Inference and Application Questions for CAT with Answers PDF

In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths; the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.
Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect, ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.
If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or lesser degree in the school of every civilised country.         
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.
It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.
Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.

Q. "Matters of fact are to be ascertained" implies that

Competitive intelligence, or CI for short, is all about collating information about your competitors, analyzing it and using the results to formulate plans and strategies to gain the competitive edge in the marketplace. Sadly, many people confuse this with spying or other cloak and dagger activities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Competitive intelligence uses legal and ethical methods in obtaining the information - anything else is not acceptable. Data must come from the public domain but this is not limited to published articles alone, indeed much information can come from interviewing people with experience or knowledge of the target companies. What is not acceptable is bugging, overhearing conversations behind closed doors or even attempting to gain trade secrets. Coca-Cola's secret formula for example is a trade secret and no faithful CI practitioner would over attempt to discover it, but then Pepsi does not need to know what the formula is in order to compete effectively. CI practitioners abide by a strict code of ethics and these are far tighter than any legal constraints. If a method sounds in the least bit shady it's not one that they would adopt.
So where does the information come from? Information becomes available for a large number of reasons: financial information due to legal obligations and (in the case of public limited companies) duty to shareholders; product information to promote the company etc. This data emerges in from the annual reports, marketing material, applications for patents the list goes on. You must first have an understanding of why information becomes available, then think about where it might be obtained and then you can begin to work out how to obtain it. It's important to realize that information is very rarely held by only a few people. Normally the same information will be shared across a great number of sources and/or people. This is called the "information chain", and understanding it and following it is vital to the CI process. For example competitor prices are not only known by the company doing the selling but by the customers that have bought the product or service, so instead of trying to get the information from the competitor, try to get it from those that the competitor has already given it to! The information chain can be quite complex. Usually, actually obtaining the information is easy, it is thinking about where to get it from that is the difficult part. This can involve deep discussions in house and lateral thinking is a prized asset to have in this industry.
Often the person who holds the information seems quite far removed from the heart of the matter - a company security guard for example. It is such people who not only have the knowledge, but they don't know how valuable it is and therefore don't mind divulging it. Interviewing to obtain information is a skill in itself, being too keen makes an interviewee very defensive and careful about their answers. One approach is to treat the most important question as the least significant; a question that it seems you wouldn't be bothered if it weren't answered. Long pauses also yield fantastic results as people don't like silence and will fill in the gap, though this requires much self-constraint.
Not all information comes from first party (or primary) sources, Indeed, not only is it sometimes quicker and easier to obtain from published (or secondary) sources where possible but it is also essential to conduct such searches before attempting to interview for further information. Company reports hold huge amounts of financial information about a company and they are available to anyone, for a small fee. But this is raw data and the accountants who drew them up usually hide sensitive information very well. A good CI practitioner is able to dissect these accounts, sorting through all the available data to produce some valuable analysed results. The rule of thumb is to start at the back and work to the front since much of the interesting data is in the "œnotes" section. 
Results don't always present themselves as a single definitive answer that is available from one or more sources (but always the same answer). Rather like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces must be gathered together, inspected to see where they each fit, until finally the bigger picture is revealed.
Competitive intelligence is at its best when the results are used proactively. For example before committing large amounts of capital to a new development or research project, companies engage CI professionals. Being told that they will be beaten to market since the competitors are much further down the line, can save companies small fortunes and divert efforts to areas where they will be first to market. 
In conclusion there is not much information on a competitor that can't be obtained or calculated. Companies seem quite happy to spend many thousands of pounds "œpoaching" people from their competitors to gain information (which in itself can raise legal issues). They are then committed to employing that person in future years thereby increasing the expense year on year after the initial value of the information gained has worn off. Companies seem unaware that for a fraction of the price they could have had the same information supplied using methods that are both legal and ethical competitive intelligence.

