BackALL MODULES
CAT 2025 Lesson : Verbal: Nov '25 to Dec '25-2025 - XAT VA&LR - 26 Dec 2025
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
[XAT 2022]
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 is happening 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 World War frequently understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies from the cavalry battles 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 with the simple caveat that nothing in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not serve them well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered, beyond the shortage of material resources, by a kind of ‘conceptual obsolescence’, a failure to update their cognitive tools to fit the task in hand. In at least some cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowing pernicious rationalisation.
Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon. It is important to distinguish this from mere error. We make mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity is rather one specific and stubborn cause of error. Historically, philosophers have worried a great deal about the irrationality of not taking the available means to achieve goals: Tom wants to get fit, yet his running shoes are quietly gathering dust. The stock solution to Tom’s quandary is simple willpower. Stupidity is very different from this. It is rather a lack of the necessary means, a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting it will typically require not brute willpower but the construction of a new way of seeing our self and our world. Such stupidity is perfectly compatible with intelligence: Haig was by any standard a smart man.
1) Which of the following statements BEST summarises the author's view on stupidity?
(1) Comprehending a problem by applying our existing world view is stupidity
(2) The inability to avoid forcing our current views on a new situation is stupidity
(3) Pushing our extant solution to fix an alien problem is stupidity
(4) The inability to comprehend what is happening around us is stupidity
(5) The novelty of the problem, in relation to our cognitive capacity, is the cause of stupidity
2) Which of the following statements BEST explains why stupidity for a smart person is“perfectly compatible with intelligence”?
(1) Intelligence is poorly defined, and is usually a perception, making it compatible with stupidity.
(2) A new phenomenon creates fear, rushing intelligent people to explain it to put others at ease.
(3) Past successes make us believe that we are intelligent and capable of explaining any new phenomenon.
(4) Intelligent people are scared to admit their lack of knowledge, and therefore, try to explain everything, including things they do not understand.
(5) Intelligence, when perceived through past successes, makes any rationalization of a new phenomenon acceptable.
3) Based on the passage, which of the following can BEST help a leader avoid stupidity?
(1) Be ready to discuss with everyone before taking a decision
(2) Being aware that our current answers are only applicable to the current context
(3) Being aware that we are short of the required resources
(4) Be cautious in taking a decision until the future unfolds
(5) Being aware that we must handle future with a different cognitive tool
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
[XAT 2022]
What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the 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 its misrepresentational 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 necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we 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 guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.
4) Which of the following statements can be BEST inferred from the passage?
(1) Both the liar and the bullshitter misrepresent the truth
(2) Both the liar and the bullshitter intend to deceive in their own ways
(3) Both the liar and the bullshitter are guided by the truth
(4) Both the liar and the bullshitter live in their own worlds of realities
(5) Both the liar and the bullshitter are not bound by any conviction
5) Why does the author say that the bullshitter’s intention “is neither to report the truthnor to conceal it?”
(1) Because bullshitters are not convinced about the truth
(2) Because bullshitters know the truth
(3) Because bullshitters do not like to deceive
(4) Because bullshitters do not find the truth useful
(5) Because bullshitters are respectful to the truth
6) When will a liar BEST turn into a bullshitter?
(1) When a liar stops responding to the truth
(2) When a liar stops worrying about the correct comprehension of reality
(3) When a liar focusses only on the outcome and not on telling lies
(4) When a liar lies to people about his intention
(5) When a liar stops misrepresenting the state of affairs
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To make matters worse, the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new—the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens. The irony here for those of us who are trying to focus amid competing activities is clear: The very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted. We answer the phone, look up something on the Internet, check our email, send an SMS, and each of these things tweaks the novelty-seeking, reward-seeking centers of the brain, causing a burst of endogenous opioids (no wonder it feels so good!), all to the detriment of our staying on task. It is the ultimate empty caloried brain candy. Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugarcoated tasks.
