CAT Mock Test- 4 - CAT

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:

It is important to keep in mind how differently people thought then. People's primary concern was to avoid living an unfortunate life. Therefore, they were more likely to order their thoughts, decisions, and behaviours to promote increased life satisfaction. One of the most important things to keep in mind is individuals didn’t automatically assume that they would achieve happiness by attaining money, prestige, and or beautiful things. With great urgency, people wanted to understand how they could have an excellent soul.

Stoicism was one of the famous schools of thought during this period because the Stoics provided interesting answers to anxiety, stress, fear, and troubling questions like “What do I want out of life?” The Stoics offered an operating system that dealt with the trials of the human condition. Their ultimate answer to these issues (essentially) went: I want enduring happiness and tranquillity of mind, which comes from being a virtuous person. In summation, Stoicism was an ancient school of philosophy that taught a particular way of living. Its principal focus was how to live a virtuous life, maximize happiness and reduce negative emotions. The Stoic philosophy changed over time, shifting focus from logic and physics - to more psychological concerns like tranquillity and well-being. Also, the Stoics could never convene to affirm all of their tenants precisely, but there are certain principles at the core of the Stoic operating system.

Epictetus - A Greek Stoic Philosopher wrote, "Some things are up to us, and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices." If we tether our happiness to things, not within our control, be it wealth, beauty, social status, or even our health, we will suffer unnecessarily. For chance, luck, randomness, or whatever one wishes to call it, plays a massive role in each person’s life. We can easily lose the external goods or accolades on which, in ignorance, we base our happiness, or even fail to attain them in the first place. But acceptance of this does not have to lead to fatalistic resignation in the assumption that because some things are out of our control, so too is our well-being. Epictetus explained that we are troubled by our judgement about things and because we can control our judgements, the quality of our life is also within our control.

The Stoics take a very different view of misfortune than most people. They expect mishaps and use them as opportunities to hone their virtues. Imagine breaking a leg and needing to sit in bed for four months while it heals. A Stoic would attempt to guide their thoughts away from useless “woe is me” rumination and focus instead on how they might do something productive while bedridden (e.g., write their first book). They would try to reframe the event as a way to cultivate their patience and become more creative. Where there is an adverse event, Stoics try not to let it ruin their tranquillity, and instead, they try to derive character-building benefits wherever possible. This is the beauty of stoicism.

Q. According to the passage, what can be a direct consequence of people trying to avoid an unfortunate life?

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Humans often appear to react irrationally in the face of disease, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Many cling to religion or become superstitious. Others become fatalistic. In times of plague and trauma, we moderns seek to protect ourselves with prayers, charms, sigils and spells as much as any medieval peasant. That a surgical mask is hygienic doesn’t make it any less of a magical symbol.

Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science - a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague. During the previous millennium, the biggest boom in the practice of magic coincided with the Black Death in the mid-14th century. It was the deadliest pandemic in human history, killing as much as half the population of Asia, Africa and Europe - around 200 million souls. 

The Islamic world...was hit particularly hard by the plague. There, it helped give rise to the ‘occult-scientific revolution’, where various occult sciences - astrology, alchemy, kabbalah, geomancy, dream interpretation - became an important basis for empire more than ever before. The ability to predict the future with divination, then change it with magic, was of obvious political, military and economic interest. Western Europe saw a parallel upsurge of occultism - much of it from Arabic sources - which we now call the Renaissance. The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend: historians now admit that saints of science such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were likewise raving occultists.

Medicine, too, was often classified and practised as an occult science among premodern Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians. Many considered it alchemy’s sister, both sciences being predicated on the harnessing of cosmic correspondences and natural sympathies to restore elemental equilibrium in the human body - the definition of health. Techniques for life-extension were also central to the alchemical quest. The sweeping physical and sociopolitical imbalances wrought by plague were accordingly answered by an upsurge in medicine, occult and otherwise.

