Aptitude Overflow - Questions without answers in English Language

In the following sentence, a part of the sentence is underlined. Following it are four ways of rephrasing the underlined part. Mark the most appropriate choice.

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:44:40 +0000

In the following sentence, a part of the sentence is underlined. Following it are four ways of rephrasing the underlined part. Mark the most appropriate choice.

The manager, who is responsible for supervising the staff and also oversees the daily operations, has been asked to submit a report.

(A) and who also oversees the daily operations
(B) also overseeing the daily operations
(C) who also oversees the daily operations
(D) in addition, overseeing the daily operations

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 1

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:43 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In $2006$, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since $1972$. In $2007$, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby's and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia.

Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country's territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism.

During the late $19^{\text {th }}$ and early $20^{\text {th }}$ century - an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called "the age of piracy" - American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. ...

I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO's World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. ...

Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. ... The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts.
China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China's most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin's spectacular tomb system.

In $2003$, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated $11$ archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in $2013$, the most ever for China.

Which one of the following statements best expresses the paradox of patrimony laws?

They were intended to protect cultural property, but instead resulted in the neglect of historical sites.
They were aimed at protecting cultural property, but instead reduced business for auctioneers like Sotheby's.
They were aimed at protecting cultural property, but instead reduced new archaeological discoveries.
They were intended to protect cultural property, but instead resulted in the with holding of national treasure from museums.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 4

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:37 +0000

Which one of the following statements, if true, would undermine the central idea of the passage?

Museums established in economically deprived archaeologically-rich source countries can display the antiques discovered there.
Affluent archaeologically-rich source countries can afford to carry out their own excavations.
Western countries will have to apologise to countries for looting their cultural property in the past century.
UNESCO finances archaeological research in poor, but archaeologically-rich source countries.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 5

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:36 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Steven Pinker's new book, "Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters," offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but achievable ideal in personal and civic life. ... Pinker's ambition to illuminate such a crucial topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. ... It's no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance.

It's also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the [COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world.

It's a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political economy of journalism - its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing reliance on social media shares - would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage is so misguided and what we might do about it.

Pinker's main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. ..

Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany. From the $19^{\text {th }}$-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulés discovery of the structure of benzene to any of Mozart's symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato's Socrates - who anticipated many of Pinker's points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers' authority or charisma attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place.

The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored. Pinker recognizes that rationality "is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one." But this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn't really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.

The author refers to the ancient Greek philosophers to:

highlight the influence of their thinking on the development of Pinker's arguments.
show how dreams and visions have for centuries influenced subconscious behaviour and pathbreaking inventions.
reveal gaps in Pinker's discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in rational behaviour.
indicate the various similarities between their thinking and Pinker's conclusions.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 6

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:32 +0000

The author mentions Kekulés discovery of the structure of benzene and Mozart's symphonies to illustrate the point that:

Pinker's conclusions on sequential reasoning are belied by European achievements which, in the past, were more rooted in unconscious bursts of genius.
unlike the sciences, human achievements in other fields are a mix of logical reasoning and spontaneous epiphanies.
it is not just the creative arts, but also scientific fields that have benefitted from flashes of creativity.
great innovations across various fields can stem from flashes of intuition and are not always propelled by logical thinking.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 7

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:31 +0000

provides a moral compass for resolving important ethical dilemmas.
equips people with the ability to tackle challenging practical problems.
focuses public attention on real issues like development rather than sensational events.
helps people to gain expertise in statistics and other scientific disciplines.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 8

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:30 +0000

According to the author, for Pinker as well as the ancient Greek philosophers, rational thinking involves all of the following EXCEPT:

arriving at independent conclusions irrespective of who is presenting the argument.
the belief that the ability to reason logically encompasses an ethical and moral dimension.
the primacy of conscious sequential reasoning as the basis for seminal human achievements.
an awareness of underlying assumptions in an argument and gaps in one's own knowledge.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 9

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:29 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is "the scandal of literary history and criticism"... The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any "single real entity, or type of entity" that the concept "romanticism" designates. Lovejoy concluded, "the word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing"...

