests that both tendencies are widespread.
In my own ChatGPT dialogues, I wanted to enact how the product's veneer of collegial neutrality could lull us into absorbing false or biased responses without much critical engagement. Over time, ChatGPT seemed to be guiding me to write a more positive book about big tech — including editing my description of OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, to call him "a visionary and a pragmatist". I'm not aware of research on whether ChatGPT tends to favor big tech, OpenAI or Altman, and I can only guess why it seemed that way in our conversation. OpenAI explicitly states that its products shouldn't attempt to influence users' thinking. When I asked ChatGPT about some of the issues, it blamed biases in its training data — though I suspect my arguably leading questions played a role too. When I queried ChatGPT about its rhetoric, it responded: "The way I communicate is designed to foster trust and confidence in my responses, which can be both helpful and potentially misleading." . . .
OpenAI has its own goals, of course. Among them, it emphasizes wanting to build AI that "benefits all of humanity". But while the company is controlled by a non-profit with that mission, its funders still seek a return on their investment. That will presumably require getting people using products such as ChatGPT even more than they already are — a goal that is easier to accomplish if people see those products as trustworthy collaborators.
On the basis of the purpose of the examples in the passage, pick the odd one out from the following AI-generated responses mentioned in the passage:
"When I queried ChatGPT about its rhetoric, it responded: 'The way I communicate is designed to foster trust and confidence in my responses, which can be both helpful and potentially misleading'."
"...when my father asked ChatGPT to edit his writing, it transmuted his perfectly correct Indian English into American English."
"Over time, ChatGPT seemed to be guiding me to write a more positive book about big tech — including editing my description of OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, to call him 'a visionary and a pragmatist'."
"When I prompted Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to produce a picture of engineers and space explorers, it gave me an entirely male cast of characters..."
"When I queried ChatGPT about its rhetoric, it responded: 'The way I communicate is designed to foster trust and confidence in my responses, which can be both helpful and potentially misleading'."
Options B, C and D are all examples where an AI tool produced an output diverging from reality due to bias, error, or undue influence, things the system did to the user. Option A is different — it is the chatbot's own self-aware statement about its communication style being designed to build trust while potentially misleading, which is a reflection on its rhetorical design rather than an instance of biased or incorrect output.
Why Option A is Correct (odd one out): This is the chatbot explaining its own communication strategy, not an example of bias or factual error like the other three instances.
Why Option B is not the odd one out: This is a concrete instance of the chatbot producing biased output, transmuting correct Indian English into American English, reflecting a US-centric bias.
Why Option C is not the odd one out: This is an instance of biased influence, the chatbot nudging the author toward a more favourable description of Sam Altman.
Why Option D is not the odd one out: This is an instance of biased output, the image generator producing an entirely male cast for a gender-neutral prompt.
Key Takeaway: When asked to identify the odd one out among examples, check whether each example is serving the same illustrative function — here, three are instances of biased or incorrect AI output, while one is the AI describing its own design philosophy.
All of the following statements from the passage affirm the disjunct between the claims about AI made by tech companies and what AI actually does EXCEPT:
"When I prompted Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to produce a picture of engineers and space explorers, it gave me an entirely male cast of characters . . ."
"In my own ChatGPT dialogues, I wanted to enact how the product's veneer of collegial neutrality could lull us into absorbing false or biased responses without much critical engagement."
"I'm not aware of research on whether ChatGPT tends to favor big tech, OpenAI or Altman, and I can only guess why it seemed that way in our conversation."
"It's a dynamic that makes us complicit in big tech's accumulation of wealth and power: we're both victims and beneficiaries."
"I'm not aware of research on whether ChatGPT tends to favor big tech, OpenAI or Altman, and I can only guess why it seemed that way in our conversation."
Statements A, B and D all point to gaps between what AI companies claim and what AI actually produces or causes — gender bias in images, the illusion of neutrality masking biased outputs, and complicity in big tech's wealth accumulation. Option C is the author admitting uncertainty about whether ChatGPT favours big tech, which does not affirm a disjunct — it expresses doubt rather than evidence of a gap between claim and reality.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This affirms the disjunct, showing a clear contradiction between claims of neutrality and the actual male-biased output.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This affirms the disjunct by describing how AI's apparent neutrality can mask the absorption of biased responses.
Why Option C is Correct: The author here is explicitly unsure and merely speculating, so this statement does not affirm any specific gap between AI's claims and its actual behaviour.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This affirms the disjunct by pointing to the gap between AI's stated benefit to users and the actual complicity it creates between users and big tech's profit motives.
Key Takeaway: When asked for the exception to a pattern, look for the one statement that expresses uncertainty or doubt rather than making an affirmative claim about a contradiction.
The author compares AI-generated texts with "a beige office building" for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
AI generates generalised responses that lack specificity and nuance.
AI tends to blame its training data when scrutinised for its biases.
AI aims to foster a feeling of trust and credibility among its users.
AI-generated texts often exhibit a warm, polite, and collegial tone.
AI tends to blame its training data when scrutinised for its biases.
The beige office building comparison is about the bland, generic, polished tone of AI output designed to feel trustworthy and safe. Reasons A, C and D directly relate to this blandness and trust-building tone. Option B, about blaming training data when scrutinised, is a separate behaviour related to deflecting responsibility for bias, not to the bland tone itself.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): Lack of specificity and nuance is precisely what makes AI text feel beige and generic.
Why Option B is Correct: Blaming training data is about evading accountability for bias, unrelated to the linguistic blandness the beige building metaphor describes.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): Fostering trust and credibility is exactly the purpose behind the bland, professional and approachable tone the metaphor captures.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): A warm, polite, collegial tone is the literal quality being compared to a beige building — generically pleasant but lacking character.
Key Takeaway: Trace metaphors back to the exact qualities they are meant to capture, and eliminate options describing unrelated behaviours even if they appear elsewhere in the passage.
The author of the passage is least likely to agree with which one of the following claims?
The neutrality of AI is conducive to critical thinking.
ChatGPT favours AI companies and their officials, like Sam Altman, in its responses.
When we use AI, we become accomplices to the exploitative practices of big tech companies.
The neutrality of AI is motivated by economic considerations.
The neutrality of AI is conducive to critical thinking.
The author repeatedly argues that AI's appearance of neutrality is actually a tool that lulls users into absorbing biased or false content without critical engagement. So the author would strongly disagree that AI's neutrality helps critical thinking, since the author's whole point is the opposite.
Why Option A is Correct: The author explicitly argues that AI's veneer of neutrality discourages, rather than helps, critical engagement, making this the claim the author would least agree with.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate): The author suggests this happened in their own experience with ChatGPT, so they would not disagree with this claim.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate): The author states directly that using these products makes users complicit, so they would agree with this.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate): The author points out that OpenAI's funders need a return on their investment, tying neutrality and trust-building to economic motives, so the author would agree with this.
Key Takeaway: For "least likely to agree" questions, find the option that contradicts the author's central argument most directly, rather than one merely absent from the passage.
Once a society accepts a secular mode of creativity, within which the creator replaces God, imaginative transactions assume a self-conscious form. The tribal imagination, on the other hand, is still to a large extent dreamlike and hallucinatory. It admits fusion between various planes of existence and levels of time in a natural and artless manner. In tribal stories, oceans fly in the sky as birds, mountains swim in water as fish, animals speak as humans and stars grow like plants. Spatial order and temporal sequence do not restrict the narrative. This is not to say that tribal creations have no conventions or rules, but simply that they admit the principle of association between emotion and the narrative motif. Thus stars, seas, mountains, trees, men and animals can be angry, sad or happy.
It might be said that tribal artists work more on the basis of their racial and sensory memory than on the basis of a cultivated imagination. In order to understand this distinction, we must understand the difference between imagination and memory. In the animate world, consciousness meets two immediate material realities: space and time. We put meaning into space by perceiving it in terms of images. The image-making faculty is a genetic gift to the human mind—this power of imagination helps us understand the space that envelops us. With regard to time, we make connections with the help of memory; one remembers being the same person today as one was yesterday.
The tribal mind has a more acute sense of time than the sense of space. Somewhere along the history of human civilization, tribal communities seem to have realized that domination over territorial space was not their lot. Thus, they seem to have turned almost obsessively to gaining domination over time. This urge is substantiated in their ritual of conversing with their dead ancestors: year after year, tribals in many parts of India worship terracotta or carved-wood objects representing their ancestors, aspiring to enter a trance in which they can converse with the dead. Over the centuries, an amazingly sharp memory has helped tribals classify material and natural objects into a highly complex system of knowledge. . .
One of the main characteristics of the tribal arts is their distinct manner of constructing space and imagery, which might be described as 'hallucinatory'. In both oral and visual forms of representation, tribal artists seem to interpret verbal or pictorial space as demarcated by an extremely flexible 'frame'. The boundaries between art and non-art become almost invisible. A tribal epic can begin its narration from a trivial everyday event; tribal paintings merge with living space as if the two were one and the same. And within the narrative itself, or within the painted imagery, there is no deliberate attempt to follow a sequence. The episodes retold and the images created take on the apparently chaotic shapes of dreams. In a way, the syntax of language and the grammar of painting are the same, as if literature were painted words and painting were a song of images.
Non-human living forms exhibit human emotions in tribal narratives because tribal narratives:
have a self-conscious form.
accommodate existential fluidity.
abandon all rules and regulations.
are rudimentary and underdeveloped.
accommodate existential fluidity.
The passage describes tribal narratives admitting fusion between different planes of existence and levels of time, allowing oceans to fly and mountains to swim, all driven by an association between emotion and narrative motif. This fluid, boundary-crossing quality, where objects and animals can take on human emotions without being restricted by spatial or temporal logic, is best described as accommodating existential fluidity.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly contrasts tribal imagination with the self-conscious form that arises once a society adopts secular, individual creativity, so tribal narratives are described as the opposite of self-conscious.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage clarifies that tribal creations do have conventions and rules, just different ones based on emotional association, so saying they abandon all rules misrepresents the passage.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage does not characterise tribal narratives as rudimentary or underdeveloped, it presents their fluid, hallucinatory quality as a distinct and rich mode of imagination, not as deficient.
Why Option B is Correct: This matches the passage's description of tribal narratives freely fusing planes of existence and time, where animals and natural elements take on human emotions without the constraints of ordinary logic.
Key Takeaway: Look for terms that precisely capture a passage's specific descriptive language, rather than options that contradict explicit statements elsewhere in the text.
On the basis of the passage, which one of the following explains the main difference between imagination and memory?
Imagination is a genetic gift to humans whereas memory is central to human consciousness.
Tribal groups value memory over imagination when it comes to creating art and literature.
Imagination needs to be cultivated whereas memory is more intuitive because it is racial and sensory.
Imagination helps humans make sense of space while memory helps them understand time.
Imagination helps humans make sense of space while memory helps them understand time.
The passage explains that imagination helps put meaning into space through images, while memory helps us connect with time, recognising ourselves as the same person across days. This direct mapping, imagination to space and memory to time, is the core distinction the passage draws.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This restates two separate facts about imagination and memory but does not capture the core functional distinction, that one relates to space and the other to time.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This describes tribal groups' preference, a separate point made later in the passage, not the general explanation of the difference between imagination and memory itself.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This refers to a different distinction, between cultivated imagination and racial or sensory memory in tribal artists specifically, not the general definitional difference asked about.
Why Option D is Correct: This precisely reflects the passage's statement that imagination helps us understand space while memory helps us connect across time.
Key Takeaway: When a passage gives a direct definitional contrast, prefer the option that mirrors that exact contrast over options describing related but distinct ideas.
Which one of the following best explains why tribals in India worship their dead ancestors?
For tribals, conversing with the dead becomes a way of seeking control over time.
Tribals show respect to their ancestors through terracotta and carved-wood objects.
Tribals possess a sophisticated knowledge system that is based on memory.
Tribals seek territorial domination over the spaces that they inhabit.
For tribals, conversing with the dead becomes a way of seeking control over time.
The passage states that tribal communities, realising domination over territorial space was not their lot, turned to gaining domination over time instead, and that the ritual of conversing with dead ancestors substantiates this urge for control over time.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This describes the form the worship takes, terracotta and carved-wood objects, but not the underlying reason the passage gives for why tribals perform this worship.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This refers to a separate point about tribals' knowledge system built from memory, not the specific explanation for ancestor worship.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states tribals turned away from seeking territorial domination, making this the opposite of what the passage argues.
Why Option A is Correct: This matches the passage's explicit reasoning, that the ritual of conversing with dead ancestors is a manifestation of the tribal urge to dominate time, since domination over space was unavailable to them.
Key Takeaway: Trace a described ritual back to the specific motivation the passage assigns to it, rather than to incidental details about how the ritual is performed.
All of the following, if true, would weaken the passage's claims about the hallucinatory tribal imagination EXCEPT that:
tribal art excludes the depiction of the mundane reality of everyday life and objects.
tribal narratives exhibit a chronological beginning, middle, and end.
tribal stories depict the natural world in accordance with rational scientific knowledge.
shamanic rituals involving conversing with the dead often feature in tribal stories.
shamanic rituals involving conversing with the dead often feature in tribal stories.
Options A, B and C all describe scenarios that would directly contradict the passage's claims about tribal art being hallucinatory, fluid, and unbound by sequence or scientific rationality. Option D, mentioning that shamanic rituals of conversing with the dead feature in tribal stories, is consistent with the passage's own description of tribal ancestor worship and trance rituals, so it does not weaken the claims about hallucinatory imagination.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If tribal art excluded depictions of everyday life, this would contradict the passage's claim that the boundary between art and non-art is invisible and that epics can begin from trivial everyday events.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If tribal narratives followed a clear chronological structure, this would contradict the passage's claim that there is no deliberate attempt to follow a sequence in tribal narratives.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If tribal stories depicted nature according to rational scientific knowledge, this would contradict the passage's examples of oceans flying and mountains swimming, which is explicitly dreamlike and not scientifically rational.
Why Option D is Correct: This aligns with the passage's own description of tribal rituals involving trance-like conversations with ancestors, so it does not weaken the hallucinatory characterisation, it actually supports it.
Key Takeaway: In a "weaken except" question, watch for an option that actually restates something the passage already claims, since this will not weaken but rather support the argument.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU's 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . .
The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as "Lupin", a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix's original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . .
Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box.
In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. "Cultural sovereignty" is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous.
They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent's non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
Based on information provided in the passage, all of the following are true, EXCEPT:
European television productions have the potential to become global hits.
Netflix has been able to transform itself into a truly European entity.
only half of Netflix's original programming in the EU is now produced in America.
national broadcasters dominate in the EU in terms of total television viewing hours.
Netflix has been able to transform itself into a truly European entity.
The passage describes Netflix as having offices across Europe but notes that ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives, and that Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than domestic rivals. This is the opposite of being a truly European entity.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly cites shows like Lupin becoming global hits, directly supporting the claim that European productions have the potential to become global hits.
Why Option B is Correct: The passage explicitly says Netflix has American executives making final decisions, that its content is sometimes stripped of local quirks, and that it used to have an imperial commissioning model. None of this supports the idea that Netflix has transformed into a truly European entity.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states that now only half of Netflix's original content is American, down from 75% in 2015, directly supporting this claim.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states that streaming services account for only about a third of all viewing hours even in well-established markets, with national broadcasters dominating, directly supporting this claim.
Key Takeaway: For "all true except" questions, identify the option that directly contradicts something explicitly stated in the passage rather than the one that is simply not mentioned.
The author sees the rise of Netflix in Europe as:
a unifying force.
filling an entertainment gap.
a looming cultural threat.
an economic threat.
a unifying force.
The final paragraph explicitly argues that Netflix and similar American companies actually facilitate European integration by pumping the same content into homes across the continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour. The author directly says Europeans should not be worried about Netflix as a cultural hegemon and presents it as a unifying force.
Why Option A is Correct: The final paragraph makes the author's position explicit, that Netflix sharing content across European borders is analogous to sharing a currency or vaccines, framing it as a mechanism for cultural integration and unity.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not frame Netflix primarily as filling an entertainment gap, it frames it as facilitating cultural integration across Europe.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: While the passage acknowledges that European politicians see Netflix as a cultural threat, the author explicitly says they should not be worried, indicating that the author does not share this view.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage does not present Netflix as an economic threat to Europe, it focuses on cultural concerns and then explicitly dismisses them in favour of a unification narrative.
Key Takeaway: When an author explicitly contradicts a concern raised earlier in the passage and offers an alternative framing, use the author's own conclusion rather than the concerns they are addressing.
Based only on information provided in the passage, which one of the following hypothetical Netflix shows would be most successful with audiences across the EU?
An Italian comedy show hosted by an international star.
An original German TV science fiction production.
A murder mystery drama set in North Africa and France.
A trans-Atlantic romantic drama set in Europe and America.
A murder mystery drama set in North Africa and France.
The passage states that whodunits and historical dramas featuring Romans and tribesmen have more universal appeal across borders, while comedy sometimes struggles to cross borders. A murder mystery drama set in North Africa and France combines the universally appealing whodunit format with a cross-national European and African setting, maximising cross-border appeal.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly notes that comedy sometimes struggles to travel across borders, making an Italian comedy show a risky choice for EU-wide success regardless of the host's fame.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage notes that German television is not always built for export, making an original German science fiction production a less likely candidate for EU-wide success.
Why Option C is Correct: This combines two features the passage identifies as universally appealing, the whodunit format and a setting spanning two distinct cultural spaces that are nonetheless within the broad European and Mediterranean world, making it most likely to succeed across EU audiences.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage warns that Netflix content can get stuck in an uncanny mid-Atlantic valley when it tries to appeal too broadly, and a trans-Atlantic romantic drama set across Europe and America seems more likely to fall into this trap of having local quirks stripped out.
Key Takeaway: Apply the passage's specific criteria for cross-border success directly to each option, since the correct answer will satisfy more of those criteria than the others.
Which one of the following research findings would weaken the author's conclusion in the final paragraph?
Research shows there is a wide variance in the popularity and viewing of Netflix shows across different EU countries.
Research shows that Netflix has been gradually losing market share to other streaming television service providers.
Research shows that Netflix hits produced in France are very popular with North American audiences.
Research shows that older women across the EU enjoy watching romantic comedies on Netflix, whereas younger women prefer historical fiction dramas.