Why did, and do, most practitioners of spiritual medicine see it as a perfectly rational response? Leaving aside the possible agency of spirits and other nonhuman entities, one factor is certain: the placebo effect. It refers to the clinical effectiveness of inert substitutes in healing disease, as long as the patient believes them to be a real drug. Under conditions of mass trauma, combined with sincere belief and mental focus, the effectiveness of the placebo often goes up sharply, with patients able to change their physiology at will. As it happens, creating extreme psychophysical conditions is also a prerequisite to the practice of many occult arts: fasting, prayer, isolation, a vegetarian diet, ritual cleanliness and constant vigil, for weeks, months or even years on end. 

By any premodern definition, then, the placebo effect is simply a form of magic. Whether you believe in the authority of celestial spirits or of doctors in white lab coats, the effect is similar: astonishing reversals (or inducements) of disease can sometimes be achieved through the power of belief alone - especially when ritually, traumatically harnessed.

Q. Which of the following has NOT been mentioned as one of the purposes of magic/occult sciences in the passage? 

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Humans often appear to react irrationally in the face of disease, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Many cling to religion or become superstitious. Others become fatalistic. In times of plague and trauma, we moderns seek to protect ourselves with prayers, charms, sigils and spells as much as any medieval peasant. That a surgical mask is hygienic doesn’t make it any less of a magical symbol.

Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science - a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague. During the previous millennium, the biggest boom in the practice of magic coincided with the Black Death in the mid-14th century. It was the deadliest pandemic in human history, killing as much as half the population of Asia, Africa and Europe - around 200 million souls. 

The Islamic world...was hit particularly hard by the plague. There, it helped give rise to the ‘occult-scientific revolution’, where various occult sciences - astrology, alchemy, kabbalah, geomancy, dream interpretation - became an important basis for empire more than ever before. The ability to predict the future with divination, then change it with magic, was of obvious political, military and economic interest. Western Europe saw a parallel upsurge of occultism - much of it from Arabic sources - which we now call the Renaissance. The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend: historians now admit that saints of science such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were likewise raving occultists.

Medicine, too, was often classified and practised as an occult science among premodern Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians. Many considered it alchemy’s sister, both sciences being predicated on the harnessing of cosmic correspondences and natural sympathies to restore elemental equilibrium in the human body - the definition of health. Techniques for life-extension were also central to the alchemical quest. The sweeping physical and sociopolitical imbalances wrought by plague were accordingly answered by an upsurge in medicine, occult and otherwise.

Why did, and do, most practitioners of spiritual medicine see it as a perfectly rational response? Leaving aside the possible agency of spirits and other nonhuman entities, one factor is certain: the placebo effect. It refers to the clinical effectiveness of inert substitutes in healing disease, as long as the patient believes them to be a real drug. Under conditions of mass trauma, combined with sincere belief and mental focus, the effectiveness of the placebo often goes up sharply, with patients able to change their physiology at will. As it happens, creating extreme psychophysical conditions is also a prerequisite to the practice of many occult arts: fasting, prayer, isolation, a vegetarian diet, ritual cleanliness and constant vigil, for weeks, months or even years on end. 

By any premodern definition, then, the placebo effect is simply a form of magic. Whether you believe in the authority of celestial spirits or of doctors in white lab coats, the effect is similar: astonishing reversals (or inducements) of disease can sometimes be achieved through the power of belief alone - especially when ritually, traumatically harnessed.

Q. Which of the following highlights a major similarity between premodern medicine and alchemy?

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Humans often appear to react irrationally in the face of disease, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Many cling to religion or become superstitious. Others become fatalistic. In times of plague and trauma, we moderns seek to protect ourselves with prayers, charms, sigils and spells as much as any medieval peasant. That a surgical mask is hygienic doesn’t make it any less of a magical symbol.

Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science - a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague. During the previous millennium, the biggest boom in the practice of magic coincided with the Black Death in the mid-14th century. It was the deadliest pandemic in human history, killing as much as half the population of Asia, Africa and Europe - around 200 million souls. 