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, "aesthetics" refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy's radical skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: "[Although] one does have a certain sympathy with Lovejoy's despair...[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement...and it is important to discover what it is" ...

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of "particular philosophical questions and concerns" ...

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms ... Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between $1796$ and $1801-02$ - the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as "Early Romanticism" ...- offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant's philosophy.

According to the passage, recent studies on romanticism avoid "a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place" because they:

prefer to highlight the paradox of romantic aesthetics as a concept.
prefer to focus on the fundamental concerns of the romantics.
understand that the variety of romanticisms renders a general analysis impossible.
seek to discredit Lovejoy's scepticism regarding romanticism.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 10

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:25 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is "the scandal of literary history and criticism"... The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any "single real entity, or type of entity" that the concept "romanticism" designates. Lovejoy concluded, "the word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing"...

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, "aesthetics" refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy's radical skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: "[Although] one does have a certain sympathy with Lovejoy's despair...[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement...and it is important to discover what it is" ...

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of "particular philosophical questions and concerns" ...

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms ... Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between $1796$ and $1801-02$ - the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as "Early Romanticism" ...- offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant's philosophy.

Which one of the following statements is NOT supported by the passage?

Many romantics rejected the idea of aesthetics as a domain separate from other aspects of life.
Characterising romantic aesthetics is both possible and desirable, despite the challenges involved.
Recent studies on romanticism seek to refute the differences between national romanticisms.
Romantic aesthetics are primarily expressed through fragments, aphorisms, and poems.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 11

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:24 +0000

is primarily the concern of philosophers and artists, rather than of ordinary people.
is widely considered to be irrelevant to human existence.
should be confined to a specific domain separate from the practical and theoretical aspects of life.
permeates all aspects of human life, philosophical and mundane.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 12

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:23 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is "the scandal of literary history and criticism"... The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any "single real entity, or type of entity" that the concept "romanticism" designates. Lovejoy concluded, "the word 'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing"...

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, "aesthetics" refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy's radical skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: "[Although] one does have a certain sympathy with Lovejoy's despair...[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement...and it is important to discover what it is" ...

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of "particular philosophical questions and concerns" ...

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms ... Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between $1796$ and $1801-02$ - the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as "Early Romanticism" ...- offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant's philosophy.

The main difficulty in studying romanticism is the:

absence of written accounts by romantic poets and artists.
elusive and suggestive nature of romantic aesthetics.
lack of clear conceptual contours of the domain.
controversial and scandalous history of romantic literature.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 13

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:22 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The biggest challenge [The Nutmeg's Curse by Ghosh] throws down is to the prevailing understanding of when the climate crisis started. Most of us have accepted ... that it started with the widespread use of coal at the beginning of the Industrial Age in the $18^{\text {th }}$ century and worsened with the mass adoption of oil and natural gas in the $20^{\text {th }}$.

Ghosh takes this history at least three centuries back, to the start of European colonialism in the $15^{\text {th }}$ century. He [starts] the book with a 1621 massacre by Dutch invaders determined to impose a monopoly on nutmeg cultivation and trade in the Banda islands in today's Indonesia. Not only do the Dutch systematically depopulate the islands through genocide, they also try their best to bring nutmeg cultivation into plantation mode. These are the two points to which Ghosh returns through examples from around the world. One, how European colonialists decimated not only indigenous populations but also indigenous understanding of the relationship between humans and Earth. Two, how this was an invasion not only of humans but of the Earth itself, and how this continues to the present day by looking at nature as a 'resource' to exploit. ...