In the old days, if the phone rang and we were busy, we either didn’t answer or we turned the ringer off. When all phones were wired to a wall, there was no expectation of being able to reach us at all times—one might have gone out for a walk or be between places, and so if someone couldn’t reach you (or you didn’t feel like being reached), that was considered normal. Now more people have cell phones than have toilets. This has created an implicit expectation that you should be able to reach someone when it is convenient for you, regardless of whether it is convenient for them. This expectation is so ingrained that people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now, I’m in a meeting.” Just a decade or two ago, those same people would have let a landline on their desk go unanswered during a meeting, so different were the expectations for reachability.
7) According to the passage, why do people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now, I’m in a meeting.”?
(1) Because, it is convenient for people to send a message.
(2) Because, it conveys that the receiver is a busy person.
(3) Because, people don’t mind if somebody takes a brief phone call.
(4) Because, in meetings, cell phones allow people to multitask.
(5) Because, if you carry a cell phone, you have to reply.
8) What does the author BEST intend to convey when he says, “Now more people have cell phones than have toilets?”
(1) Everybody wants to stay connected, using cell phones.
(2) The need to be connected is more pronounced now.
(3) Cell phones have become a bigger necessity.
(4) The usage of toilets is limited, while cell phones are used all the time.
(5) The number of cell phone users has increased over time.
9) Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the passage?
(1) Multitasking helps you complete thousands of tasks, single-tasking makes you do one.
(2) Multitasking helps you move towards different goals, single-tasking helps you achieve the one.
(3) Multitasking gives you happiness, single-tasking gives you satisfaction.
(4) Multitasking gives you a feeling of achieving many things, single-tasking enables actually achieving something.
(5) Multitasking takes you all over, single-tasking helps you achieve some goals.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Considering the multitude of situations in which we humans use numerical information, life without numbers is inconceivable. But what was the benefit of numerical competence for our ancestors, before they became Homo sapiens? Why would animals crunch numbers in the first place? It turns out that processing numbers offers a significant benefit for survival, which is why this behavioural trait is present in many animal populations.
Several studies examining animals in their ecological environments suggest that representing number enhances an animal’s ability to exploit food sources, hunt prey, avoid predation, navigate in its habitat, and persist in social interactions. Before numerically competent animals evolved on the planet, single-celled microscopic bacteria — the oldest living organisms on earth — already exploited quantitative information. The way bacteria make a living is through their consumption of nutrients from their environment. Mostly, they grow and divide themselves to multiply. However, in recent years, microbiologists have discovered they also have a social life and are able to sense the presence or absence of other bacteria; in other words, they can sense the number of bacteria. Take, for example, the marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri. It has a special property that allows it to produce light through a process called bioluminescence, similar to how fireflies give off light. If these bacteria are in dilute water solutions (where they are alone), they make no light. But when they grow to a certain cell number of bacteria, all of them produce light simultaneously. Therefore, Vibrio fischeri can distinguish when they are alone and when they are together.
Somehow they have to communicate cell number, and it turns out they do this using a chemical language. They secrete communication molecules, and the concentration of these molecules in the water increases in proportion to the cell number. And when this molecule hits a certain amount, called a quorum, it tells the other bacteria how many neighbours there are, and all bacteria glow. This behaviour is called “quorum sensing”: The bacteria vote with signalling molecules, the vote gets counted, and if a certain threshold (the quorum) is reached, every bacterium responds. This behavior is not just an anomaly of Vibrio fischeri; all bacteria use this sort of quorum sensing to communicate their cell number in an indirect way via signalling molecules.
10) Which of the following statements CANNOT be inferred from the passage?
(1) Ancestors of Homo sapiens exploited resources in groups.
(2) Ancestors of Homo sapiens sensed numbers.
(3) Ancestors of Homo sapiens hunted in groups.
(4) Ancestors of Homo sapiens interacted solely using numbers.
(5) Ancestors of Homo sapiens used numerical competence.
11) Based on the passage, which of the following statements BEST defines “quorum sensing” in bacteria?
(1) Bacteria multiply only till they reach their required numbers.