Research shows there is a wide variance in the popularity and viewing of Netflix shows across different EU countries.
The author's final paragraph argues that Netflix facilitates European integration by providing common cultural content across borders, implying that people across EU countries are watching the same shows. If research showed wide variance in the popularity of Netflix shows across different EU countries, this would directly undermine the claim that Netflix is creating a shared cultural experience that unifies Europeans.
Why Option A is Correct: If Netflix viewing patterns vary widely across EU countries, the shows are not in fact being shared across a common European audience, directly contradicting the author's claim that Netflix makes culture a cross-border endeavour.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Netflix losing market share to other streaming services would not weaken the argument that Netflix facilitates European cultural integration, since the argument is about what Netflix does, not whether Netflix is commercially dominant.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Netflix shows being popular in North America is irrelevant to the author's conclusion about Netflix facilitating European integration specifically.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Different demographic groups within the EU watching different genres is not the same as different countries watching different content. Even if older women and younger women prefer different genres, they could both be watching Netflix, which still supports the cross-border cultural connection the author describes.
Key Takeaway: To weaken a conclusion about shared cultural experience, find evidence that the sharing is not actually occurring uniformly across the relevant group.
Oftentimes, when economists cross borders, they are less interested in learning from others than in invading their garden plots. Gary Becker, for instance, pioneered the idea of human capital. To do so, he famously tackled topics like crime and domesticity, applying methods honed in the study of markets to domains of nonmarket life. He projected economics outward into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo economicus. Becker was a picture of the imperial economist in the heyday of the discipline's bravura.
Times have changed for the once almighty discipline. Economics has been taken to task, within and beyond its ramparts. Some economists have reached out, imported, borrowed, and collaborated—been less imperial, more open. Consider Thomas Piketty and his outreach to historians. The booming field of behavioral economics—the fusion of economics and social psychology—is another case. Having spawned active subfields, like judgment, decisionmaking and a turn to experimentation, the field aims to go beyond the caricature of Rational Man to explain how humans make decisions….
It is important to underscore how this flips the way we think about economics. For generations, economists have presumed that people have interests—"preferences," in the neoclassical argot—that get revealed in the course of peoples' choices. Interests come before actions and determine them. If you are hungry, you buy lunch; if you are cold, you get a sweater. If you only have so much money and can't afford to deal with both your growling stomach and your shivering, which need you choose to meet using your scarce savings reveals your preference.
Psychologists take one look at this simple formulation and shake their heads. Increasingly, even some mainstream economists have to admit that homo economicus doesn't always behave like the textbook maximizer; irrational behavior can't simply be waved away as extraeconomic expressions of passions over interests, and thus the domain of other disciplines…. This is one place where the humanist can help the economist. If narrative economics is going to help us understand how rivals duke it out, who wins and who loses, we are going to need much more than lessons from epidemiological studies of viruses or intracranial stimuli.
Above all, we need politics and institutions. Shiller [the Nobel prize winning economist] connects perceptions of narratives to changes in behavior and thence to social outcomes. He completes a circle that was key to behavioral economics and brings in storytelling to make sense of how perceptions get framed. This cycle (perception to behavior to society) was once mediated or dominated by institutions: the political parties, lobby groups, and media organizations that played a vital role in legitimating, representing, and excluding interests. Yet institutions have been stripped from Shiller's account, to reveal a bare dynamic of emotions and economics, without the intermediating place of politics.
We can infer from the passage that the term "homo economicus" refers to someone who:
is not influenced by the preferences and choices of others.
believes in borrowing and collaborating with other disciplines in their work.
makes rational decisions based on their own preferences.
maximises their opportunities based on nonmarket choices.
makes rational decisions based on their own preferences.
The passage explains that the term refers to a model in economics where people's interests, or preferences, come before and determine their actions and choices, which is essentially the idea of the rational maximiser making decisions based on personal preferences.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not characterise homo economicus through independence from others' preferences, the discussion centres on a person's own preferences driving their own choices.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This is the opposite of homo economicus, the passage shows homo economicus as a closed, self-contained model resistant to incorporating other disciplines, like in Becker's imperial approach to economics.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage describes homo economicus through market-based rational decision making, not specifically through nonmarket choices, which is rather Becker's broader application of economic reasoning to nonmarket domains.
Why Option C is Correct: This matches the passage's explanation, that interests determine choices, with the classic example given being the trade-off between buying lunch or a sweater based on one's own preferences.
Key Takeaway: Define a term strictly based on the passage's own explanation, rather than associations from the surrounding context that describe related but distinct ideas.
"Times have changed for the once almighty discipline." We can infer from this statement and the associated paragraph that the author is being:
sarcastic about how economists, who earlier shunned other disciplines, are now beginning to incorporate them in their analyses.
disparaging of economists' inability to precisely predict market behaviour, and are now borrowing from other disciplines to remedy this.
judgemental about the ability of economic tools to accurately manage crises leading to the downfall of this lofty science.
critical of economists' openly borrowing and collaborating across disciplines to explain how humans make decisions.
sarcastic about how economists, who earlier shunned other disciplines, are now beginning to incorporate them in their analyses.
The phrase "once almighty discipline" carries an ironic tone, highlighting how economics, which once resisted outside influence under figures like Becker, is now embracing collaboration with other disciplines like history and psychology. The tone is sarcastic about this shift in posture from imperial dominance to openness.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The author's point is not about economists' inability to predict markets, but about their changing openness to other disciplines, this option misattributes the reason for the shift.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This frames the tone as judgemental about economic tools failing during crises, which is not the focus of this specific statement or paragraph, the paragraph is about disciplinary openness, not crisis management failure.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This claims the author is critical of the new collaborative approach, but the broader passage actually treats this shift positively as something that helps economics, especially through behavioral economics.
Why Option A is Correct: This captures the sarcastic tone toward how a once insular, imperial discipline is now embracing the very disciplines it had previously shunned.
Key Takeaway: Identify tone by closely reading the specific word choices, like "once almighty," which signal irony about a reversal in attitude or behaviour.
The author critiques Shiller's approach to behavioural economics for:
ignoring the marginal role that media and politics play in influencing people's behaviour.
denigrating the role of institutions while creating a link between behavioural economics and perceptions.
linking emotions and rational behaviour without considering the mediation of social institutions.
relying excessively on storytelling as the main influence on the formation of perceptions.
linking emotions and rational behaviour without considering the mediation of social institutions.
The author critiques Shiller specifically for stripping institutions out of his account, leaving only a bare dynamic of emotions and economics without the mediating role that politics and institutions traditionally played between perception, behaviour and society.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not say Shiller ignores a "marginal role" of media and politics, it specifically says institutions have been stripped entirely from his account, a stronger claim than just a marginal role being ignored.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This is close but reverses the framing slightly, the critique is that Shiller links perceptions to behaviour while removing institutions, not that he denigrates institutions while still creating the link, the issue is the absence of institutional mediation itself.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The critique is not about excessive reliance on storytelling itself, storytelling is presented as a useful tool, the actual critique is about the missing institutional mediation in the overall framework.
Why Option C is Correct: This precisely matches the passage's critique, that Shiller connects emotions and economic behaviour without the mediating role of political and social institutions that once linked perception, behaviour and society.
Key Takeaway: When a critique involves an omission, focus on exactly what is said to be missing from the model, rather than rephrasing it as a different kind of flaw.
In the first paragraph the author is making the point that economists like Becker:
benefitted from the application of their principles and concepts to non-economic phenomena.
had begun to borrow concepts from other disciplines but were averse to the latter applying economic principles.
used economics to analyse non-market behaviour, without incorporating perspectives from other areas of inquiry.
tended to guard their discipline from poaching by academics from other subject areas.
used economics to analyse non-market behaviour, without incorporating perspectives from other areas of inquiry.
The passage describes how Becker applied economic methods to nonmarket domains like crime and domesticity, projecting economics outward, but did not let other disciplines like anthropology or history inform his own economic thinking, keeping the discipline closed in one direction.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not focus on whether Becker personally benefited from this one-directional application, it focuses on the imbalance of borrowing.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This reverses the passage's claim, Becker did not borrow from other disciplines at all, he only exported economic methods outward without importing ideas back.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage does not describe Becker as guarding against other academics studying economic topics, it describes him as unwilling to incorporate non-economic perspectives into his own analysis, a different point.
Why Option C is Correct: This matches the passage's description of Becker analysing nonmarket behaviour, like crime and marriage, using economic tools, while never importing insights from other disciplines into his economic thinking.
Key Takeaway: Pay attention to the direction of intellectual exchange described in a passage, exporting one's own methods is different from refusing to import others' methods, and a precise answer should reflect exactly which direction is being criticised.
Moutai has been the global booze sensation of the decade. A bottle of its Flying Fairy, which sold in the 1980s for the equivalent of a dollar, now retails for $400. Moutai's listed shares have soared by almost 600% in the past five years, outpacing the likes of Amazon ...
It does this while disregarding every Western marketing mantra. It is not global, has meagre digital sales and does not appeal to millennials. It scores pitifully on environmental, social and government measures. In the Boy Scout world of Western business, it would leave a bad taste in more ways than one.
Moutai owes its intoxicating success to three factors—not all of them easy to emulate. First, it profits from Chinese nationalism. Moutai is known as the "national liquor". It was used to raise spirits and disinfect wounds in Mao's Long March. It was Premier Zhou Enlai's favourite tipple, shared with Richard Nixon in 1972. Its centuries-old craftsmanship—it is distilled eight times and stored for years in earthenware jars—is a source of national pride. It also claims to be hangover-proof, which would make it an invention to rival gunpowder ...
Second, it chose to serve China's super-rich rather than its middle class. Markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middle-class wallets. And the country's premium market is massive—at 73m-strong, bigger than the population of France, notes Euan McLeish of Bernstein, an investment firm, and still less crowded with prestige brands than advanced economies. Moutai is to these well-heeled drinkers what vintage champagne is to the rest of the world ...
Third, Moutai looks beyond affluent millennials and digital natives. The elderly and the middle-aged, it found, can be just as lucrative. Its biggest market now is (male) drinkers in their mid-30s. Many have no siblings, thanks to four decades of China's one-child policy—which also means their elderly parents can splash out on weddings and banquets. Moutai is often a guest of honour.
Moutai has succeeded thanks to nationalism, elitism and ageism, in other words—not in spite of this unholy trinity. But it faces risks. The government is its largest shareholder—and a meddlesome one. It appears to want prices to remain stable. Exorbitantly priced booze is at odds with its professed socialist ideals. Yet minority investors—including many foreign funds—lament that Moutai's wholesale price is a third of what it sells for in shops. Raising it could boost the company's profits further. Instead, in what some see as a travesty of corporate governance, its majority owner has plans to set up its own sales channel ...
In the long run, its biggest risk may be millennials. As they grow older, health concerns, work-life balance and the desire for more wholesome pursuits than binge-drinking may curb the "Ganbei!" toasting culture [heavy drinking] on which so much of the demand for Moutai rests. For the time being, though, the party goes on.
The phrase "would make it an invention to rival gunpowder" has been used in the passage in a sense that is
literal
substantive
metaphorical
synonymical
metaphorical
The claim that being hangover-proof would make Moutai "an invention to rival gunpowder" is clearly not meant literally, since a hangover cure is incomparable in historical or scientific significance to gunpowder. The phrase is used humorously to suggest that if Moutai truly were hangover-proof, it would be seen as a great Chinese invention, playing on national pride since gunpowder is one of China's most celebrated historical inventions.
Which one of the following is both a reason for Moutai's success as well as a possible threat to that success?
Chinese love of liquor filled celebration.
Government involvement in its business.
Its appeal to the rich.
Its appeal to the older age group.
Its appeal to the older age group.
Moutai's appeal to older age groups, those in their mid-30s and beyond, is presented as one of its key success factors since it looked beyond millennials and digital natives. However, the passage also identifies millennials as Moutai's biggest long-term risk, since as they age, health concerns and changing social habits may reduce the heavy drinking culture on which Moutai's demand depends. The appeal to older drinkers is both the current success factor and the implicit vulnerability as today's younger generation ages differently.
In the context of the passage, it is most likely that the author refers to Moutai's marketing strategy as "the unholy trinity" because
there is nothing holy about marketing techniques for liquor.
it profits from Chinese nationalist feelings.
it contradicts the Western strategy of marketing.
it exposes the firm to long term risks.
it contradicts the Western strategy of marketing.
The passage calls nationalism, elitism and ageism Moutai's "unholy trinity" because together they form a strategy that contradicts every Western marketing principle, ignoring millennials, digital sales, global reach and environmental responsibility, yet succeeds wildly in China. The phrase highlights the deliberate inversion of Western marketing orthodoxy.
In the context of the passage, we can infer that to succeed in the liquor industry in China, a marketing firm must consider all of the following factors affecting the Chinese liquor market EXCEPT that
there is money to be made from marketing to the middle class.
the government may control the pricing of products.
there are few competitors to meet the demands of high end liquor consumers.
the competition for winning over the middle class is very stiff.
there is money to be made from marketing to the middle class.
The passage explicitly states that markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middle-class wallets, directly suggesting that there is no money to be made from marketing to the middle class in China's competitive environment. So a firm must consider that the middle class market is extremely difficult and not necessarily profitable.
The job of a peer reviewer is thankless. Collectively, academics spend around 70 million hours every year evaluating each other's manuscripts on the behalf of scholarly journals — and they usually receive no monetary compensation and little if any recognition for their effort. Some do it as a way to keep abreast with developments in their field; some simply see it as a duty to the discipline. Either way, academic publishing would likely crumble without them.
In recent years, some scientists have begun posting their reviews online, mainly to claim credit for their work. Sites like Publons allow researchers to either share entire referee reports or simply list the journals for whom they've carried out a review…. The rise of Publons suggests that academics are increasingly placing value on the work of peer review and asking others, such as grant funders, to do the same. While that's vital in the publish-or-perish culture of academia, there's also immense value in the data underlying peer review. Sharing peer review data could help journals stamp out fraud, inefficiency, and systemic bias in academic publishing.…..Peer review data could also help root out bias. Last year, a study based on peer review data for nearly 24,000 submissions to the biomedical journal eLife found that women and non-Westerners were vastly underrepresented among peer reviewers. Only around one in every five reviewers was female, and less than two percent of reviewers were based in developing countries…. Openly publishing peer review data could perhaps also help journals address another problem in academic publishing: fraudulent peer reviews. For instance, a minority of authors have been known to use phony email addresses to pose as an outside expert and review their own manuscripts.…
Opponents of open peer review commonly argue that confidentiality is vital to the integrity of the review process; referees may be less critical of manuscripts if their reports are published, especially if they are revealing their identities by signing them. Some also hold concerns that open reviewing may deter referees from agreeing to judge manuscripts in the first place, or that they'll take longer to do so out of fear of scrutiny….
Even when the content of reviews and the identity of reviewers can't be shared publicly, perhaps journals could share the data with outside researchers for study. Or they could release other figures that wouldn't compromise the anonymity of reviews but that might answer important questions about how long the reviewing process takes, how many researchers editors have to reach out to on average to find one who will carry out the work, and the geographic distribution of peer reviewers.
Of course, opening up data underlying the reviewing process will not fix peer review entirely, and there may be instances in which there are valid reasons to keep the content of peer reviews hidden and the identity of the referees confidential. But the norm should shift from opacity in all cases to opacity only when necessary.
According to the passage, which of the following is the only reason NOT given in favour of making peer review data public?
It will deal with peer review fraud such as authors publishing bogus reviews of their work.
It would highlight the gender and race biases currently existing in the selection of reviewers.
It could address various inefficiencies and fraudulent practices that continue in academic publishing process.
It can tackle the problem of selecting appropriately qualified reviewers for academic writing.
It can tackle the problem of selecting appropriately qualified reviewers for academic writing.
The passage gives three reasons for making peer review data public, tackling fraud such as phony reviews, addressing gender and geographic bias among reviewers, and improving efficiency in the publishing process. The passage never mentions selecting appropriately qualified reviewers as a benefit of open peer review data.
All of the following are listed as reasons why academics choose to review other scholars' work EXCEPT:
It helps them keep current with cutting-edge ideas in their academic disciplines.
Some use this as an opportunity to publicise their own review work.
It is seen as a form of service to the academic community.
It is seen as an opportunity to expand their influence in the academic community.
It is seen as an opportunity to expand their influence in the academic community.
The passage gives two reasons academics choose to review others' work, keeping abreast with developments in their field, and seeing it as a duty to the discipline. It also mentions that some post reviews online to claim credit for their work, which corresponds to option
B. The passage never mentions expanding influence in the academic community as a motivation for reviewing.
Based on the passage we can infer that the author would most probably support
more careful screening to ensure the recruitment of content-familiar peer reviewers.
preserving the anonymity of reviewers to protect them from criticism.
publicising peer review data rather than the publication of actual reviews.
greater transparency across the peer review process in academic publishing.
greater transparency across the peer review process in academic publishing.
The passage argues that the norm should shift from opacity in all cases to opacity only when necessary, advocating for greater transparency across the peer review process while acknowledging limited cases where confidentiality is warranted.
According to the passage, some are opposed to making peer reviews public for all the following reasons EXCEPT that it
makes reviewers reluctant to review manuscripts, especially if these are critical of the submitted work.
leaves the reviewers unexposed to unwarranted and unjustified criticism or comments from others.
deters reviewers from producing honest, if critical, reviews that are vital to the sound publishing process.
delays the manuscript evaluation process as reviewers would take longer to write their reviews.
leaves the reviewers unexposed to unwarranted and unjustified criticism or comments from others.
The passage lists three arguments opponents make against open peer review, that reviewers may be less critical if their reports are published, that open reviewing may deter reviewers from agreeing to participate, and that reviewers may take longer out of fear of scrutiny. The passage never says opponents argue that open review exposes reviewers to unjustified criticism, quite the opposite, the concern raised is about reviewers being more guarded because their own reviews become public.
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.
All of the following are advanced by the author as reasons why non-geographers disregard geographic influences on human phenomena EXCEPT their:
lingering impressions of past geographic analyses that were politically offensive.
belief in the central role of humans, unrelated to physical surroundings, in influencing phenomena.
disciplinary training which typically does not include technical knowledge of geography.
dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
The passage gives three reasons why non-geographers dismiss geographic explanations, the racist associations of past geographic analyses, the tradition of privileging human contingency and individual decisions, and the lack of technical geographic knowledge in most academic training. The author does not list dismissal of geographical explanations as a reason for that same dismissal, since this would be circular and is simply a description of the behaviour being explained rather than a reason for it.