We know we are facing more frequent and more severe heatwaves, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires due to climate change. We know our expansion through deforestation, dam building, canal cutting - in short, terraforming, the word Ghosh uses - has brought us repeated disasters ... Are these the responses of an angry Gaia who has finally had enough? By using the word 'curse' in the title, the author makes it clear that he thinks so. I use the pronoun 'who' knowingly, because Ghosh has quoted many non-European sources to enquire into the relationship between humans and the world around them so that he can question the prevalent way of looking at Earth as an inert object to be exploited to the maximum.

As Ghosh's text, notes and bibliography show once more, none of this is new. There have always been challenges to the way European colonialists looked at other civilisations and at Earth. It is just that the invaders and their myriad backers in the fields of economics, politics, anthropology, philosophy, literature, technology, physics, chemistry, biology have dominated global intellectual discourse....

There are other points of view that we can hear today if we listen hard enough. Those observing global climate negotiations know about the Latin American way of looking at Earth as Pachamama (Earth Mother). They also know how such a framing is just provided lip service and is ignored in the substantive portions of the negotiations. In The Nutmeg's Curse, Ghosh explains why. He shows the extent of the vested interest in the oil economy - not only for oilexporting countries, but also for a superpower like the US that controls oil drilling, oil prices and oil movement around the world. Many of us know power utilities are sabotaging decentralised solar power generation today because it hits their revenues and control. And how the other points of view are so often drowned out.

Which one of the following, if true, would make the reviewer's choice of the pronoun "who" for Gaia inappropriate?

Non-European societies have perceived the Earth as a non-living source of all resources.
There is a direct cause-effect relationship between human activities and global climate change.
Ghosh's book has a different title: "The Nutmeg's Revenge".
Modern western science discovers new evidence for the Earth being an inanimate object.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 15

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:18 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The biggest challenge [The Nutmeg's Curse by Ghosh] throws down is to the prevailing understanding of when the climate crisis started. Most of us have accepted ... that it started with the widespread use of coal at the beginning of the Industrial Age in the $18^{\text {th }}$ century and worsened with the mass adoption of oil and natural gas in the $20^{\text {th }}$.

Ghosh takes this history at least three centuries back, to the start of European colonialism in the $15^{\text {th }}$ century. He [starts] the book with a 1621 massacre by Dutch invaders determined to impose a monopoly on nutmeg cultivation and trade in the Banda islands in today's Indonesia. Not only do the Dutch systematically depopulate the islands through genocide, they also try their best to bring nutmeg cultivation into plantation mode. These are the two points to which Ghosh returns through examples from around the world. One, how European colonialists decimated not only indigenous populations but also indigenous understanding of the relationship between humans and Earth. Two, how this was an invasion not only of humans but of the Earth itself, and how this continues to the present day by looking at nature as a 'resource' to exploit. ...

We know we are facing more frequent and more severe heatwaves, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires due to climate change. We know our expansion through deforestation, dam building, canal cutting - in short, terraforming, the word Ghosh uses - has brought us repeated disasters ... Are these the responses of an angry Gaia who has finally had enough? By using the word 'curse' in the title, the author makes it clear that he thinks so. I use the pronoun 'who' knowingly, because Ghosh has quoted many non-European sources to enquire into the relationship between humans and the world around them so that he can question the prevalent way of looking at Earth as an inert object to be exploited to the maximum.

As Ghosh's text, notes and bibliography show once more, none of this is new. There have always been challenges to the way European colonialists looked at other civilisations and at Earth. It is just that the invaders and their myriad backers in the fields of economics, politics, anthropology, philosophy, literature, technology, physics, chemistry, biology have dominated global intellectual discourse....

There are other points of view that we can hear today if we listen hard enough. Those observing global climate negotiations know about the Latin American way of looking at Earth as Pachamama (Earth Mother). They also know how such a framing is just provided lip service and is ignored in the substantive portions of the negotiations. In The Nutmeg's Curse, Ghosh explains why. He shows the extent of the vested interest in the oil economy - not only for oilexporting countries, but also for a superpower like the US that controls oil drilling, oil prices and oil movement around the world. Many of us know power utilities are sabotaging decentralised solar power generation today because it hits their revenues and control. And how the other points of view are so often drowned out.