(2) Bacteria chat only when they are in groups.
(3) Bacteria communicate only in numerical terms with others.
(4) Bacteria do not communicate beyond certain numbers.
(5) Bacteria respond when they discern enough numbers around them.
12) Which of the following statements is NOT based on the premises of the passage?
(1) No one can whistle a symphony; it takes a whole orchestra to play it.
(2) Teams fear a red card as it would present an advantage for the opponents.
(3) Politicians rally with numbers to woo their undecided voters.
(4) People protest in large numbers because it helps them get their voices heard.
(5) To de-escalate a border tension, countries carry out mirror deployment.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Most of recorded human history is one big data gap. Starting with the theory of Man the Hunter, the chroniclers of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Our entire culture is riddled with them. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics. The stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future. They are all marked—disfigured—by a female-shaped ‘absent presence’. This is the gender data gap. The gender data gap isn’t just about silence. These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women’s lives every day. The impact can be relatively minor. Shivering in offices set to a male temperature norm, for example, or struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm. Irritating, certainly. Unjust, undoubtedly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety measures don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like having your heart attack go undiagnosed because your symptoms are deemed ‘atypical’. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.
One of the most important things to say about the gender data gap is that it is not generally malicious, or even deliberate. Quite the opposite. It is simply the product of a way of thinking that has been around for millennia and is therefore a kind of not thinking. A double not thinking, even: men go without saying, and women don’t get said at all. Because when we say human, on the whole, we mean man.
This is not a new observation. Simone de Beauvoir made it most famously when in 1949 she wrote, ‘humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself, but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. [...] He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.’ What is new is the context in which women continue to be ‘the Other’. And that context is a world increasingly reliant on and in thrall to data. Big Data. Which in turn is panned for Big Truths by Big Algorithms, using Big Computers. But when your big data is corrupted by big silences, the truths you get are half-truths, at best. And often, for women, they aren’t true at all. As computer scientists themselves say: ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’
13) Based on the passage, which of the following statements BEST explains “absent presence”?
(1) The presence is felt due to the specificity of the absence.
(2) The absence makes the case for the need for presence.
(3) By its sheer absence, it is present.
(4) Because of the absence, one can recognise its presence.
(5) The absence is female-shaped, making it present.
14) Based on the passage, which of the following options BEST describes “double not thinking”?
(1) Men, over millennia, always confused human with being only male.
(2) Men not thinking and women not being allowed to think is due to double not thinking.
(3) Over millennia, men and women have been conditioned to treat women as unequal.
(4) Whenever humans are mentioned, it is men; further, women are not mentioned.
(5) Men’s rejection of women as humans and women’s acceptance of it is the double not thinking.
15) Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?
(1) Women have never been treated as distinct identities which causes the gender data gap.
(2) The need of the hour is to revisit the past, and reduce the gender data gap at the earliest.
(3) The gender data gap is amplified by data-based decision making.
(4) Over millennia, men ignored women, which resulted in the gender data gap and deadly consequences.
(5) Emphasis on data-based decision making, can be devastating to women, given the gender data gap.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
And that has to do with the question of uncertainty and doubt. A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false. We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed. And as evidence grows it increases the probability perhaps that some idea is right or decreases it. But it never makes absolutely certain one way or the other. Now, we have found that this is of paramount importance in order to progress. We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified- how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about or what the purpose of the world is or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
16) What does the author BEST mean when he says, “We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed?”
(1) The uncertainties are limited by the nature of the answers sought.
(2) The uncertainties should be relevant to the question.
(3) We must be prepared to accept errors in the answers we seek.
(4) There is a finite set of uncertainties for any question.
(5) The question decides the amount of uncertainties that are allowed.
17) Which of the following BEST describes the essence of the passage?
(1) Reasonable scepticism is the characteristic of a scientific mind.
(2) Reasonable discomfort with certainty is the path for progress.
(3) Progress involves questioning accepted truths.
(4) Science can never give a conclusive answer to a question.