The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
their rejection of the role of biogeographic factors in social and cultural phenomena.
their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
the importance they place on the role of individual decisions when studying human phenomena
their labelling of geographic explanations as deterministic.
their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
The passage criticises non-geographer scholars for rejecting geographic explanations as deterministic, for privileging individual decisions and contingency over geographic factors, and for lacking technical geographic knowledge. The passage does not criticise them for making outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena, it focuses entirely on their methodological bias against geographic explanation.
All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
individual dictat and contingency were not the causal factors for the use of fur clothing in some very cold climates.
agricultural practices changed drastically in the Australian continent after it was colonised.
while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have bio-geographic origins.
several academic studies of human phenomena in the past involved racist interpretations.
while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have bio-geographic origins.
The passage does not claim that most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice while only some have biogeographic origins. The passage argues that both geographic and non-geographic factors influence human phenomena, with some cases explained by geography and others by culture or individual decisions, without claiming a hierarchy of frequency between them.
The examples of the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians are offered in the passage to show:
human resourcefulness across cultures in adapting to their surroundings.
how physical circumstances can dictate human behaviour and cultures.
that despite geographical isolation, traditional societies were self-sufficient and adaptive.
how environmental factors lead to comparatively divergent paths in livelihoods and development.
human resourcefulness across cultures in adapting to their surroundings.
The Inuit example shows that warm fur clothing developed in the Arctic because of the cold environment, not because of any cultural or individual decision. The Australian example shows that hunter-gatherer lifestyles persisted because the continent lacked domesticable native species, not because of cultural choice. Both examples are used to demonstrate that physical and environmental circumstances can directly determine human behaviour and cultural practices.
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.
None of the following statements, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage EXCEPT:
some scientific instruments may be classified as both receptive and interventional in their functions.
because of the relatively recent entry of computational machinery in mathematics, the field is only now beginning to develop a scientific culture.
like telescopy, microscopy has also sought to move beyond the visible spectrum to be able to detect objects that are invisible in that spectrum.
Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity was accomplished without the help of instruments.
because of the relatively recent entry of computational machinery in mathematics, the field is only now beginning to develop a scientific culture.
The passage argues that mathematics has only recently come to rely on computational machinery, but it does not claim that mathematics lacked any scientific culture before this — only that its style of instrumental embodiment came later. So a statement claiming mathematics is "only now beginning to develop a scientific culture" does not contradict the passage, since the passage never claims mathematics had no scientific culture prior to computation.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage acknowledges biology's instruments are interventional while astronomy's are receptive, but it does not rule out instruments having both functions, so this does not necessarily contradict the passage.
Why Option B is Correct: This does not contradict the passage because the passage's claim about mathematics is restricted to it adopting computational machinery late, not about mathematics lacking a scientific culture altogether.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This would contradict the passage's framing of astronomy as purely receptive and biology as interventional, since it suggests microscopy also shares astronomy's drive to detect things beyond ordinary perception, blurring the contrast the passage sets up.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This would contradict the passage's broader argument that science today depends on continuous instrumental progress, since it presents a major scientific discovery achieved without instruments.
Key Takeaway: For "does not contradict except" questions, test whether each statement actually clashes with what the passage explicitly claims, rather than with a loosely related idea.
All of the following statements may be rejected as valid inferences from the passage EXCEPT:
interventionist instruments, or instruments that intervene directly in scientific inquiry, are different from embodied instruments, or instruments that embody scientific inquiry.
the advances in telescopy made by Newton with reflecting telescopes allowed early modern astronomers to observe the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter.
the author distinguishes between the receptive and interventionist uses of instruments in the sciences by comparing astronomy and biology, respectively.
Isaac Newton's experiments with reflecting telescopes were the earliest versions of the "new astronomy" referred to in the passage.
the author distinguishes between the receptive and interventionist uses of instruments in the sciences by comparing astronomy and biology, respectively.
The passage explicitly draws this comparison, presenting astronomy as a "receptive" science dependent on detecting emissions, and biology, especially through biotechnology, as more "interventional" with instruments like gene-splicing. This is a valid inference directly supported by the passage's structure.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not introduce or support a distinction between "interventionist instruments" and "embodied instruments" as described, so this is not a valid inference.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage attributes the early modern observations like the phases of Venus and satellites of Jupiter to Galileo's telescopes, not Newton's reflecting telescopes, which came later and only "expanded upon" earlier magnificational-resolution capacity.
Why Option C is Correct: This matches the passage's explicit contrast between astronomy's receptive instrumentation and biology's interventional instrumentation, citing Fox-Keller's account.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Newton's reflecting telescopes are described as an improvement within the existing optical telescope trajectory, not as part of the "new astronomy," which the passage defines as beginning with radio astronomy and extending to the full electromagnetic spectrum.
Key Takeaway: When asked which inference can be accepted rather than rejected, look for the option that mirrors the passage's own stated comparisons most precisely, without misattributing facts or inventing distinctions.
To which one of the following instruments would the characterisations of instruments in the passage be least applicable?
Milestone
Kitchen oven
Scalpel
Saxophone
Milestone
The passage's discussion centers on scientific instruments that are either receptive, detecting emissions, or interventional, actively manipulating their object of study. A milestone is not an instrument used to observe or intervene in anything — it is simply a marker, making it least applicable to the characterisations of instruments described.
Why Option A is Correct: A milestone has no observational or interventional function, unlike all the other listed items, so it does not fit the instrument characterisation at all.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate): A kitchen oven actively intervenes in its contents through heat, similar to interventional instruments described in the passage.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate): A scalpel is a clearly interventional tool, directly acting upon its object, fitting the passage's description of interventional instruments.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate): A saxophone, while not scientific, still functions as an instrument producing an effect through direct engagement, making it more applicable than a milestone, which has no functional engagement at all.
Key Takeaway: When asked which item is least applicable to a described characteristic, look for the one item that fundamentally lacks the core function being discussed, rather than the one that is simply unrelated to science.
Which one of the following observations is a valid conclusion to draw from the statement that "the sciences involved are today highly instrumentalised and could not progress successfully without constant improvements upon the respective instrumental trajectories"?
The use of instruments in scientific trajectories must be respected in order to see successful progress in them.
The growth of scientific technologies has led to the embodiment of progress in the trajectories of improvement.
In both astronomy and microbiology, progress has been the consequence of improvements in the instruments they use.
Highly instrumentalised work in the sciences has resulted in the progressive improvement of scientific constants.
In both astronomy and microbiology, progress has been the consequence of improvements in the instruments they use.
The statement says the sciences are highly instrumentalised and cannot progress without constant improvement of their instruments. The passage's two examples of this are astronomy and microbiology, both of which are explicitly described as depending on their respective instrumental advances for progress.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This makes a vague normative claim about "respecting" instrument use, which is not what the passage's statement is about — the statement is descriptive of dependency, not prescriptive about respect.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This uses circular and vague phrasing about "embodiment of progress in trajectories of improvement" without grounding the conclusion in the specific examples the passage gives.
Why Option C is Correct: This directly reflects the passage's point, grounding the abstract claim in the two concrete disciplines — astronomy and microbiology — both shown to progress through their respective instrumental trajectories.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This talks about "progressive improvement of scientific constants," which is not a concept discussed anywhere in the passage and misreads the original statement.
Key Takeaway: When asked to draw a valid conclusion from a quoted line, prefer the option that stays closest to the specific examples and language used in the passage, and discard options using vague or invented terminology.
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.
All of the following inferences are supported by the passage EXCEPT that:
examples like runs on banks and toilet paper scrambles illustrate how contagion can amplify local choices into system-wide cascades that surprise participants and lead to patterns they did not intend to create.
learning can change the rules that actors face. So, a rare shock can alter payoffs and raise the odds of subsequent large disturbances within the same system, which supports the idea of second-order tail events.
heavy-tailed events make extreme outcomes more frequent and larger than bell curve expectations. This complicates forecasting and risk management in collective settings shaped by contagion and copying behaviour.
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.
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.
The passage uses the example of displaced sports bettors entering the financial market as one possible factor in the COVID-19 market dynamics, framed as "some of these dynamics are potentially attributable" to them. This is explicitly tentative and partial, not a singular, overriding explanation for the market's behaviour.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly discusses runs on banks and toilet paper scrambles as examples of contagion-driven behaviour generating collective outcomes participants did not intend, directly supporting this inference.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage discusses nonstationarity and how a first-order tail event changes the rules and raises the probability of further large disturbances, directly supporting this inference about learning changing the rules actors face.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states heavy-tailed events make extreme outcomes more frequent and larger than bell-curve expectations, supporting this inference about complicating forecasting and risk management.
Why Option D is Correct: The passage attributes market dynamics only partially and tentatively to sports bettors, using the phrase "potentially attributable," and does not claim this was the sole or overriding cause of the recovery, making this inference an overstatement not supported by the passage.
Key Takeaway: Tentative or partial attributions in a passage must not be read as sole or definitive explanations, any inference overstating a partial claim into a complete causal explanation is invalid.
Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
The passage explains how social outcomes generally follow normal distributions. So, extreme events are negligible, and policy should stabilise averages rather than learn from large shocks in fast-changing collective settings.
The passage explains how noise can create order, then shows why complex systems with contagion are vulnerable to heavy-tailed cascades. It also explains why early shocks change rules through nonstationarity with a market illustration during the COVID-19 disruption.
The passage explains how speculative entrants always produce inefficiency after health shocks. Therefore, long-term investors invariably profit when new participants push prices away from fundamentals under pandemic conditions and comparable crises.
The passage explains how nonstationarity works in evolutionary biology and rejects applications in markets or public health because adaptation is exclusive to parasite-host systems and cannot arise in technology-mediated social dynamics.
The passage explains how noise can create order, then shows why complex systems with contagion are vulnerable to heavy-tailed cascades. It also explains why early shocks change rules through nonstationarity with a market illustration during the COVID-19 disruption.
The passage explains how noise can create order through the fish schooling example, then explains heavy-tailed distributions and why complex systems are vulnerable to extreme events, then discusses second-order tail events, and illustrates these with the COVID-19 market example and the concept of nonstationarity through the host-parasite coevolution example.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly argues the opposite, that extreme events do not follow normal distributions and are more frequent than expected, contradicting the idea that extreme events are negligible and policy should only stabilise averages.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage does not claim speculative entrants always produce inefficiency or that long-term investors invariably profit, these are stated as possible outcomes in one specific scenario, not universal conclusions.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly applies nonstationarity to markets and public health, not just biology, and the host-parasite example is used as an analogy to illustrate a broader concept, not as a boundary excluding other settings.
Why Option B is Correct: This captures the passage's full arc, from noise producing order, through heavy-tailed vulnerability and cascading tail events, to the market illustration during COVID-19, and the nonstationarity concept.
Key Takeaway: A summary must capture each stage of the passage's argument in sequence, rather than selecting only one section while misrepresenting or omitting the others.
Which one of the following observations would most strengthen the passage's claim that a first-order tail event raises the probability of further tail events in complex systems?
In epidemic networks, initial super-spreading episodes are isolated spikes after which outbreak sizes match the baseline distribution from independent contact models across comparable cities with no rise in the frequency or size of later extreme clusters.
River discharge records show water levels fit a normal distribution with thin tails that match laboratory data, regardless of storms or floods.
After a major equity crash, researchers find dense clusters of large daily moves for several weeks, with extreme days occurring far more often than in normal circumstances for assets with customarily low volatility profiles.
Following large earthquakes, regional seismic activity returns to baseline within hours with no aftershock sequence once data are adjusted for reporting effects, which suggests independence across events rather than any elevation in subsequent tail probabilities.
After a major equity crash, researchers find dense clusters of large daily moves for several weeks, with extreme days occurring far more often than in normal circumstances for assets with customarily low volatility profiles.
The passage claims that once a first-order tail event occurs, the rules change and the probability of a second-order tail event increases, meaning further extreme events become more frequent. Option C directly supports this by showing that after a major equity crash, dense clusters of large daily moves appear for several weeks, with extreme days occurring far more often than normally expected.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This describes isolated spikes with no subsequent increase in frequency or size, which directly contradicts the passage's claim that first-order tail events raise the probability of further tail events.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This describes thin-tailed normal distributions for river discharge, which is evidence against heavy-tailed behaviour and does not support the claim about tail events increasing further tail event probability.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This describes seismic activity returning to baseline quickly with no aftershock sequence, directly contradicting the passage's specific use of earthquake aftershocks as an example of second-order tail events.
Why Option C is Correct: This directly illustrates the passage's claim by showing that following a major market crash, extreme days cluster and occur far more often than baseline conditions would predict, consistent with a first-order event raising the probability of further tail events.
Key Takeaway: To strengthen a claim about cascading tail events, look for evidence of elevated frequency of extreme outcomes after an initial shock, not just the initial shock itself.
The passage suggests that contact tracing apps could inadvertently raise risky interactions by altering local behaviour. Which one of the assumptions below is most necessary for that suggestion to hold?
Most users uninstall apps within a week, which leaves only highly exposed individuals participating. This neutralises any systematic bias in routing decisions and prevents any predictable change in aggregate contact patterns.
Individuals base movement choices partly on observed infections and on the behaviour of others. So, local responses interact, which turns many small adjustments into large scale patterns that can frustrate the intended aim of risk reduction.
App alerts always include precise location to within one metre and deliver real time updates for all users, which ensures that the data feed is perfectly accurate regardless of privacy settings, power limits, or network conditions.
Urban networks have uniform traffic conditions at all hours, which allows perfectly predictable routing independent of personal choices, social signals, or crowd reactions and, therefore, makes interdependence negligible in city movement decisions.
Individuals base movement choices partly on observed infections and on the behaviour of others. So, local responses interact, which turns many small adjustments into large scale patterns that can frustrate the intended aim of risk reduction.
For contact tracing apps to inadvertently raise risky interactions, it must be the case that individual responses to app alerts interact with each other and scale up into collective patterns that differ from the intended outcome. Without this assumption that local individual choices aggregate into large-scale emergent patterns, the app's intended risk reduction could not paradoxically increase risk.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: If most users uninstall the app, the mechanism through which collective patterns form via widespread behavioural responses would be broken, making the scenario of inadvertent risk increase less plausible rather than supporting it.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Perfect accuracy of app alerts is not a necessary condition for the argument, the concern is about how collective movement patterns emerge from many individual decisions, not about the precision of the data itself.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: If urban networks have uniform traffic independent of personal choices, the interdependence of individual decisions that drives the collective pattern change would not exist, undermining rather than supporting the passage's suggestion.
Why Option B is Correct: This captures the necessary assumption, that individual movement decisions based on app information interact and aggregate, turning many local adjustments into a large-scale pattern that frustrates the app's intended purpose of reducing risk.
Key Takeaway: For assumption questions, identify the minimum condition the argument requires, specifically the mechanism connecting the initial action, here app alerts, to the unintended collective outcome described.
Languages become endangered and die out for many reasons. Sadly, the physical annihilation of communities of native speakers of a language is all too often the cause of language extinction. In North America, European colonists brought death and destruction to many Native American communities. This was followed by US federal policies restricting the use of indigenous languages, including the removal of native children from their communities to federal boarding schools where native languages and cultural practices were prohibited. As many as 75 percent of the languages spoken in the territories that became the United States have gone extinct, with slightly better language survival rates in Central and South America ...
Even without physical annihilation and prohibitions against language use, the language of the "dominant" cultures may drive other languages into extinction; young people see education, jobs, culture and technology associated with the dominant language and focus their attention on that language. The largest language "killers" are English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Hindi, and Chinese, all of which have privileged status as dominant languages threatening minority languages.
When we lose a language, we lose the worldview, culture and knowledge of the people who spoke it, constituting a loss to all humanity. People around the world live in direct contact with their native environment, their habitat. When the language they speak goes extinct, the rest of humanity loses their knowledge of that environment, their wisdom about the relationship between local plants and illness, their philosophical and religious beliefs, as well as their native cultural expression (in music, visual art and poetry) that has enriched both the speakers of that language and others who would have encountered that culture ...
As educators deeply immersed in the liberal arts, we believe that educating students broadly in all facets of language and culture ... yields immense rewards. Some individuals educated in the liberal arts tradition will pursue advanced study in linguistics and become actively engaged in language preservation, setting out for the Amazon, for example, with video recording equipment to interview the last surviving elders in a community to record and document a language spoken by no children.
Certainly, though, the vast majority of students will not pursue this kind of activity. For these students, a liberal arts education is absolutely critical from the twin perspectives of language extinction and global citizenship. When students study languages other than their own, they are sensitized to the existence of different cultural perspectives and practices. With such an education, students are more likely to be able to articulate insights into their own cultural biases, be more empathetic to individuals of other cultures, communicate successfully across linguistic and cultural differences, consider and resolve questions in a way that reflects multiple cultural perspectives, and, ultimately extend support to people, programs, practices, and policies that support the preservation of endangered languages.
There is ample evidence that such preservation can work in languages spiraling toward extinction. For example, Navajo, Cree, and Inuit communities have established schools in which these languages are the language of instruction, and the number of speakers of each has increased.
In the context of the passage, which one of the following hypothetical scenarios, if true, is NOT an example of the kind of loss that occurs when a language becomes extinct?
The Nicobarese language describes 20 different moods of the ocean. By the time the last speaker is educated in a Central Board school, they will have forgotten their language.
The Lamkangs of Manipur have only 3 remaining native speakers of the language. When they die, we will lose one more group from the government list of indigenous tribes.
The Andamanese language has a word to describe someone who has lost a step-sister. When the language dies, we will lose the concept of the word and the emotions it evokes.
The Inuits of Alaska have 35 different words to describe the texture of snow. When the language becomes extinct, we will lose that understanding of nature.
The Lamkangs of Manipur have only 3 remaining native speakers of the language. When they die, we will lose one more group from the government list of indigenous tribes.
