XAT 2020 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

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Comprehension: Read the passage below and answer the 3 associated questions:
The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The “producers” and users of knowledge must know, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements. We may thus expect a thorough exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to the “knower,” at whatever point he or she may occupy in the knowledge process. The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationships of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume – that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value.”

Question 26 : Which of the following options will the author agree the MOST with?

1. To get promoted, an unempathetic manager can learn to display empathy.
2. To teach poetry, one must not be a poet.
3. A daughter of a lawyer must become a lawyer.
4. MBA program has a high exchange-value but zero use-value.
5. A person with no passion for singing, if trained, will sing perfectly.

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Explanatory Answer

A. To get promoted, an unempathetic manager can learn to display empathy. – This goes well with the idea of consumption of knowledge first (to learn to display empathy) and then the same knowledge being valorized in a new production (the promotion). Hence, this is the right answer choice.
B. To teach poetry, one must not be a poet. – “Must” signifies a mandatory condition, which is not the case. One could or could not a poet to teach poetry, according to the passage. It merely implies, “ One need not be a poet to teach poetry”. So, this is not the right answer choice.
C. A daughter of a lawyer must become a lawyer. – This option, too, can be eliminated on the same grounds as that of option B.
D. MBA program has a high exchange-value but zero use-value. – This statement does not give out specifics as to why or how the statement can be justified. But even if it were the case, MBA program has both exchange-value and use-value, and hence this option can be eliminated.
E. A person with no passion for singing, if trained, will sing perfectly – This option talks only about transmission of knowledge and does not talk about how it will manifest itself in a new production (how the trained person who sings perfectly now exchanges/utilizes the knowledge). So this can be eliminated.

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The question is "Which of the following options will the author agree the MOST with?"

Hence, the answer is To get promoted, an unempathetic manager can learn to display empathy.

Choice A is the correct answer.