Q. Which of the following is not an ethical part of the CI gathering process?

I believe that the world-wide acclaim given to The Diary of Anne Frank and to the play and movie based on her story cannot be explained unless we recognize in it our wish to forget the gas chambers, and our effort to do so by glorifying the ability to retreat into an extremely private, gentle. sensitive world, and there to cling as much as possible to what have been one's usual daily attitudes and activities, although surrounded by a maelstrom apt to engulf one at any moment.
The Frank family's attitude that life could be carried on as before may well have been what led to their destruction. By eulogizing how they lived in their hiding place while neglecting to examine first whether it was a reasonable or an effective choice, we are able to ignore the crucial lesson of their story- that such an attitude can be fatal in extreme circumstances.
While the Franks were making their preparations for going passively into hiding, thousands of other Jews in Holland (as elsewhere in Europe) were trying to escape to the free world, in order to survive and/or fight. Others who could not escape went underground - into hiding - each family member with, for example, a different gentile family. We gather from the diary, however, that the chief desire of the Frank family was to continue living as nearly as possible in the same fashion to which they had been accustomed in happier times.
Little Anne, too, wanted only to go on with life as usual, and what else could she have done but fall in with the pattern her parents created for her existence ? But hers was not a necessary fate, much less a heroic one: it was a terrible but also a senseless fate. Anne had a good chance to survive, as did many Jewish children in Holland. But she would have had to leave her parents and go live with a gentile Dutch family, posing as their own child, something her parents would have had to arrange for her.
Everyone who recognized the obvious knew that the hardest way to go underground was to do it as a family: to hide out together made detection by the SS most likely: and when detected, everybody was doomed. By hiding singly, even when one got caught, the others had a chance to survive. The Franks, with their excellent connections among gentile Dutch families, might well have been able to hide out singly, each with a different family. But instead, the main principle of their planning was continuing their beloved family life- an understandable desire, but highly unrealistic in those times. Choosing any other course would have meant not merely giving up living together but also realizing the lull measure of the danger to their lives.
But even given their wish not to separate, they failed to make appropriate preparations for what was likely to happen.
There is little doubt that the Franks, who were able to provide themselves with so much while arranging for going into hiding, and even while hiding, could have provided themselves with some weapons had they wished. Had they had a gun, Mr. Frank could have shot down at least one or two of the "green police" who came for them. There was no surplus of such police, and the loss of an SS with every Jew arrested would have noticeably hindered the functioning of the police state. The fate of the Franks wouldn't have been very different, because they all died anyway except for Anne's father. But they could have sold their lives for a high price, instead walking to their death.
An entirely different matter would have been planning for escape in case of discovery. The Franks hiding place had only one entrance: it did not have any other exit. Despite the fact, during their many months of hiding, they did not try to devise one. Nor did they make other plans for escape.