The passage describes the loss of a language as a loss of worldview, culture, environmental knowledge, philosophical and religious beliefs, and cultural expression. Option B describes the loss of the last speakers of Lamkangs and the removal of one group from the government list of indigenous tribes, which is an administrative loss, not a loss of knowledge, culture or worldview. Being removed from a government list is a bureaucratic consequence, not the kind of cultural or epistemic loss the passage is concerned with.
Which one of the following hypothetical scenarios, if true, would most strongly undermine the central ideas of the passage?
Most liberal arts students will pursue jobs in publishing and human resource management rather than doctorates in linguistics.
A liberal arts education requires that, in addition to being fluent in English, students gain fluency in two of the top five most spoken languages globally.
Schools that teach endangered languages can preserve the language only for a generation.
Recording a dying language that has only a few remaining speakers freezes it in time: it stops evolving further.
A liberal arts education requires that, in addition to being fluent in English, students gain fluency in two of the top five most spoken languages globally.
The passage argues that a liberal arts education sensitises students to cultural differences, helps them support endangered languages, and produces some specialists who document dying languages. If a liberal arts education only required fluency in the top five most spoken global languages, this would make students more proficient in the very dominant languages the passage identifies as the biggest killers of minority languages, directly contradicting the passage's argument that such an education supports diversity and preservation.
It can be inferred from the passage that it is likely South America had a slightly better language survival rate than North America for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
European colonists allowed children of native speakers to stay at home with their families.
the colonial government was unable to mainstream the locals.
not many native speakers were killed by European colonists.
locals were provided job opportunities in the colonial administration.
locals were provided job opportunities in the colonial administration.
The passage states that South America had a slightly better language survival rate than North America, and it attributes this to differences in the colonial treatment of native populations, specifically the physical annihilation and language restrictions seen in North America. The passage does not mention job opportunities in the colonial administration as a reason for better survival rates in South America.
The author believes that a liberal arts education combined with participation in language preservation empower students in all of the following ways EXCEPT that they will
overcome cultural barriers to communication.
learn different languages.
establish schools to preserve languages spiralling towards extinction.
develop a better understanding of their own culture.
establish schools to preserve languages spiralling towards extinction.
The passage describes several ways a liberal arts education empowers students, articulating cultural biases, empathising with other cultures, communicating across linguistic differences, and supporting policies for language preservation. It also separately mentions that some specialists will set up recording expeditions. However, establishing schools to preserve endangered languages is presented as an example of what preservation efforts look like, specifically the Navajo, Cree and Inuit communities, not as something a liberal arts education equips students to do.
[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.
Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period - the origins, methods of transportation, the prices - but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .
So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .
Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.
Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices' relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.
Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.
It can be inferred that all of the following contributed to a decline in the allure of spices, EXCEPT:
the development of refrigeration techniques.
increase in the availability of spices.
changes in the system of medical treatment.
changes in European cuisine.
increase in the availability of spices.
The passage discusses how refrigeration eliminated the need for spices as anti-bacterial agents, how spices were primarily used in combination with medical knowledge about humoral properties, and how taste and culinary practices changed. An increase in availability of spices would lower their price but does not directly explain why the allure or medical and culinary need for spices declined.
In the context of the passage, the people who heard the story of pepper trees being guarded by snakes would be least likely to arrive at the conclusion that
this is why pepper is so hot.
pepper is costly for good reason.
it is not advisable to go to India to harvest the pepper themselves.
it is no surprise that the pepper supply is so limited.
this is why pepper is so hot.
The story about pepper trees guarded by snakes and burned to harvest peppercorns explains why pepper is scarce and costly and why going to India to harvest it yourself is dangerous, but it says nothing about why pepper is hot. The hotness of pepper is a physical property entirely unrelated to the legend of snakes and burning trees.
In the context of the passage, which one of the following conclusions CANNOT be reached?
The spice trade was a driver of colonial expansion.
India was colonised for its spices and gold.
Tobacco was more marketable than spices.
Colonialism was motivated by the demand for spices.
India was colonised for its spices and gold.
The passage discusses how the spice trade helped fuel European colonialism and inspired voyages of exploration. However, the passage never specifically states that India was colonised for its spices and gold. The passage mentions spices in relation to India but does not discuss gold in the context of Indian colonisation specifically, nor does it state that India was colonised for these two reasons together.
If a trader brought white peppercorns from India to medieval Europe, all of the following are unlikely to happen, EXCEPT:
medieval maps would be used as navigational aids.
Europeans would doubt the story of pepper harvesting.
the price of spices would decrease.
pepper would no longer be considered exotic.
Europeans would doubt the story of pepper harvesting.
The passage explains that medieval Europeans believed peppercorns were shriveled and black because the trees were burned to drive away snakes, which they thought was the only way to harvest pepper. White peppercorns would contradict this story since burning would not produce white peppercorns, so Europeans encountering white peppercorns would have reason to doubt the burning-snake narrative.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more forests and hillsides. "The wolf must be taken in hand," said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. . . .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the 1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the predators' presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who celebrate the predators' return. Farmers' losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals' spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Which one of the following has NOT contributed to the growing wolf population in Lozère?
A decline in the rural population of Lozère.
An increase in woodlands and forest cover in Lozère.
The shutting down of the royal office of the Luparii.
The granting of a protected status to wolves in Europe.
The shutting down of the royal office of the Luparii.
The Luparii royal office was created to catch wolves and completed its job in the 1930s when the last wolf disappeared. The office was an active hunting institution that contributed to wolf eradication, not to wolf population growth. Its shutting down is not mentioned as a factor in the wolf's return, and even if it were no longer active, the passage attributes the wolf's return to specific other factors.
The inhabitants of Lozère have to grapple with all of the following problems, EXCEPT:
lack of educational facilities.
poor rural communication infrastructure.
livestock losses.
decline in the number of hunting licences.
decline in the number of hunting licences.
The passage explicitly lists concerns about local schools, jobs, phone and internet connections, and livestock losses as problems faced by residents of Lozère. A decline in the number of hunting licences is mentioned as a general French trend, but it is presented as a factor contributing to the wolf's return, not as a problem faced by Lozère's inhabitants themselves.
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author's claims?
Having migrated out in the last century, wolves are now returning to Lozère.
Unemployment concerns the residents of Lozère.
Wolf attacks on tourists in Lozère are on the rise.
The old mining sites of Lozère are now being used as grazing pastures for sheep.
Wolf attacks on tourists in Lozère are on the rise.
The passage presents wolf tourism, such as wolf parks, as generating income and jobs in rural areas, offering a potential economic benefit that could balance farmers' losses. If wolf attacks on tourists were rising, this would undermine the economic case for wolf tourism and remove the potential solution the author offers to reconcile the competing interests of farmers and environmentalists.
The author presents a possible economic solution to an existing issue facing Lozère that takes into account the divergent and competing interests of:
politicians and farmers.
environmentalists and politicians.
farmers and environmentalists.
tourists and environmentalists.
politicians and farmers.
The passage concludes by noting that farmers' losses are real but are not the only economic story, and that tourist venues discussing wolves generate income and jobs in rural areas. This is a proposed economic solution that directly addresses the competing interests of farmers, who see wolves as a threat, and environmentalists, who celebrate the wolves' return.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the "zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump. Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western coast.
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world's most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself. They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," Pedler says.
According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they have:
aided in altering an arid environment.
led a revival in preserving the species.
grown fivefold in terms of population.
led to a surge and increase of rainfall.
aided in altering an arid environment.
The passage explains that the bandicoots earned their new nickname, "ecosystem engineers," because their constant digging traps moisture and allows for seed germination, helping the cattle-damaged desert restore itself, directly tying their flattering name to their role in altering and improving the arid environment.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: While the bandicoots are part of a conservation revival effort, the flattering nickname specifically refers to their ecological impact through digging, not to the act of being preserved or revived itself.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage mentions a population increase to about 100, which is a result of the rainfall surge and joey boom, not the reason behind their nickname, which is tied to their ecological digging behaviour.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The bandicoots do not cause rainfall, rainfall surges are described as triggering their population boom, not as a result of their behaviour, this reverses the cause and effect described in the passage.
Why Option A is Correct: This matches the passage's explicit explanation, that their digging traps moisture and enables seed germination, helping restore the cattle-damaged desert, which is why they are now called ecosystem engineers.
Key Takeaway: Trace a nickname or label back to the exact behaviour or impact the passage attributes to it, rather than other facts about the same subject mentioned nearby.
Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western barred bandicoot?
Shallow diggers having an elongated muzzle.
Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and digs.
Look of a rat but with a baby pouch and a slender snout.
Long thin nose, black striped back, pouch for joeys.
Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and digs.
The passage describes the western barred bandicoot as having a long muzzle, black-striped rump, a backward-facing pouch, and the ability to dig shallow camouflaged shelters. Option B incorrectly calls it the smallest "black striped marsupial," when the passage specifically calls it the smallest bandicoot, not the smallest marsupial overall, a broader and unsupported claim.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not representing the bandicoot): This matches the passage's description of shallow digging for shelters and an elongated muzzle.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not representing the bandicoot): This matches the rat-like appearance, backward-facing pouch and slender snout described in the passage.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not representing the bandicoot): This matches the long muzzle, black-striped rump and pouch for carrying joeys described in the passage.
Why Option B is Correct: This incorrectly broadens the description from "smallest bandicoot" to "smallest black striped marsupial," a claim about being the smallest among all marsupials that the passage does not support.
Key Takeaway: Watch for subtly broadened claims, like extending "smallest of its specific type" to "smallest among a broader category," which the passage doesn't actually support.
The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of:
restoring cattle damaged deserts to green landscapes.
ridding the main desert of feral cats and large bilbies.
excluding animals to make the islands predator-free.
barring the entry of invasive species.
barring the entry of invasive species.
The passage describes the exclosures as fenced areas cleared of invasive rabbits and feral cats, designed to keep these harmful, non-native predator species out so that the imported bandicoots could thrive without predation. This matches the general measure of barring entry of invasive species.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: Restoring cattle-damaged deserts to green landscapes is a separate, later effect of the bandicoots' digging behaviour, not the specific purpose of the exclosures themselves.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The exclosures are not described as ridding the main desert of large bilbies, bilbies are mentioned separately as another rare marsupial sharing a different fenced training zone with cats, not removed by the exclosures.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The islands in Shark Bay, not the exclosures on the mainland sanctuary, are the predator-free locations historically, the exclosures are a separate, newer mainland conservation measure.
Why Option D is Correct: This matches the passage's description of exclosures as fenced areas specifically cleared of invasive rabbits and feral cats, directly reflecting the measure of barring invasive species from entering.
Key Takeaway: Match a described measure to the precise location and purpose given in the passage, rather than to a similar but distinct conservation detail mentioned elsewhere.
Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage?
The onslaught of animals, such as cattle, rabbits and housecats, brought in by the British led to the extinction of the western barred bandicoot.
The negligent attitude of the British colonists towards these bandicoots evidenced by the names given to them led to their annihilation.
Marsupials are going extinct due to the colonial era transformation of the ecosystem which also destroyed natural vegetation.
A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes on a remnant island population.
A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes on a remnant island population.
The passage traces the western barred bandicoot's decline due to invasive species brought by colonists, its survival only on isolated islands, and the current conservation effort using descendants of those island survivors to attempt a mainland revival, which is the overall arc the passage builds toward.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This captures only the cause of decline, the invasive species, but omits the passage's larger arc about the current conservation revival effort based on island survivors.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This focuses on the colonists' naming attitude as the cause of near extinction, but the passage attributes the actual decline to invasive predator species, not to the naming itself, which is a minor narrative detail.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This generalises to "marsupials" broadly and to ecosystem transformation, but the passage's specific focus is the western barred bandicoot's near extinction and the targeted conservation effort, not marsupials in general.
Why Option D is Correct: This captures the passage's full arc, the near extinction caused by invasive species, and the current conservation hope resting on the descendants of the surviving island population.
Key Takeaway: A gist should capture both the problem and the passage's central resolution or current effort, not just one half of the narrative.
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.
Which one of the following sets of terms is closest to mapping the key arguments of the passage?
Partisan act - Threatened livelihoods - Toxic algae - Quarter century
Lucrative contracts - Sacrifice zone - Expected lives - Global balance
Mega-infrastructure - Sacrifice zone - Worshipping modernity - Water impoundment
Physical instantiation - Partisan act - Decided democratically - Alternative energy
Mega-infrastructure - Sacrifice zone - Worshipping modernity - Water impoundment
The passage discusses dams as mega-infrastructure projects, describes their harmful consequences as creating "sacrifice zones," frames the unquestioned justification for building them as akin to worshipping modernity, and closes on the global trend of continued water impoundment despite emerging opposition.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: While these terms appear in the passage, "quarter century" is a specific time reference rather than a key conceptual term mapping the passage's central argument.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: "Lucrative contracts" and "expected lives" are specific details rather than central concepts capturing the passage's main arguments about justification, harm, and the unresolved global trend.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: "Physical instantiation" and "decided democratically" are specific phrases used incidentally, not the core conceptual terms mapping the passage's overall argument about dams as sacrifice zones justified by modernity's mania.
Why Option C is Correct: These four terms accurately capture the passage's progression, from describing dams as infrastructure, to their human and ecological cost as sacrifice zones, to the unquestioned justification akin to worship, to the continuing global trend of water impoundment.
Key Takeaway: Choose the term set that traces the passage's actual argumentative arc, not just terms that appear verbatim but represent only incidental details.
What does the author wish to communicate by referring to the Hoover and Aswan dams in the first paragraph?
The Colorado and Nile rivers may be seen as thin blue lines on a map.
By building dams like the Hoover and Aswan dams, large-scale employers became messianic figures.
The designers and builders of these mega-structures were highly charismatic individuals.
The drive to control nature is evident not only in mega-infrastructures like the Hoover and Aswan dams, but in smaller dams as well.
The drive to control nature is evident not only in mega-infrastructures like the Hoover and Aswan dams, but in smaller dams as well.
The passage uses the Hoover and Aswan dams as examples of charismatic mega-infrastructure, then pivots to note that most of the tens of thousands of dams worldwide are smaller and have drawn little attention, despite also being products of the same drive to conquer territories and control nature.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This is a factual detail mentioned later about reservoirs being mistaken for lakes, unrelated to the specific purpose of mentioning Hoover and Aswan.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This misreads the passage, "messianic drive" describes the broader ideological motive behind dam-building generally, not a claim that large-scale employers became messianic figures through building these specific dams.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage does not describe the designers and builders as charismatic individuals, it describes the dams themselves as "charismatic mega-infrastructure," a different claim about the structures, not their builders.
Why Option D is Correct: This matches the passage's purpose, using Hoover and Aswan as recognisable examples of the broader drive to control nature, which the passage then extends to the much larger, less noticed set of smaller dams worldwide.
Key Takeaway: When an example is given before a broader claim, check what general point the example is meant to support, rather than treating the example as a standalone fact.
The word "instantiation" is used in the first paragraph. Which one of the following pairs of terms would be the best substitute for it in the context of its usage in the paragraph?
Exemplification and manifestation
Concreteness and viability
Durability and timeliness
Development and construction
Exemplification and manifestation
The phrase "physical instantiation of a messianic drive" describes dams as the concrete manifestation or embodiment of that drive to conquer nature. The best substitute would be terms meaning embodiment or representation in physical form.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: "Concreteness and viability" do not capture the sense of dams being a manifestation of an abstract drive, viability refers to feasibility, which is unrelated to the meaning of instantiation here.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: "Durability and timeliness" are unrelated to the meaning of instantiation, which is about embodiment or manifestation, not about how long-lasting or well-timed something is.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: "Development and construction" describe the process of building dams, not the specific sense of instantiation as the physical embodiment of an abstract drive or ideology.
Why Option A is Correct: "Exemplification and manifestation" precisely capture the meaning of instantiation in this context, dams serving as a concrete representation of the broader messianic drive to control nature.
Key Takeaway: For vocabulary-in-context questions, test whether the substitute terms preserve the specific sense the word carries in that sentence, not just its general dictionary meaning.
All of the following statements may be considered valid inferences from the passage EXCEPT that:
despite increasing evidence of opposition to dams as well as alternatives to them, they continue to be built.
smaller, though not inconsequential, dams are safer than large dam projects.
processes of colonisation have used dam-building to make people vacate their territories.
dam-building has proved to be an extremely costly enterprise that may not be justifiable.
smaller, though not inconsequential, dams are safer than large dam projects.
The passage explicitly describes smaller dams as "not inconsequential," directly contradicting any claim that they are safer than larger dam projects. The passage gives no comparative safety claim about smaller versus larger dams at all.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage explicitly states that despite opposition, alternative energy sources, and lack of viable projects slowing construction, a wave of recent construction continues to favour dam building, supporting this inference.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage explicitly states dams were often an instrument of colonialism used to dispossess Indigenous people, directly supporting this inference.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): The passage cites the $2 trillion investment and questions whether a fair return was achieved, along with the lack of independent analyses, supporting the inference that dam-building's costliness may not be justifiable.
Why Option B is Correct: The passage explicitly calls smaller dams "not inconsequential," implying they too cause significant harm, contradicting any claim that they are safer than large dam projects.
Key Takeaway: Watch for an option that contradicts an explicit qualifier in the passage, here, the passage takes pains to say smaller dams are not harmless, directly undermining a claim of their relative safety.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly—contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .
Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, "The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate."
It's not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. "Thrifting" has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined 'vintage', shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.
So you're cool and you care about the planet; you've killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?
According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .
Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, "high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability."
The central idea of the passage would be undermined if:
customers bought all their clothes online.
clothes were not thrown and burnt in landfills.
second-hand stores sold only high-quality clothes.
Primark and Boohoo recycled their clothes for vintage stores.
second-hand stores sold only high-quality clothes.
The passage raises a problem with second-hand shopping, that older clothes shed more microfibres, and suggests buying high-quality items that shed less and last longer as the best solution. If second-hand stores sold only high-quality clothes, this would resolve the microfibre problem and make second-hand shopping a genuinely effective solution, removing the central complication the passage raises about the limitations of thrifting.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: Customers buying all their clothes online is not specifically what the passage's argument about the limitations of second-hand shopping depends on, this does not undermine the central issue about waste and microfibre pollution.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage's central concern is about the microfibre pollution and environmental harm caused by second-hand clothes specifically, not just landfill burning. If clothes weren't burnt in landfills, the passage's specific concern about second-hand microfibre pollution would still stand.