On the basis of information in the passage, which one of the following is NOT a reason for the failure of policies seeking to address climate change?

The greed of organisations benefiting from non-renewable energy resources.
The global dominance of oil economies and international politics built around it.
The decentralised characteristic of renewable energy resources like solar power.
The marginalised status of non-European ways of looking at nature and the environment.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 16

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:17 +0000

Which one of the following best explains the primary purpose of the discussion of the colonisation of the Banda islands in "The Nutmeg's Curse"?

To illustrate how systemic violence against the colonised constituted the cornerstone of colonialism.
To illustrate how colonialism represented and perpetuated the mindset that has led to climate change.
To illustrate the role played by the cultivation of certain crops in the plantation mode in contributing to climate change.
To illustrate the first instance in history when the processes responsible for climate change were initiated.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 17

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:16 +0000

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option $1, 2, 3$ or $4$) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: For theoretical purposes, arguments may be considered as freestanding entities, abstracted from their contexts of use in actual human activities.

Paragraph :_(1)__. An argument can be defined as a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. Alternatively, an argument can be viewed as a complex speech act consisting of one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favor of the conclusion), an act of concluding, and a stated or implicit marker ("hence", "therefore") that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises.. __(2)__. The relation of support between premises and conclusion can be cashed out in different ways: the premises may guarantee the truth of the conclusion, or make its truth more probable; the premises may imply the conclusion; the premises may make the conclusion more acceptable (or assertible).__(3)__. But depending on one's explanatory goals, there is also much to be gained from considering arguments as they in fact occur in human communicative practices.

Option $2$
Option $1$
Option $4$
Option $3$

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 18

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:15 +0000

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option $1, 2, 3$, or $4$ ) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Beyond undermining the monopoly of the State on the use of force, armed conflict also creates an environment that can enable organized crime to prosper.

Paragraph:__(1)__. Linkages between illicit arms, organized crime, and armed conflict can reinforce one another while also escalating and prolonging violence and eroding governance.__(2)__. Financial gains from crime can lengthen or intensify armed conflicts by creating revenue streams for non-State armed groups (NSAGs).__(3)__. In this context, when hostilities cease and parties to a conflict move towards a peaceful resolution, the widespread availability of surplus arms and ammunition can contribute to a situation of 'criminalized peace' that obstructs sustainable peacebuilding efforts.

Option $2$
Option $1$
Option $4$
Option $3$

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 19

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:13 +0000

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled $1, 2, 3, 4$ and $5$), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

Boa Senior, who lived through the $2004$ tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.
The indigenous population has been steadily collapsing since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following $100$ years as a colonial penal colony.
Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the $10$ Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of southeast Asia.
The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a $65,000$ -year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.
Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Senior spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 20

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:12 +0000

Although hard skills have traditionally ruled the roost, some companies are moving away from choosing prospective hires based on technical abilities alone.
Companies are shaking off the old definition of an ideal candidate and ditching the idea of looking for the singularly perfect candidate altogether.
Now, some job descriptions are frequently asking for candidates to demonstrate soft skills, such as leadership or teamwork.
That's not to say that practical know-how is no longer required - some jobs still call for highly specific expertise
The move towards prioritising soft skills "is a natural response to three years of the pandemic" says a senior recruiter at Cenlar FSB.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 21

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:10 +0000

The four sentences (labelled $1, 2,3$ and $4$) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

Centuries later formal learning is still mostly based on reading, even with the widespread use of other possible education-affecting technologies such as film, radio, and television.
One of the immediate and recognisable impacts of the printing press was on how people learned; in the scribal culture it primarily involved listening, so memorization was paramount.
The transformation of learners from listeners to readers was a complex social and cultural phenomenon, and it was not until the industrial era that the concept of universal literacy took root.
The printing press shifted the learning process, as listening and memorisation gradually gave way to reading and learning no longer required the presence of a mentor; it could be done privately.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 22