Q. The author cites the example of the book "Diary of Anne Frank" to demonstrate that

Liberia has been hemorrhaging heavily. Even before the recent fighting, humanitarian workers had access to barely a third of the country. Later, as the fighting grew more intense, the safety of those who could have saved the lives of others could no longer be ensured. Relief work ground to a halt. An already explosive humanitarian situation burst at the seams. Acute shortages of food and water are reported and cholera is rampant. The then cycle of violence cost a staggering 150,000 lives.
Liberia's suffering has prompted some to advocate a limited police action: go in quickly, shoot the law-breakers, restore security and feed the people. These sentiments are laudable. But humanitarian interventions that have to conjure up policing are fraught with not just collateral risks for those who are engaged. They also raise serious questions vis-vis national sovereignty. The international community has yet to clearly agree on the basis and scope of humanitarian interventions.
In the interim, peacekeeping appears to be an honourable compromise and first-aid to the suffering. Peacekeepers thus continue to be the most visible demonstration of humanity's concern for fellow human beings. However, the hiatus between the expectations of the suffering and what peacekeepers can do for them remains. Peacekeepers are erroneously expected to overwhelm unruly and rogue elements, punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The problem is that this expectation, though understandable, is antithetical to peacekeeping which in essence is non-judgmental. Based on consent, impartiality and use of force only for self-defense, the peacekeepers' first lesson is not to take sides. Punitive action, however desirable, does not therefore fall strictly as yet within the realm of peacekeeping. In fact, the United Nations Charter did not foresee peacekeeping at all. Against the backdrop of two world wars, the framers of the U.N. Charter envisaged collective security to deter an aggressor akin to the perpetrators of the two world wars. Thanks to the cold war it soon became apparent that aggressions of the world war kind may not be replicated and transnational conflicts could be contained from spiraling into a global war. The cold war also kept a lid on simmering ethnic and civil discontent. Inter-state conflicts were consequently relatively straightforward for the architects of peacekeeping. Parties came under heavy pressure to relent the moment they began hostilities. Frequently this led to a ceasefire. The ceasefire needed to hold lest breaches became a reason for fresh hostilities. Against this canvass, the presence of outside non-partisan elements was conceived as a practical measure to aid in the maintenance and consolidation of the truce. As a spin-off, this presence would contribute to a climate conducive for the parties to talk out their differences in calm, and to ease the plight of innocents.
With time, however, peacekeeping has had to undergo changes. A complex world has now rendered peacekeeping multifunctional. No more is peacekeeping limited to just observing truces or ceasefires. Humanitarian assistance has increasingly become the staple of peacekeeping. Demobilization, election monitoring, reconstruction, institution building and even administering - on an interim or transitional basis - are some of the myriad tasks that have come within peacekeeping's ambit.
But nowhere down the road had the original precepts of peacekeeping changed to a policing role for peacekeepers, at least not until Rwanda and Srebrenica violently challenged the status quo. Peacekeepers should not normally distinguish between perpetrators and victims; and even if they can they may not have the means to prevent a tragedy as seen in those cases. Therefore, without the means there is no use in sending peacekeepers just to be turned into casualty statistics. Yet for those who are struck by the horrors of a war brought to their doorsteps by cable television, and for those who bear the brunt of suffering these nuances are immaterial. The very precepts of the U.N. demand that we do not simply watch, but do something.
Yet it is unclear if the international community is more willing and able since then to commit itself to preventing such wrongs. Without that resolve and concomitant, determined involvement, an over-ambitious role for lightly-armed peacekeepers might render the exercise farcical.

Q. The presence of outside non-partisan elements in the troubled state, had which of the following effects?
I. It aided in maintenance and consolidation of the truce.
II. It led to establishment of independent states.
III. It provided a climate conducive for parties to talk out their differences.

THE DECADES-OLD proposal to link all of India's major rivers with one another was revived with much fanfare last year. Most political parties welcomed it then as a solution to the country's drinking water and irrigation problems. But it has not taken long for the proposal to come face to face with the hard reality of planning what will be the largest project ever taken up in India. A number of States, from Punjab in the north to Kerala in the south, have expressed their opposition to a transfer of river waters from their territory to other States. The latest example is the considerable anxiety in Kerala about including a link between the Pampa and the Achankovil (flowing through Kerala) and the Vaippar (in Tamil Nadu) in the proposed national river grid. This is only one of many reasons why the ambitious, many would say unrealistic. Schedules for execution of the project have already been thrown out of gear.
The high-level task force on the project, constituted in December 2002, was expected to prepare the schedule for completion of feasibility studies and estimate the cost of the project by the end of April this year. It was to then come up in June with the options for funding the project. It was also expected to convene a meeting in May/June of State Chief Ministers and obtain their agreement and cooperation. None of these deadlines has been met and there is no indication that these events will take place in the near future. This is not surprising, for while the interlinking proposal has been spoken about for decades, all the complex engineering, economic, environmental and social issues involved in the project have never been carefully studied. It is, therefore, not an easy task to draw up in a few months even the time lines for implementation. It will also be impossible to complete within a decade (as decreed by the Supreme Court) execution of a project that at first approximation is estimated to cost Rs. 5,60,000 crores, which is twice the size of India's gross domestic product at present. In fact, the one Government committee that did examine aspects of the proposal to some extent, the National Commission for an Integrated Water Resources Development Plan, was in 1999 ambivalent about the benefits of interlinking the country's rivers.
The drought of 2002 was the context in which the proposal to build a grid connecting India's rivers was revived. Before another drought leads to another round of active interest in the project, it is necessary to come up with answers to two broad sets of questions. The first question is, what will be the total costs and benefits of a river grid project in economic, environmental and social terms. The second will be, what are the different options to meet the future requirements of water and is the interlinking proposal the best among them. Answers to these questions will have to address issues in agricultural technology, patterns of water use, extraction of ground and surface water resources, efficiency in consumption of water in crop cultivation, resource mobilization, human displacement and changes in the environment. A plan on such a scale and of such complexity as the proposal to link the country's rivers can be taken up only after a range of such substantive issues are analyzed threadbare.