The Islamic world...was hit particularly hard by the plague. There, it helped give rise to the ‘occult-scientific revolution’, where various occult sciences - astrology, alchemy, kabbalah, geomancy, dream interpretation - became an important basis for empire more than ever before. The ability to predict the future with divination, then change it with magic, was of obvious political, military and economic interest. Western Europe saw a parallel upsurge of occultism - much of it from Arabic sources - which we now call the Renaissance. The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend: historians now admit that saints of science such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were likewise raving occultists.

Medicine, too, was often classified and practised as an occult science among premodern Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians. Many considered it alchemy’s sister, both sciences being predicated on the harnessing of cosmic correspondences and natural sympathies to restore elemental equilibrium in the human body - the definition of health. Techniques for life-extension were also central to the alchemical quest. The sweeping physical and sociopolitical imbalances wrought by plague were accordingly answered by an upsurge in medicine, occult and otherwise.

Why did, and do, most practitioners of spiritual medicine see it as a perfectly rational response? Leaving aside the possible agency of spirits and other nonhuman entities, one factor is certain: the placebo effect. It refers to the clinical effectiveness of inert substitutes in healing disease, as long as the patient believes them to be a real drug. Under conditions of mass trauma, combined with sincere belief and mental focus, the effectiveness of the placebo often goes up sharply, with patients able to change their physiology at will. As it happens, creating extreme psychophysical conditions is also a prerequisite to the practice of many occult arts: fasting, prayer, isolation, a vegetarian diet, ritual cleanliness and constant vigil, for weeks, months or even years on end. 

By any premodern definition, then, the placebo effect is simply a form of magic. Whether you believe in the authority of celestial spirits or of doctors in white lab coats, the effect is similar: astonishing reversals (or inducements) of disease can sometimes be achieved through the power of belief alone - especially when ritually, traumatically harnessed.

Q. Why does the author mention the 'surgical mask' in the passage?

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Humans often appear to react irrationally in the face of disease, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Many cling to religion or become superstitious. Others become fatalistic. In times of plague and trauma, we moderns seek to protect ourselves with prayers, charms, sigils and spells as much as any medieval peasant. That a surgical mask is hygienic doesn’t make it any less of a magical symbol.

Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science - a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague. During the previous millennium, the biggest boom in the practice of magic coincided with the Black Death in the mid-14th century. It was the deadliest pandemic in human history, killing as much as half the population of Asia, Africa and Europe - around 200 million souls. 

The Islamic world...was hit particularly hard by the plague. There, it helped give rise to the ‘occult-scientific revolution’, where various occult sciences - astrology, alchemy, kabbalah, geomancy, dream interpretation - became an important basis for empire more than ever before. The ability to predict the future with divination, then change it with magic, was of obvious political, military and economic interest. Western Europe saw a parallel upsurge of occultism - much of it from Arabic sources - which we now call the Renaissance. The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend: historians now admit that saints of science such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were likewise raving occultists.

Medicine, too, was often classified and practised as an occult science among premodern Muslim, Jewish and Christian physicians. Many considered it alchemy’s sister, both sciences being predicated on the harnessing of cosmic correspondences and natural sympathies to restore elemental equilibrium in the human body - the definition of health. Techniques for life-extension were also central to the alchemical quest. The sweeping physical and sociopolitical imbalances wrought by plague were accordingly answered by an upsurge in medicine, occult and otherwise.

Why did, and do, most practitioners of spiritual medicine see it as a perfectly rational response? Leaving aside the possible agency of spirits and other nonhuman entities, one factor is certain: the placebo effect. It refers to the clinical effectiveness of inert substitutes in healing disease, as long as the patient believes them to be a real drug. Under conditions of mass trauma, combined with sincere belief and mental focus, the effectiveness of the placebo often goes up sharply, with patients able to change their physiology at will. As it happens, creating extreme psychophysical conditions is also a prerequisite to the practice of many occult arts: fasting, prayer, isolation, a vegetarian diet, ritual cleanliness and constant vigil, for weeks, months or even years on end. 