(5) Doubting the established world order is the purpose of science.
[XAT 2022]
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 is happening 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 World War frequently understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies from the cavalry battles 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 with the simple caveat that nothing in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not serve them well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered, beyond the shortage of material resources, by a kind of ‘conceptual obsolescence’, a failure to update their cognitive tools to fit the task in hand. In at least some cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowing pernicious rationalisation.
Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon. It is important to distinguish this from mere error. We make mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity is rather one specific and stubborn cause of error. Historically, philosophers have worried a great deal about the irrationality of not taking the available means to achieve goals: Tom wants to get fit, yet his running shoes are quietly gathering dust. The stock solution to Tom’s quandary is simple willpower. Stupidity is very different from this. It is rather a lack of the necessary means, a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting it will typically require not brute willpower but the construction of a new way of seeing our self and our world. Such stupidity is perfectly compatible with intelligence: Haig was by any standard a smart man.
1) Which of the following statements BEST summarises the author's view on stupidity?
(1) Comprehending a problem by applying our existing world view is stupidity
(2) The inability to avoid forcing our current views on a new situation is stupidity
(3) Pushing our extant solution to fix an alien problem is stupidity
(4) The inability to comprehend what is happening around us is stupidity
(5) The novelty of the problem, in relation to our cognitive capacity, is the cause of stupidity
2) Which of the following statements BEST explains why stupidity for a smart person is“perfectly compatible with intelligence”?
(1) Intelligence is poorly defined, and is usually a perception, making it compatible with stupidity.
(2) A new phenomenon creates fear, rushing intelligent people to explain it to put others at ease.
(3) Past successes make us believe that we are intelligent and capable of explaining any new phenomenon.
(4) Intelligent people are scared to admit their lack of knowledge, and therefore, try to explain everything, including things they do not understand.
(5) Intelligence, when perceived through past successes, makes any rationalization of a new phenomenon acceptable.
3) Based on the passage, which of the following can BEST help a leader avoid stupidity?
(1) Be ready to discuss with everyone before taking a decision
(2) Being aware that our current answers are only applicable to the current context
(3) Being aware that we are short of the required resources
(4) Be cautious in taking a decision until the future unfolds
(5) Being aware that we must handle future with a different cognitive tool
Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that follow.
[XAT 2022]
What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the 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 its misrepresentational 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 necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we 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 guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.
4) Which of the following statements can be BEST inferred from the passage?
(1) Both the liar and the bullshitter misrepresent the truth
(2) Both the liar and the bullshitter intend to deceive in their own ways
(3) Both the liar and the bullshitter are guided by the truth
(4) Both the liar and the bullshitter live in their own worlds of realities
(5) Both the liar and the bullshitter are not bound by any conviction
5) Why does the author say that the bullshitter’s intention “is neither to report the truthnor to conceal it?”
(1) Because bullshitters are not convinced about the truth
(2) Because bullshitters know the truth
(3) Because bullshitters do not like to deceive
(4) Because bullshitters do not find the truth useful
(5) Because bullshitters are respectful to the truth
6) When will a liar BEST turn into a bullshitter?
(1) When a liar stops responding to the truth
(2) When a liar stops worrying about the correct comprehension of reality
(3) When a liar focusses only on the outcome and not on telling lies
(4) When a liar lies to people about his intention
(5) When a liar stops misrepresenting the state of affairs
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To make matters worse, the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new—the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens. The irony here for those of us who are trying to focus amid competing activities is clear: The very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted. We answer the phone, look up something on the Internet, check our email, send an SMS, and each of these things tweaks the novelty-seeking, reward-seeking centers of the brain, causing a burst of endogenous opioids (no wonder it feels so good!), all to the detriment of our staying on task. It is the ultimate empty caloried brain candy. Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugarcoated tasks.