Q. What is the main idea of the passage?

THE DECADES-OLD proposal to link all of India's major rivers with one another was revived with much fanfare last year. Most political parties welcomed it then as a solution to the country's drinking water and irrigation problems. But it has not taken long for the proposal to come face to face with the hard reality of planning what will be the largest project ever taken up in India. A number of States, from Punjab in the north to Kerala in the south, have expressed their opposition to a transfer of river waters from their territory to other States. The latest example is the considerable anxiety in Kerala about including a link between the Pampa and the Achankovil (flowing through Kerala) and the Vaippar (in Tamil Nadu) in the proposed national river grid. This is only one of many reasons why the ambitious, many would say unrealistic. Schedules for execution of the project have already been thrown out of gear.
The high-level task force on the project, constituted in December 2002, was expected to prepare the schedule for completion of feasibility studies and estimate the cost of the project by the end of April this year. It was to then come up in June with the options for funding the project. It was also expected to convene a meeting in May/June of State Chief Ministers and obtain their agreement and cooperation. None of these deadlines has been met and there is no indication that these events will take place in the near future. This is not surprising, for while the interlinking proposal has been spoken about for decades, all the complex engineering, economic, environmental and social issues involved in the project have never been carefully studied. It is, therefore, not an easy task to draw up in a few months even the time lines for implementation. It will also be impossible to complete within a decade (as decreed by the Supreme Court) execution of a project that at first approximation is estimated to cost Rs. 5,60,000 crores, which is twice the size of India's gross domestic product at present. In fact, the one Government committee that did examine aspects of the proposal to some extent, the National Commission for an Integrated Water Resources Development Plan, was in 1999 ambivalent about the benefits of interlinking the country's rivers.
The drought of 2002 was the context in which the proposal to build a grid connecting India's rivers was revived. Before another drought leads to another round of active interest in the project, it is necessary to come up with answers to two broad sets of questions. The first question is, what will be the total costs and benefits of a river grid project in economic, environmental and social terms. The second will be, what are the different options to meet the future requirements of water and is the interlinking proposal the best among them. Answers to these questions will have to address issues in agricultural technology, patterns of water use, extraction of ground and surface water resources, efficiency in consumption of water in crop cultivation, resource mobilization, human displacement and changes in the environment. A plan on such a scale and of such complexity as the proposal to link the country's rivers can be taken up only after a range of such substantive issues are analyzed threadbare.

