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Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers that follow.
We can answer Fermi’s Paradox in two ways. Perhaps our current science over - estimates the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps, evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self - limiting, even self - exterminating. After Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make colonizing space ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later.
I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual - reality narcissism. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot.
The fundamental problem is that an evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself. This was a key insight of evolutionary psychology in the early 1990s; although evolution favours brains that tend to maximize fitness (as measured by numbers of great - grandkids), no brain has capacity enough to do so under every possible circumstance. As a result, brains must evolve shortcuts: fitness - promoting tricks, cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on an average, under ancestrally normal conditions. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote real biological fitness, but it’s even better at delivering fake fitness - subjective cues of survival and reproduction without the real - world effects.
Fitness - faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. With the invention of Xbox 360, people would rather play a high - resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson’s King Kong than be a perfect – resolution real human. Teens today must find their way through a carnival of addictively fitness - faking entertainment products. The traditional staples of physical, mental and social development - athletics, homework dating - are neglected. The few young people with the self - control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute.
Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality and in 2005 focus shifted to virtual entertainment. Freud’s pleasure principle triumphs over the reality principle. Today we narrow - cast human - interest stories to each other, rather than broadcasting messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems.
Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period of fitness - faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species – to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures and less to their children.
Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Some individuals and families may start with an “irrational” Luddite abhorrence of entertainment technology, and they may evolve ever more self - control, conscientiousness and pragmatism by combining the family values of the religious right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace. They wait patiently for our fitness - faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical - minded breeders will inherit the Earth as like - minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve contacts, it will not be a meeting of novel - readers and game - players. It will be a meeting of dead - serious super - parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox.
Which of the following statements, if true, challenges the ideas presented in the passage the most?
I. Violent crime, including gang warfare for turf protection and expansion, co - exists in all technological advanced societies in spite of proliferation of fitness - faking technologies.
II. The technology to produce fitness - faking gadgets is guided by the government’s desire to control the minds of citizens and keep citizens away from engaging in trouble - making activities.
III. Countries that have the most advanced technology often are the ones that are at the forefront of preparedness for wars.
IV. The era of colonial expansion that was engaged in by the European nations after the renaissance would have never taken place had the technology to produce fitness - faking gadgets existed during those times.
V. Teenagers having access to technology, engage in more socializing away from parental supervision than those who do not have access to such technology.
For the following questions answer them individually
Nature is ___________ and unchangeable, and it is ___________ as to whether its hidden reasons and ___________ are __________to man or not.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Impressions are direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience; ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions.
Assuming the above statement is true, which of the statements logically follow from it?
I. Every impression leads to an idea.
II. Ideas must follow an antecedent impression.
III. The colour of the 2011 XAT test booklet right in front of a candidate is an impression to her, whereas the memory of the colour of her television set is an idea.
IV. If one was interested in origin of the idea of the colour of a television set, then one need to understand the impressions from which this idea was derived.
Media are not just passive channels of information. Not only do they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the internet seems to be doing is chipping away our capacity for concentration. Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument presented above?
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument presented in the previous question?
Randomness has to be dealt with successfully to ensure a better control over one’s life. Before one can deal effectively with randomness, one must acknowledge its existence.
The above statement implies the following except:
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us, leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
Which of the following is certainly not implied in the above verse?
Travelling is my hobby. Today in the Himalayas, as I drag my feet through the __________, I cannot but think of the same time last year when I was negotiating
the thick _________ of the Ganges delta or for that matter the time I spent with my children __________ about in the waters of the Arabian Sea.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
In spite of being perceived as ______ by all, the club members decided to ______ Arun, a skinny teenage with prominent ___________, as the member of the year, so that the whole affair would be __________ to Arun’s father who was recuperating after a serious illness.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