In the old days, if the phone rang and we were busy, we either didn’t answer or we turned the ringer off. When all phones were wired to a wall, there was no expectation of being able to reach us at all times—one might have gone out for a walk or be between places, and so if someone couldn’t reach you (or you didn’t feel like being reached), that was considered normal. Now more people have cell phones than have toilets. This has created an implicit expectation that you should be able to reach someone when it is convenient for you, regardless of whether it is convenient for them. This expectation is so ingrained that people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now, I’m in a meeting.” Just a decade or two ago, those same people would have let a landline on their desk go unanswered during a meeting, so different were the expectations for reachability.
7) According to the passage, why do people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now, I’m in a meeting.”?
(1) Because, it is convenient for people to send a message.
(2) Because, it conveys that the receiver is a busy person.
(3) Because, people don’t mind if somebody takes a brief phone call.
(4) Because, in meetings, cell phones allow people to multitask.
(5) Because, if you carry a cell phone, you have to reply.
8) What does the author BEST intend to convey when he says, “Now more people have cell phones than have toilets?”
(1) Everybody wants to stay connected, using cell phones.
(2) The need to be connected is more pronounced now.
(3) Cell phones have become a bigger necessity.
(4) The usage of toilets is limited, while cell phones are used all the time.
(5) The number of cell phone users has increased over time.
9) Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the passage?
(1) Multitasking helps you complete thousands of tasks, single-tasking makes you do one.
(2) Multitasking helps you move towards different goals, single-tasking helps you achieve the one.
(3) Multitasking gives you happiness, single-tasking gives you satisfaction.
(4) Multitasking gives you a feeling of achieving many things, single-tasking enables actually achieving something.
(5) Multitasking takes you all over, single-tasking helps you achieve some goals.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Considering the multitude of situations in which we humans use numerical information, life without numbers is inconceivable. But what was the benefit of numerical competence for our ancestors, before they became Homo sapiens? Why would animals crunch numbers in the first place? It turns out that processing numbers offers a significant benefit for survival, which is why this behavioural trait is present in many animal populations.
Several studies examining animals in their ecological environments suggest that representing number enhances an animal’s ability to exploit food sources, hunt prey, avoid predation, navigate in its habitat, and persist in social interactions. Before numerically competent animals evolved on the planet, single-celled microscopic bacteria — the oldest living organisms on earth — already exploited quantitative information. The way bacteria make a living is through their consumption of nutrients from their environment. Mostly, they grow and divide themselves to multiply. However, in recent years, microbiologists have discovered they also have a social life and are able to sense the presence or absence of other bacteria; in other words, they can sense the number of bacteria. Take, for example, the marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri. It has a special property that allows it to produce light through a process called bioluminescence, similar to how fireflies give off light. If these bacteria are in dilute water solutions (where they are alone), they make no light. But when they grow to a certain cell number of bacteria, all of them produce light simultaneously. Therefore, Vibrio fischeri can distinguish when they are alone and when they are together.
Somehow they have to communicate cell number, and it turns out they do this using a chemical language. They secrete communication molecules, and the concentration of these molecules in the water increases in proportion to the cell number. And when this molecule hits a certain amount, called a quorum, it tells the other bacteria how many neighbours there are, and all bacteria glow. This behaviour is called “quorum sensing”: The bacteria vote with signalling molecules, the vote gets counted, and if a certain threshold (the quorum) is reached, every bacterium responds. This behavior is not just an anomaly of Vibrio fischeri; all bacteria use this sort of quorum sensing to communicate their cell number in an indirect way via signalling molecules.
10) Which of the following statements CANNOT be inferred from the passage?
(1) Ancestors of Homo sapiens exploited resources in groups.
(2) Ancestors of Homo sapiens sensed numbers.
(3) Ancestors of Homo sapiens hunted in groups.
(4) Ancestors of Homo sapiens interacted solely using numbers.
(5) Ancestors of Homo sapiens used numerical competence.
11) Based on the passage, which of the following statements BEST defines “quorum sensing” in bacteria?
(1) Bacteria multiply only till they reach their required numbers.
(2) Bacteria chat only when they are in groups.