Q. The passage is likely to have been sourced from

Esteemed members of the Jury …. If you want to condemn these twenty men, then do it. I beseech no kindness on behalf of any one of them. They are no better than any other twenty men or women; they are no better than the millions down through the times who have been indicted and convicted in cases like this. And if it is obligatory for my clients to show that America is like all the rest, if it is necessary that my clients shall go to penitentiary to show it, then let them go. They can afford it if you members of the jury can; make no mistake about that.
The State says my clients “dare to disparage the Constitution.” Yet this police officer (who the State says is a fine, right–living person) twice dishonored the federal Constitution while a prosecuting attorney was standing by. They entered Mr. Foster’s home without a search warrant. They overhauled his papers. They found a flag, a red one, which he had the same right to have in his house that you have to keep a green one, or a yellow one, or any other color, and the officer daringly rolled it up and put another flag on the wall, nailed it there. By what right was that done? What about this kind of patriotism that violates the Constitution? Has it come to pass in this country that officers of the law can trample on constitutional rights and then excuse it in a court of justice?
Most of what has been shown to this jury to incite emotions in your souls has not the least bearing on confirming conspiracy in this case. Take Mr. Hepburn’s speech in Aspen. It is devoid of any conspiracy whatsoever.
Whether that speech was a comic story or was serious, I shall spare the efforts of discussing it. But I shall make a point to state that if it was serious it was as gentle as a summer’s spell of rain in contrast with many of the avowals of those who are accountable for working conditions in this country. We have heard from people of position assert that individuals who carp the actions of those who are getting prosperous should be put in a cement ship with leaden sails and sent out to sea. Every vicious appeal that could be envisaged by the brain has been used by the dominant and the strong. I reiterate, Mr. Hepburn’s speech was gentle in comparison.
My clients are damned because they say in their platform that, while they vote, they believe the ballot is secondary to education and organization. Counsel proposes that those who get something they did not vote for are sinners, but I guess you the jury know in true light that my clients are right. Most of you have an eight–hour day. Did you get it by any vote you ever cast? No. It came about because workers laid down their tools and said we will no longer work until we get an eight–hour day. That is how they got the twelve–hour day, the ten–hour day, and the eight–hour day–not by voting but by laying down their tools. Then when it was over and the victory won . . . then the politicians, in order to get the labor vote, passed legislation creating an eight–hour day. That is how things changed; victory preceded law . . .
You have been informed that if you acquit these defendants you will be despised because you will endorse everything they believe. But I am not here to defend my clients’ belief. I am here to protect their right to communicate their outlook. I ask you, then; to make your mind up on this case upon the facts as you have heard them, in light of the law as you infer it, in light of the history of our country, whose foundation you and I are ought to guard.

Q. The statement that "They can afford it if you members of the jury can" is most likely meant to imply that

Sartre was not alone or wholly original in marrying phenomenology and existentialism into a single philosophy. Phenomenology had already undergone the profound transformation into ‘fundamental ontology’ at the hands of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his large, if incomplete, 1927 masterwork, Being and Time. The book is an examination of what it means to be, especially as this is disclosed through one’s own existence. The 1945 synthesis of phenomenology and existentialism in 'Phenomenology of Perception’ (Phenomenologie die la Perception) by Maurice Merleau – Ponty, Sartre’s philosophical friend and political antagonist, follows hard on the heels of Sartre’s own 1943 synthesis, Being and Nothingness with which it is partly inconsistent. Sartre’s existentialism, like that of Merleau Ponty, is ‘existential phenomenology’. Maurice Merleau–Ponty offers a phenomenology of the body which eschews mind–body dualism, reductivist materialism and idealism. He influenced Sartre politically and collaborated in editing Les Temps Modernes but broke with Sartre over what he saw as the latter’s ‘ultrabolshevism’.
Sartre’s Marxism was never a pure Marxism. Not only did he never join the PCF (Parti Communiste Francais), the second massive synthesis of his philosophical career was the fusion of Marxism with existentialism. The large 1960 first volume of ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’ is an attempt to exhibit existentialist philosophy and Marxist political theory as not only mutually consistent but as mutually dependent: as dialectically requiring one another for an adequate understanding of human reality. This neo–Hegelian ‘totalizing’ philosophy promises us all the intellectual apparatus we need to understand the direction of history and the unique human individual in their complex mutual constitution. The German idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770 – 1831) thought that philosophical problems could be exhibited as apparent contradictions that could be relieved, overcome or ‘synthesized’. Hence, for example, human beings are both free and causally determined, both mental and physical, social and individual, subjective and objective, and so on; not one to the exclusion of the other. ‘Synthetic’ or ‘totalizing’ philosophy shows seemingly mutually exclusive views to be not only compatible but mutually necessary.
Sartre’s Marxism is a ‘humanistic’ Marxism. His faith in Marxism as the most advanced philosophy of human liberation is tempered by his awareness of the crushing of the aspirations of the human individual by actual Marxism in, for example, the Soviet collectivization of the farms and purges of the 1930s and 1940s, the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the decades of atrocities in the Soviet Gulag, the ending of the Prague Spring in 1968. Like the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, Sartre does not think the oppression of the individual by communism is only a problem of political practice. He thinks Marxist political theory is misconstrued. Unlike Popper however, he seeks to humanize Marxist theory rather than reject it utterly. Also unlike Popper, he thinks the neglected resources for a theory of the freedom of the individual can be found within the early writings of Marx himself. The young Marx is to be construed as a kind of proto–existentialist.
The putative synthesis of existentialism and Marxism is extraordinarily ambitious. Some of the most fundamental and intractable problems of metaphysics and the philosophy of mind are obstacles to that synthesis. Classical Marxism is determinist and materialist. Sartre’s existentialism is libertarian and phenomenological. Marxism includes a theory of history with prescriptive prognoses for the future. Existentialism explores agency in a spontaneous present which bestows only a derivative existence on past and future. Marxism is a social theory in which class is the subject and object of change. In existentialism, individuals do things and things are done to individuals. Marxism has pretensions to be a science. Existentialism regards science as part of the very problem of dehumanization and alienation.
Despite the fact that Sartre’s overt anarchism emerges only at the end of his life – it is mainly professed in a series of interviews with the then secretary Benny Levy for the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur – Sartre also claimed in the 1970s that he had always been an anarchist.