By any premodern definition, then, the placebo effect is simply a form of magic. Whether you believe in the authority of celestial spirits or of doctors in white lab coats, the effect is similar: astonishing reversals (or inducements) of disease can sometimes be achieved through the power of belief alone - especially when ritually, traumatically harnessed.

Q. "The scientific revolution that followed continued the same trend". The 'trend' in the statement refers to

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Our meritocracy looks to markets to measure merit. Prices—including, crucially, wages—establish what things are worth. Greg Mankiw, who chaired George Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, captures the ideal in his “principle of just deserts.” Meritocracy holds that “a person who contributes more to society deserves a higher income that reflects those greater contributions.” Moreover, meritocracy measures each person’s contribution as the market value that she adds “to society’s production of goods and services.”

But in reality, meritocratic hierarchies now distort market valuations, especially wages. Elites remake work in their own image, to privilege education and skills that only they can afford to acquire. Finance illustrates the pattern. In the mid 20th century, when the Economist called banking “the world’s most respectable dying industry,” those in the field were neither better educated nor better paid than others. Since then, super-educated elites have developed technologies—financial instruments, digital tools and legal regimes—that dramatically favour their own skills. Today, no sector is more closely associated with high wages. But the innovation is not a true advance, and the new style of finance does not make a greater social contribution than the old. The transaction costs of financial intermediation have not declined, and overall financial risk is neither reduced nor better shared.

Similar patterns pervade the wider economy. Elites remake work to favour their peculiar skills and then use the enormous incomes that ensue to buy educations for their children that the rest cannot match. Far from correcting itself, meritocratic inequality triggers a feedback loop that undermines meritocracy’s core claims. Merit is an ideology built to launder offensive hierarchies.

But, today's distribution of rewards and opportunities is not so repugnant that we need to junk the idea of merit. The meritocratic idea was forged in the revolt against the old society that fixed people’s position at birth, most notably in the French and American Revolutions of the 18th century and the English liberal revolution of the 19th. But things didn’t stop there. Prominent thinkers of the time like Du Bois and Luther King, all rested their arguments on the idea that people should be judged on the basis of their own abilities. I would agree with a reworded version of Mankiw’s principle: someone who contributes more to prosperity deserves a higher income that reflects their greater contribution.

There is more to meritocracy than money-making. The meritocratic idea tries to address two of the great problems at the heart of modernity: how do we reconcile the moral equality of individuals with social differentiation? And how do we secure the economic growth that pays for the things we have come to expect, such as social welfare?
Meritocracy answers the first question by providing a combination of equality of opportunity and competition. Universal education gives everybody a basic shot at succeeding. Competition allows people to discover their unique talents. And if competition has downsides, they are nothing compared with the risks of allowing talents to go undiscovered. The evidence that meritocracy promotes economic efficiency is overwhelming: meritocratic countries such as Singapore grow more robustly than non-meritocratic ones such as Greece; public companies that recruit people on merit are more successful than family companies that rely on nepotism. The solution to the inequalities produced by meritocracy’s success is to tax the winners rather than to bind Prometheus.

Q. Which of the following best describes what the passage is trying to do?

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Our meritocracy looks to markets to measure merit. Prices—including, crucially, wages—establish what things are worth. Greg Mankiw, who chaired George Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, captures the ideal in his “principle of just deserts.” Meritocracy holds that “a person who contributes more to society deserves a higher income that reflects those greater contributions.” Moreover, meritocracy measures each person’s contribution as the market value that she adds “to society’s production of goods and services.”