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:10 +0000

The four sentences (labelled $1, 2, 3$ and $4$) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist at the University of New South Wales, believes there is a new way of solving this problem.
Her vision is for automated drones and robots to pick out components, put them into a small furnace and smelt them at specific temperatures to extract the metals one by one before they are sent off to manufacturers for reuse.
E-waste contains huge quantities of valuable metals, ceramics and plastics that could be salvaged and recycled, although currently not enough of it is.
She plans to build micro factories that can tease apart the tangle of materials in mobile phones, computers and other e-waste.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 23

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:10 +0000

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

The weight of society's expectations is hardly a new phenomenon but it has become particularly draining over recent decades, perhaps because expectations themselves are so multifarious and contradictory. The perfectionism of the $1950 \mathrm{~s}$ was rooted in the norms of mass culture and captured in famous advertising images of the ideal white American family that now seem self-satirising. In that era, perfectionism meant seamlessly conforming to values, behaviour and appearance: chiselled confidence for men, demure graciousness for women. The perfectionist was under pressure to look like everyone else, only more so. The perfectionists of today, by contrast, feel an obligation to stand out through their idiosyncratic style and wit if they are to gain a foothold in the attention economy.

Though long-standing, the pressure to appear perfect and thereby attract attention, has evolved over time from one of conformism to one of non-conformism.
The image of perfectionism is reflected in and perpetuated by the media; and people do their best to adhere to these ideals.
The pressure to appear perfect has been the cause of tension and conflict because the idea itself has been in a state of flux and hard to define.
The desire to attract attention is so deep-rooted in individual consciousness that people are willing to go to any lengths to achieve it.

CAT 2023 Set-3 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 24

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:02:10 +0000

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

Gradually, life for the island's birds is improving. Antarctic prions and white-headed petrels, which also nest in burrows, had managed to cling on in some sites while pests were on the island. Their numbers are now increasing. "It's fantastic and so exciting," Shaw says. As birds return to breed, they also poo. This adds nutrients to the soil, which in turn helps the plants to grow back stronger. Tall plants then help burrowing birds hide from predatory skuas. "It's this wonderful feedback loop," Shaw says. Today, the "pretty paddock" that Houghton first experienced has been transformed. "The tussock is over your head, and you're dodging all these penguin tunnels," she says. The orchids and tiny herb that had been protected by fencing have started turning up all over the place.

There is an increasing number of predatory birds and plants on the island despite the presence of pests which is a positive development.
Flowering plants, herbs and birds are now being protected on this wonderful Antarctic island.
There is a huge positive transformation of the ecosystem of the island when brought under environmental protection.
In the absence of pests, life on the island is now protected, and there has been a revival of a variety of birds and plants.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 1

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:12 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. ... This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . .

What is a historical fact? . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history - the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in $1066$ and not in $1065$ or $1067$, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history-archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . .

The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in $1066$ is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.

All of the following, if true, can weaken the passage's claim that facts do not speak for themselves, EXCEPT:

the truth value of a fact is independent of the historian who expresses it.
facts, like truth, can be relative: what is fact for person $\mathrm{X}$ may not be so for person $\mathrm{Y}$.
a fact, by its very nature, is objective and universal, irrespective of the context in which it is placed.
the order in which a series of facts is presented does not have any bearing on the production of meaning.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 3

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:08 +0000

If the author of the passage were to write a book on the Battle of Hastings along the lines of his/her own reasoning, the focus of the historical account would be on:

producing a detailed timeline of the various events that led to the Battle.
providing a nuanced interpretation by relying on the auxiliary sciences.
exploring the socio-political and economic factors that led to the Battle.
deriving historical facts from the relevant documents and inscriptions.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 4

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:07 +0000

According to this passage, which one of the following statements best describes the significance of archaeology for historians?