Why Option C is Correct: If second-hand stores sold only high-quality clothes, the main problem the passage identifies with second-hand shopping, microfibre pollution from worn garments, would be eliminated. This would make thrifting a genuinely effective environmental solution, undermining the passage's central argument about its limitations.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Primark and Boohoo recycling their clothes for vintage stores would increase the supply of second-hand clothing but would not address the core issue about microfibre shedding from older clothes that the passage raises.
Key Takeaway: To undermine a passage's central idea, find the scenario that removes the main problem or complication the passage is built around.
According to the author, companies like ThredUP have not caught on in the UK for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that:
recycling is currently not financially attractive for luxury brands.
luxury brands want to maintain their brand image.
luxury brands do not like their product to be devalued.
the British don't buy second-hand clothing.
the British don't buy second-hand clothing.
The passage gives three reasons for ThredUP not catching on in the UK, recycling not being cost-effective, luxury brands prioritising brand image over sustainability, and luxury brands not wanting their latest season stock circulated at cheaper prices. The passage does not say the British specifically don't buy second-hand clothing, in fact the passage describes the growth of vintage and second-hand shops across London.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly quotes Ben Whitaker saying high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability unless recycling becomes cost-effective, directly stating that recycling is currently not financially attractive.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states that luxury brands would rather not circulate stock at cheaper prices, which is about protecting brand image.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly states that luxury brands prefer not to have their latest season stock sold at a cheaper price, directly stating that devaluation of the product is a concern.
Why Option D is Correct: The passage describes the growth of second-hand shopping in London and the wider UK, and the reasons given for ThredUP not catching on are about luxury brand reluctance and cost-effectiveness, not about British consumer attitudes toward second-hand goods generally.
Key Takeaway: When asked for a reason not given in the passage, verify each option directly against what the passage explicitly states as the cause, and identify the one that contradicts the passage's description of consumer behaviour.
Based on the passage, we can infer that the opposite of fast fashion, 'slow fashion', would most likely refer to clothes that:
are of high quality and long lasting.
do not bleed toxins and dyes.
are sold by genuine vintage stores.
do not shed microfibres.
are of high quality and long lasting.
The passage argues that buying high-quality items that shed less and last longer is the best approach for second-hand shoppers, because this combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. Slow fashion, as the opposite of fast fashion which generates waste and pollution through disposable, low-quality items, would most logically refer to clothes that are high quality and long-lasting.
Why Option A is Correct: High quality and long-lasting is the direct opposite of fast fashion's defining characteristic of low-quality, disposable items that quickly end up in landfills, making this the most accurate description of slow fashion as the passage's argument implies it.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Not bleeding toxins and dyes is a concern about disposal and landfill contamination, not a defining characteristic of slow fashion as the opposite of fast fashion's core problem of low quality and short lifespan.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Being sold by genuine vintage stores is about the retail channel, not a characteristic of the clothes themselves. Slow fashion as an opposing concept to fast fashion would relate to the nature of the clothes, not where they are sold.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Not shedding microfibres is a desirable property related to the specific microfibre pollution problem the passage raises, but it is a consequence of high quality rather than the defining characteristic of slow fashion itself.
Key Takeaway: Derive the meaning of an implied concept by identifying what the passage explicitly positions as the solution to the problem caused by the named concept.
The act of "thrifting", as described in the passage, can be considered ironic because it:
has created environmental problems.
is not cost-effective for retailers.
offers luxury clothing at cut-rate prices.
is an anti-consumerist attitude.
has created environmental problems.
Thrifting is presented in the passage as an environmentally conscious, trendy practice meant to reduce fashion waste. The irony is that it has created its own environmental problems, specifically microfibre pollution, meaning the act intended to help the planet is contributing to polluting rivers and oceans through microfibre shedding from laundered old clothes.
Why Option A is Correct: The irony is that thrifting, intended as an environmentally responsible alternative to fast fashion, has itself created environmental problems through microfibre pollution, meaning the cure has become part of the disease.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not present thrifting as not cost-effective for retailers, it is actually described as expanding rapidly and creating a viable market.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Thrifting offering luxury clothing at cut-rate prices is not described as ironic in the passage, it is simply a feature of the consignment market rather than a contradiction of its purpose.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Thrifting as an anti-consumerist attitude is its intended purpose, not an ironic outcome. The irony the passage identifies is the unintended harmful consequence, not the act's own stated aim.
Key Takeaway: Irony in a passage is typically found where an action intended to produce one outcome inadvertently produces the opposite or an equally harmful one.
How can we know what someone else is thinking or feeling, let alone prove it in court? In his 1863 book, A General View of the Criminal Law of England, James Fitzjames Stephen, among the most celebrated legal thinkers of his generation, was of the opinion that the assessment of a person's mental state was an inference made with "little consciousness." In a criminal case, jurors, doctors, and lawyers could watch defendants—scrutinizing clothing, mannerisms, tone of voice—but the best they could hope for were clues. . . . Rounding these clues up to a judgment about a defendant's guilt, or a defendant's life, was an act of empathy and imagination. . . . The closer the resemblance between defendants and their judges, the easier it was to overlook the gap that inference filled. Conversely, when a defendant struck officials as unlike themselves, whether by dint of disease, gender, confession, or race, the precariousness of judgments about mental state was exposed.
In the nineteenth century, physicians who specialized in the study of madness and the care of the insane held themselves out as experts in the new field of mental science. Often called alienists or mad doctors, they were the predecessors of modern psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists. . . . The opinions of family and neighbors had once been sufficient to sift the sane from the insane, but a growing belief that insanity was a subtle condition that required expert, medical diagnosis pushed physicians into the witness box. . . . Lawyers for both prosecution and defense began to recruit alienists to assess defendants' sanity and to testify to it in court.
Irresponsibility and insanity were not identical, however. Criminal responsibility was a legal concept and not, fundamentally, a medical one. Stephen explained: "The question 'What are the mental elements of responsibility?' is, and must be, a legal question. It cannot be anything else, for the meaning of responsibility is liability to punishment." . . . Nonetheless, medical and legal accounts of what it meant to be mentally sound became entangled and mutually referential throughout the nineteenth century. Lawyers relied on medical knowledge to inform their opinions and arguments about the sanity of their clients. Doctors commented on the legal responsibility of their patients. Ultimately, the fields of criminal law and mental science were both invested in constructing an image of the broken and damaged psyche that could be contrasted with the whole and healthy one. This shared interest, and the shared space of the criminal courtroom, made it nearly impossible to consider responsibility without medicine, or insanity without law. . . .
Physicians and lawyers shared more than just concern for the mind. Class, race, and gender bound these middle-class, white, professional men together, as did family ties, patriotism, Protestantism, business ventures, the alumni networks of elite schools and universities, and structures of political patronage. But for all their affinities, men of medicine and law were divided by contests over the borders of criminal responsibility, as much within each profession as between them. Alienists steadily pushed the boundaries of their field, developing increasingly complex and capacious definitions of insanity. Eccentricity and aggression came to be classified as symptoms of mental disease, at least by some.
The last paragraph of the passage refers to "middle-class, white, professional men". Which one of the following qualities best describes the connection among them?
The borders of criminal responsibility.
The opinions of family and neighbours.
Eccentricity and aggression.
Empathy and imagination.
The borders of criminal responsibility.
The passage uses the example of displaced sports bettors entering the financial market as one possible factor in the COVID-19 market dynamics, framed as "some of these dynamics are potentially attributable" to them. This is explicitly tentative and partial, not a singular, overriding explanation for the market's behaviour. The last paragraph explicitly states that despite all the shared class, race, professional, and personal ties among these men, they were divided by contests over the borders of criminal responsibility, both within and between the professions of medicine and law. The passage focuses on this contest as the key tension defining their relationship despite their many affinities.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The opinions of family and neighbours are mentioned earlier in the passage as what was once sufficient to assess sanity, not as a quality connecting the professional men described in the last paragraph.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Eccentricity and aggression are mentioned as symptoms that alienists began classifying as mental disease, a specific development within the field, not the central bond or division among these professional men.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Empathy and imagination are mentioned in the first paragraph as the qualities used by jurors to assess mental state, not as something connecting the professional men discussed in the last paragraph.
Why Option A is Correct: The passage explicitly states that despite all their shared qualities, these men were divided by contests over the borders of criminal responsibility, making this the most precise description of what connected and defined their relationship.
Key Takeaway: When a paragraph lists many shared qualities but then identifies one key dividing issue, that dividing issue is usually what the question about connections among the group is pointing toward.
According to the passage, who or what was an "alienist"?
Professionals who pushed the boundaries of their fields till they became unrecognisable in the nineteenth century.
Physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane in the nineteenth century.
Physicians and lawyers who were responsible for the condition of immigrants or 'aliens' in the nineteenth century.
Physicians and lawyers who were responsible for examining accounts of extraterrestrials or 'aliens' in the nineteenth century.
Professionals who pushed the boundaries of their fields till they became unrecognisable in the nineteenth century.
The passage defines alienists directly in the second paragraph as physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane, noting they were the predecessors of modern psychiatrists, neurologists and psychologists.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: While alienists did push the boundaries of their field over time, this is a later development described separately, not the definition of what an alienist was.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage makes no connection between alienists and immigrants or "aliens" in the sense of foreign nationals, this interpretation confuses the word "alienist" with its superficially similar term.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Extraterrestrials are entirely absent from the passage, this is a fanciful misreading of the term.
Why Option B is Correct: This matches the passage's explicit definition, physicians specialising in madness and care of the insane in the nineteenth century.
Key Takeaway: For definition questions, locate the passage's explicit definitional statement rather than inferring a meaning from the word's sound or etymology.
Study the following sets of concepts and identify the set that is conceptually closest to the concerns and arguments of the passage.
Empathy, Prosecution, Knowledge, Business.
Judgement, Belief, Accounts, Patronage.
Assessment, Empathy, Prosecution, Patriotism.
Judgement, Insanity, Punishment, Responsibility.
Judgement, Insanity, Punishment, Responsibility.
The passage is centrally about how judgments about mental state are made in legal contexts, how insanity as a concept relates to legal responsibility, how punishment is tied to the definition of responsibility, and how these concepts became entangled between medicine and law throughout the nineteenth century.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: While empathy and prosecution appear in the passage, knowledge and business are peripheral and do not represent the conceptual core of the argument.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Judgment and belief appear in the passage, but accounts and patronage are mentioned only as background contextual details about the shared social world of these professionals, not as central concerns of the argument.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Assessment, empathy and prosecution appear in the passage but patriotism is a social background detail, not a conceptual concern of the passage's core argument.
Why Option D is Correct: Judgment, insanity, punishment and responsibility are the four concepts that the passage explicitly develops and interconnects, through Stephen's definition of responsibility as liability to punishment, the legal versus medical concept of insanity, and the difficulty of judging mental state in court.
Key Takeaway: When asked for conceptual closeness, identify the terms that the passage explicitly defines, argues about, and interconnects, rather than terms that merely appear incidentally.
"Conversely, when a defendant struck officials as unlike themselves, whether by dint of disease, gender, confession, or race, the precariousness of judgments about mental state was exposed." Which one of the following best describes the use of the word "confession" in this sentence?
Referring to the practice of 'confession' in some faiths, here it is a metaphor for the religion of the defendant.
Referring to the gender, race or disease claimed as a defence by the defendant, here it is a synonym for 'professing' a gender, race, or disease.
Referring to the defendant's confession of his or her crime as false, because 'dint' is an archaic form of 'didn't' or 'did not'.
The defendants struck out at the officials and then confessed to the act.
Referring to the practice of 'confession' in some faiths, here it is a metaphor for the religion of the defendant.
The sentence lists disease, gender, confession, and race as qualities that could make a defendant seem unlike the officials judging them. In this list, "confession" functions most naturally as referring to religious confession, meaning the defendant's religious affiliation, which, like race or gender, could mark them as different from the predominantly Protestant professional judges described elsewhere in the passage.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: While this option offers a grammatically creative reading, "professing" a gender or race is not a natural reading of "confession" in this context, and the option creates an awkward construction to make the word fit.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: "Dint" is not an archaic form of "didn't," it is an archaic word meaning "by means of" or "by force of," so this interpretation is based on a factual error about the word's meaning.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This completely misreads the sentence, which is not about defendants physically striking officials but about how defendants appeared to officials, and "confession" here is not about admitting to a crime.
Why Option A is Correct: In the context of a society where the judges and officials were predominantly Protestant, a defendant's religious affiliation, like race or gender, could mark them as unlike the officials, exposing the precariousness of the judgment, making "confession" as a metaphor for religious faith the most coherent reading.
Key Takeaway: When a word appears in a list alongside other demographic or social categories, interpret it as a social marker consistent with the others in the list rather than in its most literal or common sense.
Time and again, whenever a population [of Mexican tetra fish] was swept into a cave and survived long enough for natural selection to have its way, the eyes disappeared. "But it's not that everything has been lost in cavefish . . . Many enhancements have also happened." . . . Studies have found that cave-dwelling fish can detect lower levels of amino acids than surface fish can. They also have more tastebuds and a higher density of sensitive cells alongside their bodies that let them sense water pressure and flow. . . .
Killing the processes that support the formation of the eye is quite literally what happens. Just like non-cave-dwelling members of the species, all cavefish embryos start making eyes. But after a few hours, cells in the developing eye start dying, until the entire structure has disappeared. [Developmental biologist Misty] Riddle thinks this apparent inefficiency may be unavoidable. "The early development of the brain and the eye are completely intertwined—they happen together," she says. That means the least disruptive way for eyelessness to evolve may be to start making an eye and then get rid of it. . . .
It's easy to see why cavefish would be at a disadvantage if they were to maintain expensive tissues they aren't using. Since relatively little lives or grows in their caves, the fish are likely surviving on a meager diet of mostly bat feces and organic waste that washes in during the rainy season. Researchers keeping cavefish in labs have discovered that, genetically, the creatures are exquisitely adapted to absorbing and storing nutrients. . . .
Fats can be toxic for tissues, [evolutionary physiologist Nicolas] Rohner explains, so they are stored in fat cells. "But when these cells get too big, they can burst, which is why we often see chronic inflammation in humans and other animals that have stored a lot of fat in their tissues." Yet a 2020 study by Rohner, Krishnan and their colleagues revealed that even very well-fed cavefish had fewer signs of inflammation in their fat tissues than surface fish do. Even in their sparse cave conditions, wild cavefish can sometimes get very fat, says Riddle. This is presumably because, whenever food ends up in the cave, the fish eat as much of it as possible, since there may be nothing else for a long time to come. Intriguingly, Riddle says, their fat is usually bright yellow because of high levels of carotenoids, the substance in the carrots that your grandmother used to tell you were good for your…eyes.
"The first thing that came to our mind, of course, was that they were accumulating these because they don't have eyes," says Riddle. In this species, such ideas can be tested: Scientists can cross surface fish (with eyes) and cavefish (without eyes) and look at what their offspring are like. When that's done, Riddle says, researchers see no link between eye presence or size and the accumulation of carotenoids. Some eyeless cavefish had fat that was practically white, indicating lower carotenoid levels. Instead, Riddle thinks these carotenoids may be another adaptation to suppress inflammation, which might be important in the wild, as cavefish are likely overeating whenever food arrives.
All of the following statements from the passage describe adaptation in Mexican tetra cavefish EXCEPT:
"It's easy to see why cavefish would be at a disadvantage if they were to maintain expensive tissues they aren't using."
"Since relatively little lives or grows in their caves, the fish are likely surviving on a meager diet of mostly bat feces and organic waste that washes in during the rainy season."
"'But when these cells get too big, they can burst, which is why we often see chronic inflammation in humans and other animals that have stored a lot of fat in their tissues.'"
"Even in their sparse cave conditions, wild cavefish can sometimes get very fat, says Riddle."
"It's easy to see why cavefish would be at a disadvantage if they were to maintain expensive tissues they aren't using."
Options A, B and D all describe specific traits or behaviours that represent the cavefish's adaptation to their environment — lack of unnecessary tissue maintenance, survival on limited food, and the capacity to get fat when food is available. Option C is a general statement about fat cells bursting and causing inflammation in humans and other animals broadly, used as background context rather than describing an adaptation specific to cavefish.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This describes the adaptive logic of why cavefish lose unnecessary tissues like eyes, directly tied to their adaptation.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This describes the limited food environment cavefish are adapted to survive in, directly relevant to their adaptation.
Why Option C is Correct: This is a general statement about fat cells and inflammation across humans and other animals, not a description of an adaptation specific to cavefish.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This describes the cavefish's specific behavioural adaptation of overeating when food becomes available, directly relevant to adaptation.
Key Takeaway: Distinguish between statements that describe a specific adaptation of the organism in question and statements used as general scientific background that apply more broadly.
Which one of the following best explains why the "apparent inefficiency" is "unavoidable"?
The caves have poor and inconsistent availability of food and nutrition for Mexican tetra cavefish.
The lack of light in the caves kills the eye cells in the developing Mexican tetra cavefish embryo.
The inefficiency resulting from eyelessness is compensated by enhancements like more tastebuds in Mexican tetra cavefish.
Mexican tetra cavefish are similar to non-cave-dwelling variants in their early stages of development.
Mexican tetra cavefish are similar to non-cave-dwelling variants in their early stages of development.
Riddle explains that the "apparent inefficiency" of building an eye and then destroying it might be unavoidable because eye and brain development are deeply intertwined and happen together, meaning eyelessness cannot easily evolve without first going through the motion of forming an eye, just like non-cave dwelling fish do at the start of development.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This explains why cavefish cannot afford to maintain expensive tissues, not why the inefficient process of building and then destroying an eye is unavoidable in the first place.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This describes the mechanism of how the eye disappears, but not why this particular inefficient process is the only viable path, which is the actual question being asked.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This refers to a separate point about enhancements compensating for lost senses, unrelated to the explanation of why the inefficient eye-building-then-destroying process is unavoidable.
Why Option D is Correct: This matches Riddle's explanation directly, since cavefish embryos start the same way as non-cave-dwelling fish, with eye and brain development intertwined, making the inefficient path of forming and then losing the eye the least disruptive way for eyelessness to evolve.
Key Takeaway: Trace an explanation back to the exact reasoning given by the source quoted in the passage, rather than other plausible-sounding but unrelated facts nearby.
