XAT 2022 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

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

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Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the user's grip on some new phenomenon.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 12 : Which of the following statements BEST summarizes the author's view on stupidity?

Explanatory Answer

According to the author, stupidity is the result of the inability to comprehend a new phenomenon and the tendency to apply an existing but outdated conceptual framework to solve it. Option E rewords this idea.
The passage defines stupidity as the inability to comprehend a problem. Option A tries to define stupidity in terms of the inability to avoid imposing our current views and option B in terms of comprehending a problem. So, both these options are incorrect. Option C is too general. The author defines stupidity as the inability to comprehend new phenomena, not "what is happening around us". Option D while partially true is not as comprehensive as E.

The question is " Which of the following statements BEST summarizes the author's view on stupidity? "

Hence, the answer is 'Pushing our extant solution to fix an alien problem is stupidity'

Choice E is the correct answer.