Q. Maurice Merleau-Ponty became political adversary of Sartre because of what he considers

The 1980s have come to be regarded as the decade of corporate consolidation in the United States, with the number of mergers and their dollar value both setting records. Many public forums have questioned, on both social and economic grounds, the merits of this takeover frenzy. Even more controversial than the mergers themselves, however, is the reaction of the management of target firms. No longer is management content to be passive or to put up minimal resistance in the face of an unwelcome takeover attempt. Indeed, the responses of target managements have become as imaginative as the methods used by the would–be acquirers. These so–called anti-takeover tactics have received nearly universal condemnation from government regulatory bodies, the financial press, and some academic publications. Why is there so much criticism when management resists takeovers? At the most general level, such criticism is based on studies that find a negative return to shareholders when a negotiated (friendly) merger is unsuccessful. These studies examine the cumulative return from the period just prior to the first public announcement of the proposed merger through the announcement of cancellation. Results range from a total return of –9.02 per cent to + 3.68 per cent, with an average of –2.88 percent. In unsuccessful mergers, therefore, stockholders in target firms lose on average nearly 3 per cent of the shares' value.
But looking at the returns only through the termination date can be misleading. Other studies examining the period from six months prior to an offer to six months after the offer have found that the total return averages nearly +36 per cent, even though the offer was unsuccessful. Given the typical stock market reaction to unsuccessful negotiated mergers, this is a curious finding. The explanation for this seeming anomaly emerges when firms are divided into two groups: those eventually acquired by some other bidder, and those not acquired. Firms that were not acquired eventually lost the entire 36 per cent return. But firms subsequently acquired, earned an additional 20 per cent return above the initial 36 per cent, earning shareholders a total return of 56 per cent. Those earnings compare favorably to the overall average return of 30 percent earned by shareholders & of all companies successfully acquired. These results suggest that some form of resistance by management may be desirable. Playing "hard to get" may influence the initial suitor to increase the bid, or it may permit time for competing bids to be submitted. It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing. When management actions are designed solely to eliminate a takeover by a specific bidder, then shareholders may be harmed. Nevertheless, anti-takeover tactics do not deserve the blanket condemnation they receive  in the press.

Q. According to the passage, under which of the following conditions do firms, on the average, yield the greatest return to their shareholders?