(3) Bacteria communicate only in numerical terms with others.
(4) Bacteria do not communicate beyond certain numbers.
(5) Bacteria respond when they discern enough numbers around them.
12) Which of the following statements is NOT based on the premises of the passage?
(1) No one can whistle a symphony; it takes a whole orchestra to play it.
(2) Teams fear a red card as it would present an advantage for the opponents.
(3) Politicians rally with numbers to woo their undecided voters.
(4) People protest in large numbers because it helps them get their voices heard.
(5) To de-escalate a border tension, countries carry out mirror deployment.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
Most of recorded human history is one big data gap. Starting with the theory of Man the Hunter, the chroniclers of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Our entire culture is riddled with them. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics. The stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future. They are all marked—disfigured—by a female-shaped ‘absent presence’. This is the gender data gap. The gender data gap isn’t just about silence. These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women’s lives every day. The impact can be relatively minor. Shivering in offices set to a male temperature norm, for example, or struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm. Irritating, certainly. Unjust, undoubtedly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety measures don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like having your heart attack go undiagnosed because your symptoms are deemed ‘atypical’. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.
One of the most important things to say about the gender data gap is that it is not generally malicious, or even deliberate. Quite the opposite. It is simply the product of a way of thinking that has been around for millennia and is therefore a kind of not thinking. A double not thinking, even: men go without saying, and women don’t get said at all. Because when we say human, on the whole, we mean man.
This is not a new observation. Simone de Beauvoir made it most famously when in 1949 she wrote, ‘humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself, but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. [...] He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.’ What is new is the context in which women continue to be ‘the Other’. And that context is a world increasingly reliant on and in thrall to data. Big Data. Which in turn is panned for Big Truths by Big Algorithms, using Big Computers. But when your big data is corrupted by big silences, the truths you get are half-truths, at best. And often, for women, they aren’t true at all. As computer scientists themselves say: ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’
13) Based on the passage, which of the following statements BEST explains “absent presence”?
(1) The presence is felt due to the specificity of the absence.
(2) The absence makes the case for the need for presence.
(3) By its sheer absence, it is present.
(4) Because of the absence, one can recognise its presence.
(5) The absence is female-shaped, making it present.
14) Based on the passage, which of the following options BEST describes “double not thinking”?
(1) Men, over millennia, always confused human with being only male.
(2) Men not thinking and women not being allowed to think is due to double not thinking.
(3) Over millennia, men and women have been conditioned to treat women as unequal.
(4) Whenever humans are mentioned, it is men; further, women are not mentioned.
(5) Men’s rejection of women as humans and women’s acceptance of it is the double not thinking.
15) Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?
(1) Women have never been treated as distinct identities which causes the gender data gap.
(2) The need of the hour is to revisit the past, and reduce the gender data gap at the earliest.
(3) The gender data gap is amplified by data-based decision making.
(4) Over millennia, men ignored women, which resulted in the gender data gap and deadly consequences.
(5) Emphasis on data-based decision making, can be devastating to women, given the gender data gap.
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
[XAT 2021]
And that has to do with the question of uncertainty and doubt. A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false. We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed. And as evidence grows it increases the probability perhaps that some idea is right or decreases it. But it never makes absolutely certain one way or the other. Now, we have found that this is of paramount importance in order to progress. We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified- how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about or what the purpose of the world is or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
16) What does the author BEST mean when he says, “We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed?”
(1) The uncertainties are limited by the nature of the answers sought.
(2) The uncertainties should be relevant to the question.
(3) We must be prepared to accept errors in the answers we seek.
(4) There is a finite set of uncertainties for any question.
(5) The question decides the amount of uncertainties that are allowed.
17) Which of the following BEST describes the essence of the passage?
(1) Reasonable scepticism is the characteristic of a scientific mind.
(2) Reasonable discomfort with certainty is the path for progress.
(3) Progress involves questioning accepted truths.
(4) Science can never give a conclusive answer to a question.
(5) Doubting the established world order is the purpose of science.
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