VA/LR For XAT 2022 | Verbal Ability (VA) & Reading Comprehension (RC) - CAT PDF Download

Directions: Answer the questions carefully!

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.

Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle in geological events for a long time. Back in the 1920s and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle, while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the best-dated geological events at the time to give them a range of the length between 'pulses' of 26.2 to 30.6 million years. Now, everything seems to be in order -27.5 million years is right about where we'd expect. A study late last year suggested that this 27.5-million-year mark is when mass extinctions happen, too.

Directions: Carefully read the following statement:
When I ask people to name three recently implemented technologies that most impact our world today, they usually propose the computers, the Internet and the laser. All three were unplanned, ___________, and_____________ upon their discovery and remained __________ well after their initial use.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.
One theory of accidents is what experts call the Swiss Cheese model. A slab of swiss cheese has several holes, randomly and unevenly distributed over its surface. If several slabs are stacked together, it would be impossible for something to slip through unless all the holes happen to line up.
If even one slab doesn’t align, the impending catastrophe will meet a layer of resistance, and the worst is averted. Aviation professionals will tell you that plane crashes never happen for a single reason. There may be an identifiable primary factor, but it’s usually a chain of events, an array of circumstances neatly piling up.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE following question.

Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what ishappening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes.
This is easiest to introduce with a tragic case. British high command during the First WorldWar frequently understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies from the cavalrybattles of their youth. As one of Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s subordinates later remarked,they thought of the trenches as ‘mobile operations at the halt’: i.e., as fluid battle lines withthe simple caveat that nothing in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not servethem well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered, beyond the shortage of materialresources, by a kind of ‘conceptual obsolescence’, a failure to update their cognitive tools tofit the task in hand. In at least some cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowingpernicious rationalisation.

Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework isforced into service, mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon. It is important todistinguish this from mere error. We make mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity israther one specific and stubborn cause of error. Historically, philosophers have worried agreat deal about the irrationality of not taking the available means to achieve goals: Tomwants to get fit, yet his running shoes are quietly gathering dust. The stock solution to Tom’squandary is simple willpower. Stupidity is very different from this. It is rather a lack of thenecessary means, a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting it will typicallyrequire not brute willpower but the construction of a new way of seeing our self and ourworld. Such stupidity is perfectly compatible with intelligence: Haig was by any standard asmart man.

Directions: Read the excerpt carefully and answer the following question.
The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE following question.
What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers northe beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent,by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in itsmisrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so,either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarilyattempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctivecharacteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. This is the crux ofthe distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falselyas endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving usabout that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead usaway from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believesomething he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on theother hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; whatwe are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guidingand controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. It isimpossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshitrequires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he isto that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believesto be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers hisstatements to be false.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE following question.
What does a good life look like to you? For some, the phrase may conjure up images of aclose-knit family, a steady job, and a Victorian house at the end of a street arched with oaktrees. Others may focus on the goal of making a difference in the world, whether by workingas a nurse or teacher, volunteering, or pouring their energy into environmental activism.According to Aristotlean theory, the first kind of life would be classified as “hedonic”—onebased on pleasure, comfort, stability, and strong social relationships. The second is“eudaimonic,” primarily concerned with the sense of purpose and fulfilment one gets bycontributing to the greater good. The ancient Greek philosopher outlined these ideas in histreatise Nicomachean Ethics, and the psychological sciences have pretty much stuck themever since when discussing the possibilities of what people might want out of their time onEarth. But a new paper, published in the American Psychological Association’sPsychological Review, suggests there’s another way to live a good life. It isn’t focused onhappiness or purpose, but rather it’s a life that’s “psychologically rich.”
What is a psychologically rich life? According to authors Shige Oishi, a professor ofpsychology at the University of Virginia, and Erin Westgate, an assistant professor ofpsychology at the University of Florida, it’s one characterized by “interesting experiences inwhich novelty and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes in perspective.”

Studying abroad, for example, is one way that college students often introducepsychological richness into their lives. As they learn more about a new country’s customsand history, they’re often prompted to reconsider the social mores of their own cultures.Deciding to embark on a difficult new career path or immersing one’s self in avant-garde art(the paper gives a specific shout-out to James Joyce’s Ulysses) also could make a personfeel as if their life is more psychologically rich.
Crucially, an experience doesn’t have to be fun in order to qualify as psychologicallyenriching. It might even be a hardship. Living through war or a natural disaster might makeit hard to feel as though you’re living a particularly happy or purposeful life, but you can stillcome out of the experience with psychological richness. Or you might encounter lessdramatic but nonetheless painful events: infertility, chronic illness, unemployment.Regardless of the specifics, you may experience suffering but still find value in how yourexperience shapes your understanding of yourself and the world around you.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE following question.
What Arendt does for us is to remind us that our “publicness” is as important to our flourishing as our sociability and our privacy. She draws a distinction between what it means to act “socially” and what is means to act “politically.” The social realm for Arendt is both the context where all our basic survival needs “are permitted to appear in public” and also the realm of “behaviour.” One of the things she fears about modern societies is that society - focused on how we behave and what we will permit for ourselves and others -becomes the realm of conformism. This is worrying not just because we don’t really get vibrant societies out of conformism and sameness, but also, Arendt says because there is a risk that we think this is all there is to our living together. We lose ourselves in the tasks of managing behaviour and forget that our true public task is to act, and to distinguish ourselves in doing so. The risk, says Arendt, is therefore that we confuse behaviour with action , that in modern liberal societies “behaviour replaces action as the foremost mode of human relationship.” This confusion can happen in any area of our modern lives and institutions, secular or faith-based. None is immune.
Arendt wants to drive home the point that the healthy public life requires that we do not just see ourselves as social actors but also as fully public persons, committed to judging and acting as members of a common world we want to inhabit and pass on. Arendt tells us that public action is action in which we stand out, are individuated, become in some way excellent in a manner that is of service to others and a greater good. This is the space where we take risks, subject our common life to scrutiny, seek justice (that sometimes requires us to transgress what seem like accepted laws) in order to be increasingly open to the claims and needs of other humans - ones who are not our household and our kin.

Directions: Read the poem carefully, and answer the TWO questions that follow.
It hurts to walk on new legs:
The curse of consonants. The wobble of vowels.
And you for whom I gave up a kingdom
Can never love that thing I was.
When you look into my past
You see
Only weeds and scales.
Once I had a voice.
Now I have legs.
Sometimes I wonder
Was it a fair trade?

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.
Labouring is simply what we do to survive. We labour to eat. To keep our bodieshealthy. To keep roof over our heads, and to keep life reproducing. All animalslabour, with or without coaxing…. There’s nothing special about labour, save for thefact that without it we would die.

Work, on the other hand, gives collective meaning to what we do. When we work toproduce something we both put something into and leave something lasting in theworld: a table, a house, a book, a car, a rug, a high precision piece of engineeringwith which we can order the days into time, or keep a body breathing.