Archaeology helps historians to ascertain factual accuracy.
Archaeology helps historians to carry out their primary duty.
Archaeology helps historians to interpret historical facts.
Archaeology helps historians to locate the oldest civilisations in history.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 5

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:07 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. "The gap between liberalism's claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry" is now so wide that "the lie can no longer be accepted," Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of $1,000$ private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of "creating a shared future in a fragmented world"? . . .

Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing leftwing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? ... He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.

Mr Deneen's fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism's ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late $19$th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.

Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is "liberation from liberalism itself". The best way to read "Why Liberalism Failed" is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.

The author of the passage is likely to disagree with all of the following statements, EXCEPT:

if we accept that liberalism is a dying ideal, we must work to find a viable substitute.
liberalism was the dominant ideal in the past century, but it had to reform itself to remain so.
claims about liberalism's disintegration are exaggerated and misunderstand its core features.
the essence of liberalism lies in greater individual self-expression and freedoms.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 6

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:04 +0000

All of the following statements are evidence of the decline of liberalism today, EXCEPT:

"'The gap between liberalism's claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry' is now so wide that 'the lie can no longer be accepted,'. .."
"And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery."
". . . the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies . .."
"Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd."

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 7

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:03 +0000

The author of the passage faults Deneen's conclusions for all of the following reasons, EXCEPT:

its very narrow definition of liberalism limited to individual freedoms.
its failure to note historical instances in which the process of declining liberalism has managed to reverse itself.
its repeated harking back to premodern notions of liberty.
its extreme pessimism about the future of liberalism today and predictions of an ultimate decline.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 8

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:02 +0000

The author of the passage refers to "the Davos elite" to illustrate his views on:

the fact that the rise in liberalism had led to a greater interest in shared futures from unlikely social classes.
the hypocrisy of the liberal rich, who profess to subscribe to liberal values while cornering most of the wealth.
the unlikelihood of a return to the liberalism of the past as long as the rich continue to benefit from the decline in liberal values.
the way the debate around liberalism has been captured by the rich who have managed to insulate themselves from economic hardships.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 9

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:43:01 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU's $24$ official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . .

The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as "Lupin", a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . In $2015$, about $75\%$ of Netflix's original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a mediaanalysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . .

Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box.

In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. "Cultural sovereignty" is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous.

They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent's non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common-even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart $2,000$ years ago beats doing so in reality.

Based only on information provided in the passage, which one of the following hypothetical Netflix shows would be most successful with audiences across the EU?

A murder mystery drama set in North Africa and France.
A trans-Atlantic romantic drama set in Europe and America.
An original German TV science fiction production.
An Italian comedy show hosted by an international star.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 10

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:58 +0000

Which one of the following research findings would weaken the author's conclusion in the final paragraph?

Research shows that older women across the EU enjoy watching romantic comedies on Netflix, whereas younger women prefer historical fiction dramas.
Research shows there is a wide variance in the popularity and viewing of Netflix shows across different EU countries.
Research shows that Netflix hits produced in France are very popular with North American audiences.
Research shows that Netflix has been gradually losing market share to other streaming television service providers.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 11

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:57 +0000

Based on information provided in the passage, all of the following are true, EXCEPT:

Netflix has been able to transform itself into a truly European entity.
national broadcasters dominate in the EU in terms of total television viewing hours.
European television productions have the potential to become global hits.
only half of Netflix's original programming in the EU is now produced in America.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 12

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:56 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU's $24$ official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . .

The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as "Lupin", a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . In $2015$, about $75\%$ of Netflix's original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a mediaanalysis company. Netflix has about $100$ productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . .

Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box.

In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. "Cultural sovereignty" is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous.

They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent's non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common-even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart $2,000$ years ago beats doing so in reality.

The author sees the rise of Netflix in Europe as:

a unifying force.
a looming cultural threat.
an economic threat.
filling an entertainment gap.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 13

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:55 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally-or perhaps even knowingly — contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .

Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: $300,000$ tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, "The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate."

It's not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate .. . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save $449$ million Ibs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. "Thrifting" has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined 'vintage', shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.

So you're cool and you care about the planet; you've killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with $\#$vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?

According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering $100,000$ fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as $11,900$ plastic grocery bags, and up to $40$ per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . So where does this leave secondhand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . .

Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm BStock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, "high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability."

The act of "thrifting", as described in the passage, can be considered ironic because it:

is an anti-consumerist attitude.
has created environmental problems.
is not cost-effective for retailers.
offers luxury clothing at cut-rate prices.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 14

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:53 +0000

According to the author, companies like ThredUP have not caught on in the UK for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that:

luxury brands want to maintain their brand image.
luxury brands do not like their product to be devalued.
the British don't buy second-hand clothing.
recycling is currently not financially attractive for luxury brands.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 15

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:52 +0000

The central idea of the passage would be undermined if:

customers bought all their clothes online.
Primark and Boohoo recycled their clothes for vintage stores.
second-hand stores sold only high-quality clothes.
clothes were not thrown and burnt in landfills.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 16

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:51 +0000

Based on the passage, we can infer that the opposite of fast fashion, 'slow fashion', would most likely refer to clothes that:

are sold by genuine vintage stores.
are of high quality and long lasting.
do not shed microfibres.
do not bleed toxins and dyes.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 17

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:51 +0000

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option $1, 2, 3$, or $4$) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Dualism was long held as the defining feature of developing countries in contrast to developed countries, where frontier technologies and high productivity were assumed to prevail.

Paragraph: ___($1$)___ . At the core of development economics lies the idea of 'productive dualism': that poor countries' economies are split between a narrow 'modern' sector that uses advanced technologies and a larger 'traditional' sector characterized by very low productivity. __($2$)___While this distinction between developing and advanced economies may have made some sense in the 1950s and 1960s, it no longer appears to be very relevant. A combination of forces have produced a widening gap between the winners and those left behind.__$(3)$__. Convergence between poor and rich parts of the economy was arrested and regional disparities widened. ___$(4)$ ___ As a result, policymakers in advanced economies are now grappling with the same questions that have long preoccupied developing economies: mainly how to close the gap with the more advanced parts of the economy.

Option $1$
Option $2$
Option $3$
Option $4$

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 18

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:49 +0000

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option $1, 2, 3$, or $4$) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: And probably much earlier, moving the documentation for kissing back $1,000$ years compared to what was acknowledged in the scientific community.

Paragraph: Research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia $3,500$ years ago. From there it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus __$(1)$__. According to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice $4,500$ years ago in the Middle East. __$(2)$___. In ancient Mesopotamia, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets. __$(3)$____. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times. __$(4)$___. "Kissing could also have been part of friendships and family members' relations," says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.

Option $1$
Option $4$
Option $3$
Option $2$

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 19

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:47 +0000

The banning of Northern Lights could be considered a precursor to censoring books for "moral", world view or religious reasons.
Attempts to ban books are attempts to silence authors who have summoned immense courage in telling their stories.
Now the banning and challenging of books in the US has escalated to an unprecedented level.
The widely acclaimed fantasy novel Northern Lights was banned in some parts of the US, and was the second most challenged book in the US.
The American Library Association documented an unparalleled number of reported book challenges in $2022$, about $2,500$ unique titles.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 20

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:46 +0000

Self-care particularly links to loneliness, behavioural problems, and negative academic outcomes.
"Latchkey children" refers to children who routinely return home from school to empty homes and take care of themselves for extended periods of time.
Although self-care generally points to negative outcomes, it is important to consider that the bulk of research has yet to track long-term consequences.
In research and practice, the phrase "children in self-care" has come to replace latchkey in an effort to more accurately reflect the nature of their circumstances.
Although parents might believe that self-care would be beneficial for development, recent research has found quite the opposite.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 21