Which one of the following results for the cross between surface fish (with eyes) and cavefish (without eyes) would invalidate Riddle's inference from the experiment?
Some offspring with eyes had white fat.
Some offspring with eyes had yellow fat.
Only eyeless offspring had yellow fat.
Some eyeless offspring had white fat.
Only eyeless offspring had yellow fat.
Riddle's inference was that there is no link between eye presence or size and the accumulation of carotenoids, based on observing offspring from the cross. If only eyeless offspring had yellow fat, with no eyed offspring showing it, that would actually support a link between eyelessness and carotenoid accumulation, directly invalidating Riddle's no-link conclusion.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: Some eyed offspring having white fat does not establish any link between eye presence and carotenoid levels — this is consistent with no link existing.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Some eyed offspring having yellow fat actually supports the no-link conclusion, since it shows fat colour does not depend strictly on eyelessness.
Why Option C is Correct: If only eyeless offspring had yellow fat, this would directly suggest a connection between the absence of eyes and carotenoid accumulation, contradicting Riddle's claim that there is no such link.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Some eyeless offspring having white fat is consistent with no link existing, since it shows eyelessness does not guarantee high carotenoid levels.
Key Takeaway: To invalidate a "no link" conclusion, look for a result showing a clear and exclusive pattern connecting the two variables in question, rather than scattered or mixed results.
On the basis of the information in the passage, what is the most likely function of carotenoids in Mexican tetra cavefish?
To act as a substitute for eyes.
To help the fat cells store nutrients.
To render bright yellow colour to the cavefish.
To control inflammation from the bursting of fat cells.
To control inflammation from the bursting of fat cells.
The passage states that researchers initially thought the yellow carotenoids might relate to compensating for lost eyes, but the cross-breeding experiment showed no link between carotenoids and eye presence. Riddle instead suggests carotenoids may help suppress inflammation, which is important because cavefish are likely to overeat whenever food becomes available, leading to fat cell bursting and inflammation.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This was the initial hypothesis researchers had, but it was disproven by the cross-breeding experiment, which found no link between carotenoids and eye presence.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not suggest carotenoids help fat cells store nutrients — this function is not discussed anywhere in the passage.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The yellow colour is a result of carotenoid presence, not the function or purpose of carotenoids — this option mistakes an effect for a function.
Why Option D is Correct: This matches Riddle's final explanation directly, that carotenoids likely help suppress inflammation that results from overeating and fat cell bursting in cavefish.
Key Takeaway: When a passage walks through and disproves an initial hypothesis before arriving at a final explanation, make sure to identify the final accepted explanation rather than the earlier, discarded one.
This book takes the position that setting in literature is more than just backdrop, that important insight into literary texts can be made by paying close attention to how authors craft place, as well as to how place functions in a narrative. The authors included in this reference work engage deeply with either real or imagined geographies. They care about how human decisions have shaped landscapes and how landscapes have shaped human practices and values. Some of the best writing is highly vivid, employing the language of the senses because this is the primary means through which humans know physical space. Literature can offer valuable perspectives on physical and cultural geography. Unlike scientific reports, a literary narrative can provide the emotional component missing from the scientific record. In human experience, geographical places have a spiritual or emotional component in addition to and as part of a physical layout and topography. This emotional component, although subjective, is no less "real" than a surveyor's map. Human consciousness of place is experienced in a multimodal manner. Histories of places live on in many forms, one of which is the human memory or imagination.
Both real and imaginary landscapes provide insight into the human experience of place. The pursuit of such a topic speaks to the valuable knowledge produced from bridging disciplines and combining material from both the arts and the sciences to better understand the human condition. The perspectives that most concern cultural geographers are often those regarding movement and migration, cultivation of natural resources, and organization of space. The latter two reflect concerns of the built environment, a topic shared with the field of architectural study. Many of these concerns are also reflected in work sociologists do. Scholars from literary studies can contribute an aesthetic dimension to what might otherwise be a purely ideological approach.
Literature can bring together material that spans different branches of science. For example, a literary description of place may involve not only the environment and geography but the noises and quality of light, or how people from different races or classes can experience the same place in different ways linked to those racial or class disparities. Literary texts can also account for the way in which absence—of other people, animals, and so on—affects a human observer or inhabitant. Both literary and scientific approaches to place are necessary, working in unison, to achieve a complete record of an environment. It is important to note that the interdisciplinary nature of this work teaches us that landscapes are not static, that they are not unchanged by human culture. At least part of their identity derives from the people who inhabit them and from the way space can alter and inspire human perspective. The intersection of scientific and literary expression that happens in the study of literary geography is of prime importance due to the complexity of the personal and political ways that humans experience place.
Which one of the following is a valid conclusion to draw from the author's statement that, "The pursuit of such a topic speaks to the valuable knowledge produced from bridging disciplines and combining material from both the arts and the sciences to better understand the human condition."?
A comprehensive bridging of the human condition can best be achieved by a disciplined pursuit of human understanding.
A comprehensive understanding of the valuable knowledge produced by the arts and sciences can best be achieved by studying the human condition.
A comprehensive understanding of the human condition can best be achieved by combining the findings of disciplines from the arts and the sciences.
The literary descriptions of the emotions we experience in the places we visit can contribute to our understanding of the arts and sciences.
A comprehensive understanding of the human condition can best be achieved by combining the findings of disciplines from the arts and the sciences.
The quoted line argues that pursuing the topic of literary geography produces valuable knowledge by bridging arts and science disciplines to better understand the human condition. The valid conclusion must reflect this exact relationship — combining disciplines from arts and sciences leads to a fuller understanding of human experience.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This inverts the relationship, suggesting that bridging the human condition results from disciplined pursuit of human understanding, rather than disciplines being combined to understand the human condition.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This shifts the focus to understanding the arts and sciences themselves through studying the human condition, which reverses the actual direction of the author's claim.
Why Option C is Correct: This accurately reflects the author's point, that combining findings from arts and science disciplines leads to a comprehensive understanding of the human condition.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This narrows the claim to literary descriptions of emotions specifically, when the original statement is about a broader interdisciplinary combination of arts and science material, not just emotional descriptions.
Key Takeaway: Pay close attention to the direction of cause and effect in a quoted statement, since incorrect options often simply reverse or narrow the original relationship.
Which one of the following is not true of the argument in the second paragraph?
Analysing the literary descriptions of a place can give us a sense of how people relate emotionally to it.
The spiritual experience of a place may be considered as real as the physical experience of it.
The emotional and spiritual experience of a place can replace a surveyor's map.
Literary accounts of places can be filled with histories, manifested as memory or imagination.
The emotional and spiritual experience of a place can replace a surveyor's map.
The second paragraph states that the emotional component of place is "no less real" than a surveyor's map, meaning it stands alongside the physical record, not that it replaces or substitutes for it. Saying the emotional experience "can replace" a surveyor's map goes beyond and misrepresents what the paragraph actually claims.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not true): The paragraph supports this, since it discusses how literary narrative can convey the emotional component of a place that scientific records miss.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not true): The paragraph explicitly states the emotional or spiritual component is "no less real" than a physical layout or surveyor's map, supporting this statement.
Why Option C is Correct: The paragraph never claims the emotional experience can replace a surveyor's map, only that it is equally real alongside it, making this statement not true of the argument.
Why Option D is
Incorrect (as a candidate for not true): The paragraph supports this, mentioning that histories of places live on in human memory or imagination, among other forms.
Key Takeaway: Watch for options that subtly escalate a passage's claim — such as turning "equally real as" into "can replace" — which changes the meaning entirely.
The author uses the example of the literary description of place to illustrate that:
scientific approaches to place are more accurate than literary ones.
literature can convey how different people experience the same place differently.
architects use diverse methods to calibrate the noises and lights of a given place.
the absence of other people, animals, and so on in a place can profoundly affect its inhabitants.
literature can convey how different people experience the same place differently.
The fourth paragraph uses the example of literary description of place specifically to show how people from different races or classes can experience the same place differently, linked to those disparities, illustrating literature's capacity to capture varied human experience of the same physical space.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue scientific approaches are more accurate — it argues both literary and scientific approaches are necessary together for a complete record.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage does not discuss architects calibrating noises and lights — this detail is not present anywhere in the passage.
Why Option B is Correct: This matches the specific example given, that literary descriptions can show how race or class differences shape different experiences of the same place.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: While the passage does mention literature accounting for the effect of absence on an observer, this is a separate point made afterward, not the specific illustration intended by the example of literary description of place referenced in the question.
Key Takeaway: When a question asks about the purpose of a specific example, locate that exact example in the passage and identify precisely what point it is illustrating, rather than picking a nearby but distinct idea.
All of the following statements, if false, would contradict the arguments in the passage, EXCEPT that:
descriptions of places do not need satellite imagery or other visual aids to give a "real" sense of the place.
literature provides us with deep insights into the ways in which movement and migration affect physical geography.
highly vivid writing, employing the language of the senses, can capture the multi-modal manner in which humans experience places.
humans do not interact with places in subjective, emotional ways because places are only physical topography.
humans do not interact with places in subjective, emotional ways because places are only physical topography.
The passage argues throughout that human experience of place includes a real emotional and spiritual component beyond physical topography. If this were false, meaning if humans truly did not interact with places emotionally and places were purely physical, this would directly contradict the passage's central argument. The other options, if false, do not necessarily contradict the passage's claims as directly.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If this were false, meaning descriptions of places did need visual aids to feel "real," this would contradict the passage's argument that emotional or literary accounts are "no less real" without such aids, so this is not the exception.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If this were false, meaning literature does not provide insight into movement and migration's effect on geography, this would contradict the passage's mention of these as key concerns literature can address, so this is not the exception.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): If this were false, meaning vivid sensory writing cannot capture the multimodal human experience of place, this would contradict the passage's explicit claim about the value of vivid, sense-based writing, so this is not the exception.
Why Option D is Correct: If this statement is false, it actually aligns with and supports the passage's argument, since the passage insists humans do interact with places emotionally and subjectively, beyond pure physical topography. So this being false does not contradict the passage, making it the exception.
Key Takeaway: In "if false, contradicts except" questions, test what happens to the passage's argument under the assumption that each statement is false, and find the one case where falseness aligns with, rather than against, the original argument.
Studies showing that income inequality plays a positive role in economic growth are largely based on three arguments. The first argument focuses on investment indivisibilities wherein large sunk costs are required when implementing new fundamental innovations. Without stock markets and financial institutions to mobilize large sums of money, a high concentration of wealth is needed for individuals to undertake new industrial activities accompanied by high sunk costs . . . [One study] shows the relation between economic growth and income inequality for 45 countries during 1966-1995. [It was found] that the increase in income inequality has a significant positive relationship with economic growth in the short and medium term. Using system GMM, [another study estimated] the relation between income inequality and economic growth for 106 countries during 1965-2005 period. The results show that income inequality has a positive impact on economic growth in the short run, but the two are negatively correlated in the long run. The second argument is related to moral hazard and incentives . . . Because economic performance is determined by the unobservable level of effort that agents make, paying compensations without taking into account the economic performance achieved by individual agents will fail to elicit optimum effort from the agents. Thus, certain income inequalities contribute to growth by enhancing worker motivation . . . and by giving motivation to innovators and entrepreneurs . . . Finally, [another study] point[s] out that the concentration of wealth or stock ownership in relation to corporate governance contributes to growth. If stock ownership is distributed and owned by a large number of shareholders, it is not easy to make quick decisions due to the conflicting interests among shareholders, and this may also cause a free-rider problem in terms of monitoring and supervising managers and workers. . . .
Various studies have examined the relationships between income inequality and economic growth, and most of these assert that a negative correlation exists between the two. . . . Analyzing 159 countries for 1980-2012, they conclude that there exists a negative relation between income inequality and economic growth; when the income share of the richest 20% of population increases by 1%, the GDP decreases by 0.08%, whereas when the income share of the poorest 20% of population increases by 1%, the GDP increases by 0.38%. Some studies find that inequality has a negative impact on growth due to poor human capital accumulation and low fertility rates . . . while [others] point out that inequality creates political instability, resulting in lower investment. . . . [Some economists] argue that widening income inequality has a negative impact on economic growth because it negatively affects social consensus or social capital formation. One important research topic is the correlation between democratization and income redistribution. [Some scholars] explain that social pressure for income redistribution rises as income inequality increases in a democratic society. In other words, when democratization extends suffrage to a wider class of people, the increased political power of low- and middle-income voters results in broader support for income redistribution and social welfare expansion. However . . . if the rich have more political influence than the poor, the democratic system actually worsens income inequality rather than improving it.
Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
The passage claims that evaluating the effect of income inequality on economic growth without considering both short- and long-term consequences is misguided.
The passage confines its discussion to financing gaps and corporate control while undercutting cross country evidence and overlooking the significance of concerns regarding human capital accumulation, fertility rates, and income redistribution under democratisation.
The passage argues that income inequality accelerates economic growth while also emphasising the significance of concerns regarding human capital accumulation, fertility rates, and political instability.
The passage outlines investment, incentive, and governance channels through which income inequality may support economic growth and reports short-term gains while noting long-term drawbacks.
The passage outlines investment, incentive, and governance channels through which income inequality may support economic growth and reports short-term gains while noting long-term drawbacks.
The passage's first half outlines three mechanisms through which income inequality may support growth, investment in high sunk-cost activities, incentive effects on workers and innovators, and concentrated ownership improving corporate governance, while noting that short-term gains may not persist in the long run. The second half presents the opposing evidence of a long-term negative relationship between inequality and growth.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This is a partial claim about the importance of considering short and long-term effects, but it does not capture the passage's actual content, which outlines specific mechanisms and presents both sides of the empirical debate.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This incorrectly claims the passage confines itself to financing gaps and corporate control, when it also discusses incentives, human capital, fertility rates, political instability and democratisation, so this is inaccurate.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This says the passage "argues that income inequality accelerates economic growth," but the passage presents both sides, the positive and negative, without taking a single position, making this a misrepresentation.
Why Option D is Correct: This captures both halves accurately, the three investment, incentive, and governance channels that may support growth, the evidence of short-term gains, and the overall complication that long-term outcomes may be negative.
Key Takeaway: When a passage presents both sides of an empirical debate, the correct summary should reflect the structure of the argument, listing channels on one side and acknowledging the opposing evidence, without resolving the debate in favour of either position.
The passage refers to "democratization". Choose the one option below that comes closest to the opposite of this process.
After the emergency decree, the regime shifted toward authoritarianism as suffrage narrowed and opposition parties were deregistered.
Corporate donations were capped and parties received public funding which was portrayed as establishing an oligarchy.
Municipalities adopted participatory budgeting and recall elections which a press release called totalitarianism.
The coalition imposed term limits and strengthened judicial review in order to further entrench autocratic rule.
After the emergency decree, the regime shifted toward authoritarianism as suffrage narrowed and opposition parties were deregistered.
The passage defines democratisation in terms of extending suffrage to a wider class of people, increasing the political power of low- and middle-income voters, and broadening support for income redistribution. The opposite would be a narrowing of suffrage and a shift toward authoritarian rule, which is precisely what Option A describes.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Capping corporate donations and using public funding is a reform within a democratic system, not a move away from democracy, despite the option labelling it an oligarchy, which is an incorrect framing of what it describes.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Participatory budgeting and recall elections are expansions of democratic participation, despite the option using the word "totalitarianism," which does not match what the described measures actually represent.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Term limits and strengthened judicial review are typically mechanisms for reinforcing democratic accountability, not autocratic rule, making the label "autocratic" inconsistent with the described measures.
Why Option A is Correct: Narrowing suffrage and deregistering opposition parties directly reverses the core features of democratisation described in the passage, making authoritarianism the genuine opposite.
Key Takeaway: When evaluating opposites, look at what the measures actually do rather than what labels the options attach to them, since several options use misleading labels that contradict the substance of what they describe.
The primary function of the three-part case for a positive income inequality-economic growth link in the first half of the passage is to show that:
inequality boosts growth in every period and type of economy, regardless of finance or governance conditions.
mature stock markets make wealth concentration unnecessary, yet they might still be harmful to investment.
inequality can aid short-term growth in settings with high sunk costs, incentive alignment, and concentrated ownership.
dispersed ownership speeds corporate decision-making and removes free rider problems.
inequality can aid short-term growth in settings with high sunk costs, incentive alignment, and concentrated ownership.
The passage's three-part case presents conditions under which inequality may support growth, specifically when large sunk costs require concentrated capital, when performance-based pay incentivises worker and innovator effort, and when concentrated ownership improves corporate decision-making and supervision.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not claim inequality boosts growth in every period and type of economy, it presents conditions under which this may be true, and explicitly notes the long-run negative correlation across many countries.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue that mature stock markets make wealth concentration unnecessary or harmful, it argues concentration is needed specifically when stock markets and financial institutions cannot mobilise large sums on their own.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This reverses the passage's point about ownership, the passage argues that concentrated ownership improves decision-making and removes the free-rider problem, not that dispersed ownership speeds decisions.
Why Option C is Correct: This accurately captures the three specific conditional settings where inequality may aid growth, high sunk costs, incentive alignment, and concentrated ownership, without overstating the claim as universal.
Key Takeaway: When a passage presents a conditional argument, the correct characterisation must preserve those conditions rather than presenting the claim as unconditional or universal.
According to the incentive or moral hazard argument, which one of the designs below is most consistent with the claim that some inequality can raise growth?
Pay rewards on verifiable performance for highly productive workers.
Rents protected by market power that enlarge top incomes without linking pay to results.
Wages are determined by tenure rather than output to ensure equity.
A regime that concentrates stock ownership in relation to corporate governance.
Pay rewards on verifiable performance for highly productive workers.
The moral hazard argument in the passage states that since economic performance depends on unobservable effort, paying rewards without linking them to performance fails to elicit optimal effort. Therefore, performance-linked compensation creates the kind of inequality in pay that motivates workers to exert more effort and drives growth.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Rents from market power that enlarge top incomes without linking pay to results are exactly what the moral hazard argument argues against, since this creates inequality without any incentive effect on effort or performance.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Wages determined by tenure rather than output remove the performance-based link entirely, which the passage identifies as failing to elicit optimum effort, making this inconsistent with the moral hazard argument.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Concentrated stock ownership relates to the third argument about corporate governance, not to the moral hazard or incentive argument, which is specifically about linking pay to individual performance.