One can never know, only surmise, what tragedies, despair and silent devastation have been going on for over a century in the invisible underground of the intellectual professions – in the souls of their practitioners – nor what caIculable potential of human ability and integrity perished in those hidden, lonely conflicts. The young minds who came to the field of the intellect with the inarticulate sense of a crusade, seeking rational answers to the problems of achieving a meaningful human existence, found a philosophical con game in place of guidance and leadership. Some of them gave up the field of ideas, in hopeless, indignant frustration, and vanished into the silence of subjectivity. Others gave in and saw their eagerness turn into bitterness, their quest into apathy, their crusade into a cynical racket. They condemned themselves to the chronic anxiety of a con man dreading exposure when they accepted the roles of enlightened leaders, while knowing that their knowledge rested on nothing but fog and that its only validation was somebody’s feelings.
They, the standard bearers of the mind, found themselves dreading reason as an enemy, logic as a pursuer, thought as an avenger. They, the proponents of ideas, found themselves clinging to the belief that ideas were important: their choice was the futility of a charlatan or the guilt of a traitor. They were not mediocrities when they began their careers; they were pretentious mediocrities when they ended. The exceptions are growing rarer with every generation. No one can accept with psychological impunity the function of a Witch Doctor under the banner of the intellect. With nothing but quicksands to stand on – the shifting mixture of Witch-doctor-ism and Attila-ism as their philosophical base – the intellectuals were unable to grasp, to identify or to evaluate the historical drama taking place before them: the industrial revolution and capitalism. They were like men who did not see the splendor of a rocket bursting over their heads, because their eyes were lowered in guilt. It was their job to see and to explain – to a society of men stumbling dazedly out of a primeval dungeon – the cause and the meaning of the events that were sweeping them faster and farther than the notion of all the centuries behind him. The intellectuals did not choose to see.
The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines – that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the “surplus” population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed – now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people’s voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.
The intellectuals, or their predominant majority, remained centuries behind their time: still seeking the favour of noble protectors, some of them were bewailing the “vulgarity” of commercial pursuits, scoffing at those whose wealth was “new,” and, simultaneously, blaming these new wealth-makers for all the poverty inherited from the centuries ruled by the owners of nobly “non-commercial” wealth. Others were denouncing machines as “inhuman,” and factories as a blemish on the beauty of the countryside (where gallows had formerly stood at the crossroads). Still others were calling for a movement “back to nature,” to the handicrafts, to the Middle Ages. And some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden “mysteries” and interfering with God’s design.
The victim of the intellectuals’ most infamous injustice was the businessman.
Having accepted the premises, the moral values and the position of Witch Doctors, the intellectuals were unwilling to differentiate between the businessman and Attila, between the producer of wealth and the looter. Like the Witch Doctor, they scorned and dreaded the realm of material reality, feeling secretly inadequate to deal with it. Like the Witch Doctor’s, their secret vision (almost their feared and envied ideal) of a practical, successful man, a true master of reality, was Attila; like the Witch Doctor, they believed that force, fraud, lies, plunder, expropriation, enslavement, murder were practical. So they did not inquire into the source of wealth or ever ask what made it possible. They took it as their axiom, as an irreducible primary, that wealth can be acquired only by force – and that a fortune as such is the proof of plunder, with no further distinctions or inquiries necessary.
With their eyes still fixed on the Middle Ages, they were maintaining this in the midst of a period when a greater amount of wealth than had ever before existed in the world was being brought into existence all around them. If the men who produced that wealth were thieves, from whom had they stolen it? Under all the shameful twists of their evasions, the intellectuals’ answer was: from those who had not produced it. They were refusing to acknowledge the industrial revolution. They were refusing to admit into their universe what neither Attila nor the Witch Doctor can afford to admit: the existence of man, the Producer.
Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between pay checks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.
