Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Comprehension:
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Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon.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.

Question 11

Which of the following statements BEST explains why stupidity for a smart person is“perfectly compatible with intelligence”?

Solution

"...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..."

The author underscores how using past/obsolete models to fit novel situations qualifies as stupidity; he adds that intelligence furthers such stupidity by providing "pernicious rationalisation" - in a way, conveying how we justify the usage of past models to fit the current situation [as is the case with Haig]. Hence, our success with past models makes us presume that they'll function in new situations. Option C comes closest to presenting the author's intention when he correlates intelligence and stupidity. 

Options A, B and D, can be easily eliminated since they do not relate to the discussion [are not implied]. Option E, while closer to the idea in C, focuses on the idea around 'rationalisation' rather than the application of past models to new problems. Furthermore, we cannot discern what is meant by "rationalization...acceptable."

Hence, the correct answer is Option C.     


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