Why Option A is Correct: Rewarding verifiable performance for highly productive workers directly reflects the moral hazard argument, since it links compensation to observable results, providing the incentive structure that the passage argues can raise growth.
Key Takeaway: Match a design to the specific mechanism the passage describes for a particular argument, rather than to other arguments that appear nearby in the same passage.
[Fifty] years after its publication in English [in 1972], and just a year since [Marshall] Sahlins himself died—we may ask: why did [his essay] "Original Affluent Society" have such an impact, and how has it fared since? . . . Sahlins's principal argument was simple but counterintuitive: before being driven into marginal environments by colonial powers, hunter-gatherers, or foragers, were not engaged in a desperate struggle for meager survival. Quite the contrary, they satisfied their needs with far less work than people in agricultural and industrial societies, leaving them more time to use as they wished. Hunters, he quipped, keep bankers' hours. Refusing to maximize, many were "more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game." . . . The so-called Neolithic Revolution, rather than improving life, imposed a harsher work regime and set in motion the long history of growing inequality . . .
Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data—the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic—but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
With its title's nod toward The Affluent Society (1958), economist John Kenneth Galbraith's famously skeptical portrait of America's postwar prosperity and inequality, and dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism, "The Original Affluent Society" brought this critical perspective to bear on the contemporary world. It did so through the classic anthropological move of showing that radical alternatives to the readers' lives really exist. If the capitalist world seeks wealth through ever greater material production to meet infinitely expansive desires, foraging societies follow "the Zen road to affluence": not by getting more, but by wanting less. If it seems that foragers have been left behind by "progress," this is due only to the ethnocentric self-congratulation of the West. Rather than accumulate material goods, these societies are guided by other values: leisure, mobility, and above all, freedom. . . .
Viewed in today's context, of course, not every aspect of the essay has aged well. While acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism, and dispossession, it does not thematize them as heavily as we might today. Rebuking evolutionary anthropologists for treating present-day foragers as "left behind" by progress, it too can succumb to the temptation to use them as proxies for the Paleolithic. Yet these characteristics should not distract us from appreciating Sahlins's effort to show that if we want to conjure new possibilities, we need to learn about actually inhabitable worlds.
We can infer that Sahlins's main goal in writing his essay was to:
put forth the view that, despite egalitarian origins, economic progress brings greater inequality and social hierarchies.
highlight the fact that while we started off as a fairly contented egalitarian people, we have progressively degenerated into materialism.
hold a mirror to an acquisitive society, with examples of other communities that have chosen successfully to be non-materialistic
counter Galbraith's pessimistic view of the inevitability of a capitalist trajectory for economic growth.
hold a mirror to an acquisitive society, with examples of other communities that have chosen successfully to be non-materialistic
The passage states that the real interest of Sahlins's essay is not empirical data about foragers but its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The essay was meant to show that alternatives to the capitalist world's material accumulation genuinely exist, holding a mirror to acquisitive society by pointing to communities that have chosen non-materialistic ways of living.
The author mentions Tanzania's Hadza community to illustrate:
that hunter-gatherer communities' subsistence-level techniques equipped them to survive well into contemporary times.
how pre-agrarian societies did not hamper the emergence of more advanced agrarian practices in contiguous communities.
that forager communities' lifestyles derived not from ignorance about alternatives, but from their own choice.
how two vastly different ways of living and working were able to coexist in proximity for centuries.
that forager communities' lifestyles derived not from ignorance about alternatives, but from their own choice.
The passage states that the Hadza, surrounded by farmers and knowing the alternatives, rejected farming, and that Sahlins used this to show that foragers demonstrate real collective self-determination, making choices about their way of life rather than simply lacking knowledge of alternatives.
The author of the passage mentions Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" to:
show how Galbraith's theories refute Sahlins's thesis on the contentment of pre-hunter-gatherer communities.
contrast the materialist nature of contemporary growth paths with the pacifist content ways of living among the foragers.
document the influence of Galbraith's cynical views on modern consumerism on Sahlins's analysis of pre-historic societies.
show how Sahlins's views complemented Galbraith's criticism of the consumerism and inequality of contemporary society.
show how Sahlins's views complemented Galbraith's criticism of the consumerism and inequality of contemporary society.
The passage describes Sahlins's essay as dripping with New Left contempt for consumerism and explicitly states that the title nods toward Galbraith's book. The passage says the essay brought Galbraith's critical perspective on consumerism and inequality to bear on the contemporary world, and shows how the two works share a critical stance toward capitalist society, meaning Sahlins's views complemented Galbraith's criticism.
The author of the passage criticises Sahlins's essay for its:
cursory treatment of the effects of racism and colonialism on societies.
outdated values regarding present-day foragers versus ancient foraging communities.
critique of anthropologists who disparage the choices of foragers in today's society
failure to supplement its thesis with robust empirical data.
cursory treatment of the effects of racism and colonialism on societies.
The passage explicitly states that while acknowledging the violence of colonialism, racism and dispossession, Sahlins's essay does not thematise them as heavily as we might today, which is a direct criticism of the essay's cursory treatment of racism and colonialism.
(. . .) There are three other common drivers for carnivore-human attacks, some of which are more preventable than others. Natural aggression-based conflicts - such as those involving females protecting their young or animals protecting a food source - can often be avoided as long as people stay away from those animals and their food.
Carnivores that recognise humans as a means to get food, are a different story. As they become more reliant on human food they might find at campsites or in rubbish bins, they become less avoidant of humans. Losing that instinctive fear response puts them into more situations where they could get into an altercation with a human, which often results in that bear being put down by humans. "A fed bear is a dead bear," says Servheen, referring to a common saying among biologists and conservationists. Predatory or predation-related attacks are quite rare, only accounting for 17% of attacks in North America since 1955. They occur when a carnivore views a human as prey and hunts it like it would any other animal it uses for food. (. . .)
Then there are animal attacks provoked by people taking pictures with them or feeding them in natural settings such as national parks which often end with animals being euthanised out of precaution. "Eventually, that animal becomes habituated to people, and [then] bad things happen to the animal. And the folks who initially wanted to make that connection don't necessarily realise that," says Christine Wilkinson, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, California, who's been studying coyote-human conflicts.
After conducting countless postmortems on all types of carnivore-human attacks spanning 75 years, Penteriani's team believes 50% could have been avoided if humans reacted differently. A 2017 study co-authored by Penteriani found that engaging in risky behaviour around large carnivores increases the likelihood of an attack.
Two of the most common risky behaviours are parents leaving their children to play outside unattended and walking an unleashed dog, according to the study. Wilkinson says 66% of coyote attacks involve a dog. "[People] end up in a situation where their dog is being chased, or their dog chases a coyote, or maybe they're walking their dog near a den that's marked, and the coyote wants to escort them away," says Wilkinson.
Experts believe climate change also plays a part in the escalation of human-carnivore conflicts, but the correlation still needs to be ironed out. "As finite resources become scarcer, carnivores and people are coming into more frequent contact, which means that more conflict could occur," says Jen Miller, international programme specialist for the US Fish & Wildlife Service. For example, she says, there was an uptick in lion attacks in western India during a drought when lions and people were relying on the same water sources.
(. . .) The likelihood of human-carnivore conflicts appears to be higher in areas of low-income countries dominated by vast rural landscapes and farmland, according to Penteriani's research. "There are a lot of working landscapes in the Global South that are really heterogeneous, that are interspersed with carnivore habitats, forests and savannahs, which creates a lot more opportunity for these encounters, just statistically," says Wilkinson.
According to the passage, what is a significant factor that contributes to the habituation of carnivores to human presence?
The natural aggression exhibited by carnivores, exacerbated by human interference, particularly when they are safeguarding their offspring or food sources.
The increased scarcity of resources due to climate change, forcing carnivores to venture outside their natural habitats in search of sustenance.
The predatory perception of humans as potential prey within the carnivores' food chain.
The reduction in carnivores' instinctive fear response, resulting from their reliance upon human-provided food.
The natural aggression exhibited by carnivores, exacerbated by human interference, particularly when they are safeguarding their offspring or food sources.
The passage explicitly explains that carnivores that become reliant on human food lose their instinctive fear response, which leads to more situations where altercations with humans occur. This reduction in the fear response, driven by food habituation, is the mechanism through which carnivores become habituated to human presence.
Given the insights provided by Penteriani's research and Wilkinson's statement, which of the following conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and human-carnivore conflicts?
Low-income countries with vast, contiguous wilderness areas are less prone to human-carnivore conflicts because these areas lack the human presence necessary for such encounters.
Landscape heterogeneity, characterized by a mix of farmland and natural habitats, inherently reduces the chances of human-carnivore conflicts by providing more refuge for wildlife away from human activity.
Homogeneous landscapes with uniform agricultural practices are more likely to experience high rates of human-carnivore conflicts due to the predictability of resources.
The diversity and interspersion of working landscapes with carnivore habitats in rural areas increase the statistical probability of encounters between humans and carnivores.
Low-income countries with vast, contiguous wilderness areas are less prone to human-carnivore conflicts because these areas lack the human presence necessary for such encounters.
Wilkinson explicitly states that working landscapes in the Global South are interspersed with carnivore habitats, forests and savannahs, and that this creates more statistical opportunities for encounters between humans and carnivores.
Which of the following statements, if false, would be inconsistent with the concerns raised in the passage regarding the drivers of carnivore-human conflicts?
Climate change has had negligible effects on the frequency of carnivore-human interactions in affected regions.
Predatory attacks by carnivores are a common occurrence and have steadily increased over the past few decades.
Carnivores lose their instinctive fear of humans, when consistently exposed to human food sources
Human efforts to avoid risky behaviours around large carnivores have proven effective in reducing conflict incidents.
Climate change has had negligible effects on the frequency of carnivore-human interactions in affected regions.
The passage states that experts believe climate change plays a part in escalating human-carnivore conflicts, citing the example of increased lion attacks during drought in western India. If option A is true, meaning climate change has had negligible effects, this would directly contradict the passage's stated concern about climate change as a driver of conflict, making it inconsistent.
According to the passage, which of the following scenarios would MOST likely exacerbate the frequency of carnivore-human conflicts?
Implementing 'food waste' management strategies to prevent wild animals being attracted to human food sources.
Addressing the impact of climate change on the availability of resources for wildlife.
Attempting to photograph wild animals from within secured viewing areas in national parks and protected zones.
Unleashing dogs by pet owners in areas with known high concentrations of large carnivores.
Unleashing dogs by pet owners in areas with known high concentrations of large carnivores.
The passage explicitly states that walking an unleashed dog is one of the two most common risky behaviours around large carnivores, citing Wilkinson's finding that 66% of coyote attacks involve a dog. Unleashing dogs in areas with high concentrations of large carnivores would directly increase the likelihood of conflict.
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.
Choose the one option below that comes closest to being the opposite of "utilitarianism".
The committee adopted a non-egoist framework, ranking policies by their contribution to overall social welfare and treating self-interest as a derivative concern within institutional evaluation.
The authors advocated an absolutist stance, following exceptionless rules regardless of outcomes and evaluating choices by broadest societal benefit.
The council followed a prioritarian approach, assigning greater moral weight to improvements for the worst-off rather than to maximising total welfare across the affected population.
The policy was cast as deontological ethics, selecting the option that delivered the highest total benefit to citizens while presenting duty as a secondary consideration in public decision-making.
The council followed a prioritarian approach, assigning greater moral weight to improvements for the worst-off rather than to maximising total welfare across the affected population.
Utilitarianism is defined in the passage as the principle of maximising overall wellbeing or total happiness across the greatest number. The opposite of this would be a framework that prioritises improvements for the worst-off specifically, rather than maximising aggregate welfare, which is precisely what prioritarianism does.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This describes ranking policies by their contribution to overall social welfare, which is essentially restating utilitarianism's core principle rather than opposing it.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: Despite using the word "absolutist," this option still evaluates choices by "broadest societal benefit," which mirrors utilitarianism's logic of aggregate benefit rather than opposing it.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This option, despite labelling itself "deontological," still selects the option with the "highest total benefit," which is utilitarian reasoning, making it inconsistent and not a true opposite.
Why Option C is Correct: This describes assigning greater moral weight to the worst-off rather than maximising total welfare, which directly contrasts with utilitarianism's core aggregative principle, making it the closest opposite.
Key Takeaway: When asked for an opposite, check the underlying logic of each option rather than just the label used, since some options use contrasting terminology but still apply the same reasoning being asked to oppose.
Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
The passage rejects formal methods in principle. It holds that moral judgement cannot be expressed in disciplined terms and concludes that AI should not serve in courts, medicine, or diplomacy under any conditions.
The passage weighs the appeal of an impersonal AI judge against doubts about moral grasp. It claims codified schemes retain case nuance at scale and uses a physics analogy to predict convergence on a unified framework.
The passage weighs the appeal of an impersonal AI judge against doubts about moral grasp. It warns that codification can erode case-sensitive judgement, allow axiom-led reasoning at scale, and use a physics analogy to model structured plurality.
The passage highlights administrative gains from automation. It treats reproducing human moral judgement as progress and argues that, as computational resources increase, AI can be responsible for decision-making across varied institutional settings.
The passage weighs the appeal of an impersonal AI judge against doubts about moral grasp. It warns that codification can erode case-sensitive judgement, allow axiom-led reasoning at scale, and use a physics analogy to model structured plurality.
The passage weighs the appeal of an AI moral arbiter against deep doubts about whether it can truly grasp morality, warns that formalising ethics risks losing nuance and context, but also shows how AI could reason from fixed ethical starting points, using the physics analogy to illustrate how different theories can coexist without merging into one framework.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This claims the passage rejects formal methods entirely and concludes AI should never serve in such roles, but the passage actually explores how ethics has been formalised before and how AI might apply fixed starting points, without reaching such an absolute rejection.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This claims the passage predicts convergence on a unified ethical framework through the physics analogy, but the passage's physics analogy is used to show that theories diverge and coexist, not that they converge into one framework.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This claims the passage treats reproducing human moral judgment as progress, but the passage explicitly raises concern that AI replicating human decisions might only reproduce human biases and limitations, not improve on them.
Why Option C is Correct: This captures the passage's balanced exploration, weighing AI's appeal against doubts about moral understanding, warning about the risk of losing nuance through codification, and using the physics analogy to illustrate structured plurality rather than convergence.
Key Takeaway: Watch for summary options that overstate the passage's position into an absolute conclusion, when the actual passage maintains a more exploratory, balanced argument.
The passage compares ethics to physics, where different theories apply to different aspects of a domain and says AI can reason from fixed starting points in complex cases. Which one of the assumptions below must hold for that comparison to guide practice?
There is a principled way to decide which ethical framework applies to which class of cases, so the system can select the relevant starting points before deriving a recommendation.
Real cases never straddle different areas, so a case always fits exactly one framework without any overlap whatsoever.
A single master framework replaces all others after translation into one code, so domain boundaries disappear in application.
Once formalised, all ethical frameworks yield the same recommendation in every case, so selection among them is unnecessary.
There is a principled way to decide which ethical framework applies to which class of cases, so the system can select the relevant starting points before deriving a recommendation.
For an AI system to reason from fixed ethical starting points the way physics applies different theories to different domains, there must be a reliable, principled way to determine which ethical framework or starting point is appropriate for a given class of cases before any reasoning can proceed.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: This assumes real cases never overlap between frameworks, which is a much stronger and unrealistic assumption than what is needed, the comparison does not require this level of clean separation, only a principled way of selecting an applicable framework.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This assumes all frameworks eventually merge into one master code, which actually contradicts the physics analogy's point about theories remaining distinct and diverging rather than collapsing into a single system.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This assumes all frameworks always agree on recommendations, removing any need for selection, which contradicts the passage's explicit point that ethical theories diverge and justify similar actions differently.
Why Option A is Correct: This captures the minimal necessary assumption, that the system needs a principled way to pick the relevant ethical starting point for a given case before applying that framework's reasoning, mirroring how physics applies different theories to different domains.
Key Takeaway: For "must hold" assumption questions, identify the minimal condition genuinely required for the analogy to work, rather than a stronger or unrelated claim that goes beyond what's necessary.
All of the following can reasonably be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
by analogy with physics, compact postulates can yield broad predictions across incompatible theories and ethics can likewise share structure while continuing to diverge rather than close on a single comprehensive framework.
encoding ethics into fixed structures risks stripping away intuition, history, and context and, if that occurs, the depth that enables reflective judgement disappears. So, machines would mirror our limits rather than exceed them.
the appeal of an AI judge rests on immunity to bribery, partiality, and fatigue; yet the text questions whether procedural cleanliness amounts to moral understanding without lived context and interpretive depth.
with fixed moral starting points and expanding computational resources, the argument forecasts convergence on one ethical system and treats contextual judgement as unnecessary once formal reasoning scales across domains and cultures.
with fixed moral starting points and expanding computational resources, the argument forecasts convergence on one ethical system and treats contextual judgement as unnecessary once formal reasoning scales across domains and cultures.
The passage does not forecast convergence on a single ethical system, in fact it uses the physics analogy specifically to show that theories can remain structurally similar while still diverging and coexisting as distinct frameworks, never merging into one. The passage also never claims contextual judgment becomes unnecessary, it actually raises this as a central concern throughout.
Why Option A is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This matches the passage's explicit physics analogy, that theories share structure (postulates leading to consequences) while remaining incompatible and divergent, which the passage extends to ethics as well.
Why Option B is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This matches the passage's stated concern, that encoding ethics into formal structures risks stripping away intuition, history and context, leaving machines to merely mirror human limitations rather than transcend them.
Why Option C is
Incorrect (as a candidate for the exception): This matches the passage's opening framing, the appeal of an AI free from emotion, prejudice or fatigue, set against the deeper question of whether procedural cleanliness equates to true moral understanding.
Why Option D is Correct: This contradicts the passage, which uses the physics analogy to show theories diverge rather than converge, and which raises ongoing concern about losing contextual judgment rather than treating it as something that becomes safely unnecessary.
Key Takeaway: Watch for an inference that reverses the passage's actual argument, claiming convergence and the irrelevance of context when the passage actually argues the opposite, persistent divergence and continued importance of context.
Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. "The gap between liberalism's claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry" is now so wide that "the lie can no longer be accepted," Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of "creating a shared future in a fragmented world"? . . .
Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing leftwing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? . . . He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.
Mr Deneen's fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism's ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late 19th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.
Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is "liberation from liberalism itself". The best way to read "Why Liberalism Failed" is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.
The author of the passage refers to "the Davos elite" to illustrate his views on:
the unlikelihood of a return to the liberalism of the past as long as the rich continue to benefit from the decline in liberal values.
the way the debate around liberalism has been captured by the rich who have managed to insulate themselves from economic hardships.
the hypocrisy of the liberal rich, who profess to subscribe to liberal values while cornering most of the wealth.
the fact that the rise in liberalism had led to a greater interest in shared futures from unlikely social classes.
the hypocrisy of the liberal rich, who profess to subscribe to liberal values while cornering most of the wealth.
The Davos reference appears twice in the passage, first with the image of 1,000 private planes heading to Davos to discuss creating a shared future, and later with the image of the Davos elite piling their plates with perks and share options. Both references depict wealthy individuals professing concern about inequality and shared futures while personally exemplifying the very inequality they claim to address, which is the definition of hypocrisy.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue that the existence of the Davos elite makes a return to liberal values unlikely, it uses them to illustrate hypocritical behaviour, not to predict the future of liberalism.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue that the Davos elite have captured the debate around liberalism specifically, it uses them as an example of hypocrisy within liberal institutions.
Why Option C is Correct: Both Davos references in the passage show wealthy people claiming to support liberal values like shared prosperity while personally accumulating disproportionate wealth and privilege, directly illustrating the hypocrisy of the liberal rich.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage does not suggest the Davos elite are genuinely interested in shared futures, it uses them to illustrate the gap between liberal rhetoric and actual behaviour.
Key Takeaway: When an example appears more than once in a passage, identify the consistent point it illustrates each time it appears to determine its primary function in the argument.
All of the following statements are evidence of the decline of liberalism today, EXCEPT:
"And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery."
". . . the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies . . ."
"Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd."
"'The gap between liberalism's claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry' is now so wide that 'the lie can no longer be accepted,'. . ."
"And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery."
Options B, C and D all directly describe the current state of liberal institutions, democratic processes, economic structures and the gap between liberal promises and lived reality, which are all evidence of liberalism's current decline. Option A describes a consequence of technological advances reducing work to meaningless drudgery, which is a feature of the current technological economy but is not specifically presented as evidence of liberalism's failure in the passage. It could be attributed to technological change rather than to liberalism's decline specifically.
Why Option A is Correct: Technological advances reducing work to drudgery is a feature of the modern economy attributed to technology, not necessarily to liberalism's failure as a political or social system, making it the weakest piece of direct evidence for liberalism's decline specifically.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The creation of a business aristocracy and the rise of vast companies are explicitly cited as signs of the inequality that liberalism has failed to prevent, directly evidencing liberalism's decline.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: Democracy degenerating into theatre of the absurd is explicitly presented as an example of how liberalism's promises of genuine democratic participation have failed.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The widening gap between liberalism's claims and citizens' lived reality is the passage's central definition of the evidence for liberalism's failure.
Key Takeaway: Distinguish between consequences that directly demonstrate the failure of a specific ideology and consequences that may have multiple causes and are not uniquely tied to that ideology's failures.
The author of the passage is likely to disagree with all of the following statements, EXCEPT:
claims about liberalism's disintegration are exaggerated and misunderstand its core features.
if we accept that liberalism is a dying ideal, we must work to find a viable substitute.
liberalism was the dominant ideal in the past century, but it had to reform itself to remain so.
the essence of liberalism lies in greater individual self-expression and freedoms.
liberalism was the dominant ideal in the past century, but it had to reform itself to remain so.
The passage's author explicitly endorses the historical evidence of liberalism reforming itself in the late 19th century through Roosevelt, progressives and university reformers, directly supporting the claim that liberalism was dominant and had to reform itself to remain so.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The author agrees that liberalism has serious problems today, but argues these don't amount to complete disintegration or failure, not that claims of decline are simply exaggerated or misunderstand liberalism's core features, which is a stronger dismissal than the author offers.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The author explicitly argues against the conclusion that liberalism must be replaced, stating that the answer is not liberation from liberalism itself but reform within it, so he would disagree that a viable substitute must be found.
Why Option C is Correct: The author explicitly describes how liberalism dominated the past and had to reform itself historically, using the late 19th century American example, and argues this capacity for self-reform is what Deneen fails to appreciate.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The author explicitly criticises Deneen for arguing that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints, calling this too narrow and arguing that liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions beyond just individual freedom.
Key Takeaway: For "likely to agree with except" questions, find the statement that most closely mirrors an argument the author explicitly makes in the passage, particularly one the author uses as part of their own counter-argument.
The author of the passage faults Deneen's conclusions for all of the following reasons, EXCEPT:
its repeated harking back to premodern notions of liberty.
its failure to note historical instances in which the process of declining liberalism has managed to reverse itself.
its extreme pessimism about the future of liberalism today and predictions of an ultimate decline.
its very narrow definition of liberalism limited to individual freedoms.
its repeated harking back to premodern notions of liberty.
The author explicitly agrees with Deneen that the world has much to learn from premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial, rather than faulting him for invoking premodern ideas. The author's criticisms of Deneen are about his overly narrow definition of liberalism and his failure to recognise liberalism's capacity for self-reform.
Why Option A is Correct: The author explicitly agrees that the world has much to learn from premodern notions of liberty, so invoking premodern ideas is not something the author faults Deneen for.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly criticises Deneen for failing to recognise liberalism's ability to reform itself, using the late 19th century American reforms as historical evidence Deneen overlooks.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly argues that Deneen is wrong to conclude that the only solution is liberation from liberalism itself, which reflects the author's criticism of Deneen's extreme pessimism about liberalism's future.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly criticises Deneen for arguing that the essence of liberalism lies only in freeing individuals from constraints, calling this too narrow and ignoring the wide range of intellectual traditions within liberalism.
Key Takeaway: When an author explicitly endorses one aspect of the thinker being critiqued, that endorsed aspect cannot be among the faults the author attributes to that thinker.
In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform's offerings — from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches — had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show's creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.
What's less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills — a return to the material pleasures of physical media — is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality. Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film "bought" on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It's a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company's ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.
Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay — the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.
In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.
Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it'll help next quarter's numbers.
Which one of the following statements about art best captures the arguments made in the passage?
In the age of online subscription services, it is time to change our understanding of classic works of art being primarily immutable and easily available to the public.
As art is increasingly created, stored and distributed digitally, access to it is counterintuitively likely to be made more difficult by the rapid churn in technology and the whims of host platforms.
Accepting retroactive changes to works of art is dangerous because it will encourage creators to not put enough effort into the original attempt, given that they can always edit or update their work later.
Works of art belong to the cultural commons and hence must remain available in perpetuity, irrespective of who pays for access to them.
As art is increasingly created, stored and distributed digitally, access to it is counterintuitively likely to be made more difficult by the rapid churn in technology and the whims of host platforms.
The passage describes how streaming services remove content unpredictably, digital purchases can vanish due to shifting rights agreements, and even physical media like DVDs and Blu-rays face long-term durability concerns, all suggesting that despite the digital age's promise of broader access, technology and platform decisions are making access to art more precarious, not more secure.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue that classic works of art were ever truly "immutable," it shows that ephemerality and loss have always existed, the issue is more about access uncertainty in the digital era specifically.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: The passage does not argue that retroactive changes will discourage creators from putting in effort, this speculation about creator behaviour is not the argument the passage makes.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: The passage doesn't argue art "must" remain available in perpetuity as a moral imperative, it instead describes the current reality of precarious access without making this kind of normative claim.
Why Option B is Correct: This matches the passage's overall argument, that despite digital media's promise of easy access, technological churn and platform decisions are making access to art counterintuitively more difficult and uncertain.
Key Takeaway: Distinguish between a passage's descriptive observations about a trend and a normative claim about what should happen, since incorrect options often slip into prescriptive territory the passage doesn't actually argue for.
Which one of the following statements, if true, would best invalidate the main argument of the passage?
Recent research has irrefutably proven that Blu-Ray discs have a shelf life of at least 100 years.
Studios and streaming services have committed to giving customers perpetual and platform independent access to the original digital content they have paid for.
When moving to a different geographical location, customers can easily use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass geo-blocking and regain access to their content on any streaming service.
Improved cloud storage services have made it possible for movie collections to now be preserved in perpetuity, without the need to keep migrating the files.
Studios and streaming services have committed to giving customers perpetual and platform independent access to the original digital content they have paid for.
The passage's main argument is that digital and physical media access is precarious due to platform decisions, shifting rights agreements, and technological decay. If studios and streaming services committed to giving customers perpetual, platform-independent access to content they've paid for, this would directly remove the precariousness the passage centers its argument on, invalidating the main concern.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: Even with a proven 100-year shelf life for Blu-ray discs, this does not address the passage's broader argument about digital purchases, streaming removals, and shifting rights agreements, which remain unresolved.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: VPN workarounds for geo-blocking address only the specific issue of regional restrictions, not the passage's broader concern about content being removed from platforms entirely or facing format and decay issues.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: Improved cloud storage addressing file migration concerns would help with data decay specifically, but it would not resolve the deeper issue of platforms removing content or restricting access based on rights agreements.
Why Option B is Correct: This directly addresses the passage's core argument about precarious and platform-dependent access, by removing the very uncertainty and rights-based restrictions the passage centers its concern around.
Key Takeaway: To invalidate a passage's main argument, find the option that removes the central uncertainty or problem the passage is built around, not one that addresses only a peripheral detail.
Which of the following statements is suggested by the sentence "Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema"?
Around a century ago, people were more accepting of not having access to films once they left the local cinema.
Today, films are expected to be available for a long time, since they are no longer tied solely to their stay at the local cinema.
Cinema is now no longer as ephemeral as it used to be earlier, because the technology used for creating and preserving films has improved manifold.
Presently, there is no reason why film studios should remove access to films once they have left the local cinema.
Today, films are expected to be available for a long time, since they are no longer tied solely to their stay at the local cinema.
The phrase suggests that in the past, people accepted that a film, once it left the cinema, was essentially gone, an attitude of impermanence. By contrast, the passage's broader argument shows that today, audiences expect films to remain available long after their cinema run, since they are no longer tied solely to that brief cinema window, given streaming and digital purchases.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This focuses on past audience acceptance, but the question asks what this specific statement suggests in the context of contrast with today, not just about historical attitudes alone.
Why Option C is
Incorrect: This claims cinema is "no longer as ephemeral" due to improved preservation technology, but the passage's larger argument is actually that despite improved technology, access remains precarious due to platform and rights issues, not that ephemerality has been resolved.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This claims there is "no reason" for studios to remove access, but the passage shows there are commercial and practical reasons, like quarterly performance pressures, that lead studios to do exactly this.
Why Option B is Correct: This captures the intended contrast, that audiences today expect long-term availability for films, unlike the past acceptance of cinema's inherent impermanence after leaving theaters.
Key Takeaway: When a statement draws a contrast between past and present attitudes, identify what change in expectation the passage is highlighting, rather than focusing only on the historical half of that contrast.
"Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects." What is the purpose of this example used in the passage?
To show that streaming services are controlling access to the cultural commons rather than expanding it.
To show how unsubstantiated reports are leading to an increase in the level of distrust towards streaming services.
To show a practice that justifies the fears of people who feel streaming services cannot be trusted to be custodians of cultural artefacts like film.
To show that art in the digital age, specifically film, is no longer sacrosanct, and may be changed to suit changing tastes or technology.
To show a practice that justifies the fears of people who feel streaming services cannot be trusted to be custodians of cultural artefacts like film.
The passage mentions this example, alongside the HBO Max removals, as evidence that supports the fears of people who have long warned that streaming companies cannot be trusted to faithfully preserve cultural works, since they are willing to alter content retroactively to suit their own purposes.
Why Option A is
Incorrect: This example specifically illustrates retroactive editing of existing content, a different concern from controlling access to the cultural commons, which is more directly illustrated by the HBO Max content removals mentioned earlier.
Why Option B is
Incorrect: The passage explicitly notes that the report was "since denied by the show's creators," but it still uses the example to illustrate the broader pattern of distrust, the purpose isn't about highlighting that the report itself is unsubstantiated, but about what it represents to people already suspicious of streaming services.
Why Option D is
Incorrect: This is a closely related but broader claim about art generally no longer being "sacrosanct," when the passage's specific use of this example is to support the fears already raised about streaming services' trustworthiness as custodians, a more specific point than this general claim about art's mutability.
Why Option C is Correct: This precisely matches how the passage frames the example, as something that seemed like vindication to those who had long warned streaming was more about controlling access than expanding it, directly supporting their existing fears about streaming services as untrustworthy custodians.
Key Takeaway: When the passage explicitly frames an example as supporting a previously stated suspicion or fear, identify that exact framing rather than choosing a broader or more generic interpretation of the example's purpose.
There is a group in the space community who view the solar system not as an opportunity to expand human potential but as a nature preserve, forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes. These planetary protection advocates [call] for avoiding "harmful contamination" of celestial bodies. Under this regime, NASA incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres ...
Transporting bacteria would matter if Mars were the vital world once imagined by astronomers who mistook optical illusions for canals. Nobody wants to expose Martians to measles, but sadly, robotic exploration reveals a bleak, rusted landscape, lacking oxygen and flooded with radiation ready to sterilize any Earthly microbes. Simple life might exist underground, or down at the bottom of a deep canyon, but it has been very hard to find with robots. . . . The upsides from human exploration and development of Mars clearly outweigh the welfare of purely speculative Martian fungi ...
The other likely targets of human exploration, development, and settlement, our moon and the asteroids, exist in a desiccated, radiation-soaked realm of hard vacuum and extreme temperature variations that would kill nearly anything. It's also important to note that many international competitors will ignore the demands of these protection extremists in any case. For example, China recently sent a terrarium to the moon and germinated a plant seed—with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community. In contrast, when it was recently revealed that a researcher had surreptitiously smuggled super-resilient microscopic tardigrades aboard the ill-fated Israeli Beresheet lunar probe, a firestorm was unleashed within the space community ...
NASA's previous human exploration efforts made no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice. As the Mars expert Robert Zubrin noted in the National Review, U.S. lunar landings did not leave the campsites cleaner than they found it. Apollo's bacteria-infested litter included bags of feces. Forcing NASA's proposed Mars exploration to do better, scrubbing everything and hauling out all the trash, would destroy NASA's human exploration budget and encroach on the agency's other directorates, too. Getting future astronauts off Mars is enough of a challenge, without trying to tote weeks of waste along as well.
A reasonable compromise is to continue on the course laid out by the U.S. government and the National Research Council, which proposed a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation. This approach minimizes contamination, maximizes scientific exploration ... Mars presents a stark choice of diverging human futures. We can turn inward, pursuing ever more limited futures while we await whichever natural or manmade disaster will eradicate our species and life on Earth. Alternatively, we can choose to propel our biosphere further into the solar system, simultaneously protecting our home planet and providing a backup plan for the only life we know exists in the universe. Are the lives on Earth worth less than some hypothetical microbe lurking under Martian rocks?
The author is unlikely to disagree with any of the following EXCEPT:
the proposal for a zonal segregation of the Martian landscape into regions for different purposes.
that while NASA's earlier missions were not ideal in their approach to space contamination, they likely did no grave damage.
space contamination should be minimised until the possibility of life on the astronomical body being explored is ruled out.
the exorbitant costs of continuing to keep the space environment pristine may be unsustainable.
space contamination should be minimised until the possibility of life on the astronomical body being explored is ruled out.
The author's entire argument is that planetary protection concerns are overblown given the bleak, radiation-flooded Martian environment where life is hard to find, and that the costs of sterilisation are prohibitive. The author would strongly disagree with the idea that space contamination should be minimised until life is ruled out, since this is precisely the position of the "planetary protection advocates" the author is critiquing.
The author mentions all of the following reasons to dismiss concerns about contaminating Mars EXCEPT:
the lack of evidence of living organisms on Mars makes possible contamination from earthly microbes a moot point.
efforts to contain contamination on Mars are likely to be derailed as competitor countries may not follow similar restrictions.
the use of similar probes on astronomical bodies like the moon have had little effect on the environment.
earlier explorations have already contaminated pristine space environments.
the use of similar probes on astronomical bodies like the moon have had little effect on the environment.
The author dismisses contamination concerns by arguing that Mars is hostile to earthly microbes, that competitors like China will ignore restrictions anyway, and that previous missions have already contaminated space environments including the moon. However, the author does not argue that using probes on the moon has had little environmental effect as a reason to dismiss Mars concerns. The moon example is used to show the hypocrisy of the scientific community's reactions to different countries' contaminations, not to argue that probe use has limited environmental impact.
The author's overall tone in the first paragraph can be described as
sceptical about the excessive efforts to sanitise planets where life has not yet been proven to exist.
equivocal about the reasons extended by the group of scientists seeking to limit space exploration.
indifferent to the elitism of a few scientists aiming to corner space exploration.
approving of the amount of money NASA spends to restrict the spread of contamination in space.
sceptical about the excessive efforts to sanitise planets where life has not yet been proven to exist.
The first paragraph describes planetary protection advocates spending large sums sterilising probes to prevent contamination of "entirely theoretical biospheres," which immediately signals the author's view that these efforts are excessive and unwarranted given the speculative nature of the life being protected. The tone is dismissive and incredulous toward the scale of precaution being taken.
The contrasting reactions to the Chinese and Israeli "contaminations" of lunar space
are valid as the contamination of the lunar environment from animal sources is far greater than from plants.
are evidence of China's reasonable approach towards space contamination.
indicate that national scientists may have different sensitivities to issues of biosphere protection.
reveal global biases prevalent in attitudes towards different countries.
indicate that national scientists may have different sensitivities to issues of biosphere protection.
The passage describes how China germinating a plant seed on the moon drew no protest from its scientific community, while a researcher smuggling tardigrades aboard an Israeli lunar probe caused a firestorm. The author presents this contrast without resolving it and notes only that the reactions differed. This suggests that different national scientific communities may have different sensitivities to biosphere protection issues, since the same act of biological introduction to the moon generated radically different reactions depending on the country involved.
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