Ignoring the existence of the faculty they were betraying, the faculty of discrimination, the intellect, they refused to identify the fact that industrial wealth was the product of man’s mind: that an incalculable amount of intellectual power, of creative intelligence, of disciplined energy, of human genius had gone into the creation of industrial fortunes. They could not afford to identify it, because they could not afford to admit the fact that the intellect is a practical faculty, a guide to man’s successful existence on earth, and that its task is the study of reality, not the contemplation of unintelligible feelings nor a special monopoly on the “unknowable.”
The Witch Doctor’s morality of altruism – the morality that damns all those who achieve success or enjoyment on earth – provided the intellectuals with the means to make a virtue of evasion. It gave them a weapon that disarmed their victims; it gave them an automatic substitute for self-esteem and a chance at an unearned moral stature. They proclaimed themselves to be the defenders of the poor against the rich, righteously evading the fact that the rich were not Attilas any longer – and the defenders of the weak against the strong, righteously evading the fact that the strength involved was not the strength of brute muscles any longer, but the strength of man’s mind.
But while the intellectuals regarded the businessman as Attila, the businessman would not behave as they, from the position of Witch Doctors, expected Attila to behave: he was impervious to their power. The businessman was as bewildered by events as the rest of mankind, he had no time to grasp his own historical role, he had no moral weapons, no voice, no defense, and – knowing no morality but the altruist code, yet knowing also that he was functioning against it, that self-sacrifice was not his role – he was helplessly vulnerable to the intellectuals’ attack. He would have welcomed eagerly the guidance of Aristotle, but had no use for Immanuel Kant. That which today is called “common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence, and that was the businessman’s only form of philosophy. The businessman asked for proof and expected things to make sense – an expectation that kicked the intellectuals into the category of the unemployed. They had nothing to offer to a man who did not buy any shares of any version of the “noumenal” world.
To understand the course the intellectuals chose to take, it is important to remember the Witch Doctor’s psycho-epistemology and his relationship to Attila: the Witch Doctor expects Attila to be his protector against reality, against the necessity of rational cognition, and, at the same time, he expects to rule his own protector, who needs an unintelligible mystic sanction as a narcotic to relieve his chronic guilt. They derive their mutual security, not from any form of strength, but from the fact that each has a hold on the other’s secret weakness. It is not the security of two traders, who count on the values they offer each other, but the security of two blackmailers, who count on each other’s fear.
The Witch Doctor feels like a metaphysical outcast in a capitalist society – as if he were pushed into some limbo outside of any universe he cares to recognize. He has no means to deal with innocence; he can get no hold on a man who does not seek to live in guilt, on a businessman who is confident of his ability to earn his living – who takes pride in his work and in the value of his product – who drives himself with inexhaustible energy and limitless ambition to do better and still better and even better – who is willing to bear penalties for his mistakes and expects rewards for his achievements – who looks at the universe with the fearless eagerness of a child, knowing it to be intelligible – who demands straight lines, clear terms, precise definitions – who stands in full sunlight and has no use for the murky fog of the hidden, the secret, the unnamed, the furtively evocative, for any code of signals from the psycho-epistemology of guilt.
What the businessman offered to the intellectuals was the spiritual counterpart of his own activity, that which the Witch Doctor dreads most: the freedom of the market place of ideas.
To live by the work of one’s mind, to offer men and products of one’s thinking, to provide them with new knowledge, to stand on nothing but the merit of one’s ideas and to rely on nothing but objective truth, in a market open to any man who is willing to think and has to judge, accept or reject on his own – is a task that only a man on the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology can welcome or fulfill. It is not the place for a Witch Doctor nor for any mystic “elite.” A Witch Doctor has to live by the favor of a protector, by a special dispensation, by a reserved monopoly, by exclusion, by suppression, by censorship.
Having accepted the philosophy and the psycho-epistemology of the Witch Doctor, the intellectuals had to cut the ground from under their own feet and turn against their own historical distinction: against the first chance men had ever had to make a professional living by means of the intellect. When the intellectuals rebelled against the “commercialism” of a capitalist society, what they were specifically rebelling against was the open market of ideas, where feelings were not accepted and ideas were expected to demonstrate their validity, where the risks were great, injustices were possible and no protector existed but objective reality.

Q. “The most crucial issue they had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned.” Which of the following best supports the above statement?