But in reality, meritocratic hierarchies now distort market valuations, especially wages. Elites remake work in their own image, to privilege education and skills that only they can afford to acquire. Finance illustrates the pattern. In the mid 20th century, when the Economist called banking “the world’s most respectable dying industry,” those in the field were neither better educated nor better paid than others. Since then, super-educated elites have developed technologies—financial instruments, digital tools and legal regimes—that dramatically favour their own skills. Today, no sector is more closely associated with high wages. But the innovation is not a true advance, and the new style of finance does not make a greater social contribution than the old. The transaction costs of financial intermediation have not declined, and overall financial risk is neither reduced nor better shared.

Similar patterns pervade the wider economy. Elites remake work to favour their peculiar skills and then use the enormous incomes that ensue to buy educations for their children that the rest cannot match. Far from correcting itself, meritocratic inequality triggers a feedback loop that undermines meritocracy’s core claims. Merit is an ideology built to launder offensive hierarchies.

But, today's distribution of rewards and opportunities is not so repugnant that we need to junk the idea of merit. The meritocratic idea was forged in the revolt against the old society that fixed people’s position at birth, most notably in the French and American Revolutions of the 18th century and the English liberal revolution of the 19th. But things didn’t stop there. Prominent thinkers of the time like Du Bois and Luther King, all rested their arguments on the idea that people should be judged on the basis of their own abilities. I would agree with a reworded version of Mankiw’s principle: someone who contributes more to prosperity deserves a higher income that reflects their greater contribution.

There is more to meritocracy than money-making. The meritocratic idea tries to address two of the great problems at the heart of modernity: how do we reconcile the moral equality of individuals with social differentiation? And how do we secure the economic growth that pays for the things we have come to expect, such as social welfare?
Meritocracy answers the first question by providing a combination of equality of opportunity and competition. Universal education gives everybody a basic shot at succeeding. Competition allows people to discover their unique talents. And if competition has downsides, they are nothing compared with the risks of allowing talents to go undiscovered. The evidence that meritocracy promotes economic efficiency is overwhelming: meritocratic countries such as Singapore grow more robustly than non-meritocratic ones such as Greece; public companies that recruit people on merit are more successful than family companies that rely on nepotism. The solution to the inequalities produced by meritocracy’s success is to tax the winners rather than to bind Prometheus.

Q. The author's view on the 'principle of just deserts' differs from that of Mankiw in which of the following ways?

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Our meritocracy looks to markets to measure merit. Prices—including, crucially, wages—establish what things are worth. Greg Mankiw, who chaired George Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, captures the ideal in his “principle of just deserts.” Meritocracy holds that “a person who contributes more to society deserves a higher income that reflects those greater contributions.” Moreover, meritocracy measures each person’s contribution as the market value that she adds “to society’s production of goods and services.”

But in reality, meritocratic hierarchies now distort market valuations, especially wages. Elites remake work in their own image, to privilege education and skills that only they can afford to acquire. Finance illustrates the pattern. In the mid 20th century, when the Economist called banking “the world’s most respectable dying industry,” those in the field were neither better educated nor better paid than others. Since then, super-educated elites have developed technologies—financial instruments, digital tools and legal regimes—that dramatically favour their own skills. Today, no sector is more closely associated with high wages. But the innovation is not a true advance, and the new style of finance does not make a greater social contribution than the old. The transaction costs of financial intermediation have not declined, and overall financial risk is neither reduced nor better shared.

Similar patterns pervade the wider economy. Elites remake work to favour their peculiar skills and then use the enormous incomes that ensue to buy educations for their children that the rest cannot match. Far from correcting itself, meritocratic inequality triggers a feedback loop that undermines meritocracy’s core claims. Merit is an ideology built to launder offensive hierarchies.

But, today's distribution of rewards and opportunities is not so repugnant that we need to junk the idea of merit. The meritocratic idea was forged in the revolt against the old society that fixed people’s position at birth, most notably in the French and American Revolutions of the 18th century and the English liberal revolution of the 19th. But things didn’t stop there. Prominent thinkers of the time like Du Bois and Luther King, all rested their arguments on the idea that people should be judged on the basis of their own abilities. I would agree with a reworded version of Mankiw’s principle: someone who contributes more to prosperity deserves a higher inco