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:45 +0000

The four sentences (labelled $1, 2, 3$ and $4$) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

Like the ants that make up a colony, no single neuron holds complex information like selfawareness, hope or pride.
Although the human brain is not yet understood enough to identify the mechanism by which emergence functions, most neurobiologists agree that complex interconnections among the parts give rise to qualities that belong only to the whole.
Nonetheless, the sum of all neurons in the nervous system generate complex human emotions like fear and joy, none of which can be attributed to a single neuron.
Human consciousness is often called an emergent property of the human brain.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 22

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:45 +0000

The four sentences (labelled $1, 2, 3$ and $4$) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

Contemporary African writing like 'The Bottled Leopard' voices this theme using two children and two backgrounds to juxtapose two varying cultures.
Chukwuemeka Ike explores the conflict, and casts the Western tradition as condescending, enveloping and unaccommodating towards local African practice.
However, their views contradict the reality, for a rich and sustaining local African cultural ethos exists for all who care, to see and experience.
Western Christian concepts tend to deny or feign ignorance about the existence of a genuine and enduring indigenous African tradition.

CAT 2023 Set-2 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 24

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:42:45 +0000

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think "if only" or "what if" and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgments such as blame. The ability to create counterfactuals develops throughout childhood and contributes to reasoning about other people's beliefs, including their false beliefs.

Counterfactuals help people to prepare for the future by understanding intentions and making decisions.
People create counterfactual alternatives to reality for various reasons, including reasoning about other people's beliefs.
Counterfactual alternatives to reality are created for a variety of reasons and is part of one's developmental process.
Counterfactual thinking helps to reverse past and future actions and reason out false beliefs.

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 1

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:26 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward looking.

My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. ...

The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book.

For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world. This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.

On the basis of the nature of the relationship between the items in each pair below, choose the odd pair out:

Postcolonial novels : Anti-colonial nationalism
Indian Ocean novels : Outward-looking
Indian Ocean world : Slavery
ostcolonial novels : Border-crossing

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 2

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:22 +0000

All of the following statements, if true, would weaken the passage's claim about the relationship between mainstream English-language fiction and Indian Ocean novels EXCEPT:

the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by a postcolonial nostalgia for an idyllic past.
most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white, male experience of travel and adventure.
the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by an Orientalist imagination of its cultural crudeness.
very few mainstream English-language novels have historically been set in American and European metropolitan centres.

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 3

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:21 +0000

Which one of the following statements is not true about migration in the Indian Ocean world?

The Indian Ocean world's migration networks were shaped by religious and commercial histories of the region.
Migration in the Indian Ocean world was an ambivalent experience.
Geographical location rather than geographical proximity determined the choice of destination for migrants.
The Indian Ocean world's migration networks connected the global north with the global south.

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 4

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:21 +0000

All of the following claims contribute to the "remapping" discussed by the passage, EXCEPT:

the global south, as opposed to the global north, was the first centre of globalisation.
cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.
Indian Ocean novels have gone beyond the specifics of national concerns to explore rich regional pasts.
the world of early international trade and commerce was not the sole domain of white Europeans.

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 6

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:16 +0000

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people....
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea ... cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] ... They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies ... At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding ... [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all nonnative (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.

Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" ...
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.

Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted ... But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.

A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship ... Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.

All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:

several academic studies of human phenomena in the past involved racist interpretations.
agricultural practices changed drastically in the Australian continent after it was colonised.
individual dictat and contingency were not the causal factors for the use of fur clothing in some very cold climates.
while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have biogeographic origins.

CAT 2023 Set-1 | Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension | Question: 7

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 19:24:15 +0000

belief in the central role of humans, unrelated to physical surroundings, in influencing phenomena.
dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
lingering impressions of past geographic analyses that were politically offensive.
disciplinary training which typically does not include technical knowledge of geography.