These posts will include passages or articles that are abstruse, recondite, arcane, esoteric. In other words, passages that are difficult to understand. And it is difficulty in understanding something that makes it boring. The idea is to get you used to reading such stuff so that when something similar stares at you in CAT, you won’t be overwhelmed. So get going and answer the questions that follow. If I don’t see sufficient comments, I’ll stop posting these. So remember, you reap what you sow.
In this particular article, I have given a couple of subjective questions. This is so that you get into the habit of actually comprehending the passage as best as you can. The reason is something I’ve repeated many times in the class: It is not that the questions of a passage are difficult, rather that you haven’t understood the passage.
Habit, Samuel Beckett says in his essay on Proust, substitutes the ‘boredom of living’ for the ‘suffering of being’, and he has a point. Human existence is an acquired taste, and many of us get through it with the aid of what Vladimir in Waiting for Godot calls the ‘great deadener’. Blank simian rote – the round of feeding, grooming, ablution, slack-jawed vacancy – serves to block out tracts of time that might otherwise get colonised by anxious thought. And who wants that? Bertrand Russell said that people will do almost anything rather than think. Despite one’s best efforts, though, thoughts still sometimes come. Then, as Beckett says elsewhere, thinking can do proleptic duty, ensuring that rogue thoughts are repeated over and again, till they sink at last into the mud of oblivion.
Is thinking, pace Beckett, a good thing? A thoughtless response might be ‘yes’, but after a moment’s reflection it becomes plain that thinking is a human activity as prone to miscarry as Greek debt restructuring. Many endeavours go wrong not through lack of thought, but through our having the wrong thoughts. Human cogitative failure is a many-splendoured beast, which Daniel Kahneman has devoted his life to studying. Some goofs prove popular enough to put paid to any very sanguine view of evolutionary cognitive ascent. Humans are dab hands at some tasks, such as acquiring language and matching patterns. But we suck at others, including many that involve statistical inference. In the UK currently, the statistical likelihood of suffering serious injury from al-Qaida is many times lower than that of suffering a similar fate at the hands of one’s fridge. But few enter the kitchen cowed by the looming menace posed by their Smeg. This effect, which Kahneman likens to perceptual illusions such as the Müller-Lyer, can’t be sloughed off simply by realising that it is illusory – though some people, including some in government, don’t even get that far.
As with perceptual illusions, certain cognitive snafus seem immune to willed control. The base rate fallacy, targeted here by Kahneman, is another notorious instance. The fallacy lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group – for example, those who have a disease – that the same accuracy will obtain for the entire sample population. Suppose there is a test for a rare form of cancer. The test is pretty good, but less than perfectly accurate. When taken by those who will get the disease, in 99 cases out of a hundred it will be positive. But one test in a hundred will produce a ‘false negative’: it will give a clean bill of health to someone who will in fact get the cancer. Among those who don’t have the cancer, the test gives a correct negative diagnosis 99 times out of a hundred, and a false positive in 1 per cent of cases. Suppose you take the test, and it comes back positive: how worried should you be? The test might be said to be 99 per cent accurate; so does that mean there is a 99 per cent chance that you have the cancer? No. To draw that conclusion would be to commit the base rate fallacy. The arithmetic becomes clearer when the cancer is very rare indeed. Suppose it’s so rare that only one person in a million will get it, and that the total population is one hundred million. This means that of the hundred or so people who will get the cancer, some 99 should be correctly identified as having the disease. But if the whole population takes the test, the number of people mistakenly identified as having the cancer will be much larger: around 1 per cent of a hundred million, or one million. Of the two groups, the correct positives and the false positives, you are much more likely to be in the second group. If your test is positive, there’s about a one in ten thousand chance that you’re in the first group, those who have the cancer. That’s worse than the rate for the population as a whole, but it’s a whole lot better than the 99 per cent chance of having the cancer you’d imagine if you succumbed to the base rate fallacy.
1. In one sentence only (the length of the sentence is not an issue) write down the central idea of the passage.
2. Given below are four quotations. Choose the one that best relates to: “Many endeavours go wrong not through lack of thought, but through our having the wrong thought”:
a. “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
b. “Do not trust anyone—including yourself—to tell you how much you should trust their judgment.”
c. “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
1. a, b, and c 2. b and c 3. Only b 4. a and c
3. Summarize, as accurately as you can, the last paragraph.
1. Thinking in humans is a natural ability and whether it’s good or bad depends on the way it is put into use.
2. (4)
3. It summarizes the concept of base rate fallacy. The fallacy lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group. By taking the example of test of a rare cancer for a huge population, the author showcases this fallacy. It suggests that even if the test which gives false negative in 1 out of 100 cases, one shouldn’t just get satisfied by thinking that the test is 99% accurate because when performed on a huge population, a large part would test positive for cancer even when they wouldn’t have it.Thus we need to comprehend these kind of perceptual illusions and not succumb to it.
1.) Our thinking and cognitive abilities are flawed.
2.) 3
3.) Base rate fallacy is an instance which shows that some of our cognitive functions are out of our control. The cause of this fallacy is the wrong inference from the fact that an investigative procedure has a statistical accuracy. A test for a certain disease might be said to be 99 per cent accurate; so does that mean there is a 99 per cent chance that we have the disease.
1). Our ability to think helps us take decisions but it has its own limitations depending upon direction of thoughts.
2). 4
3). Base rate fallacy explains limitations of our cognitive abilities. When the test for cancer is positive for person A then there are 99% chances that he really has it. Here figure 99% makes us (mis) interpret the chances that A is really suffering from cancer is high. But it doesn’t really tell the fact until it defines 99% of which group.
1.The central idea about the passage is about human thinking with a given example on human thinking
2.3
3.It states the concept about BASE RATE FALLACY.This is not because of lack of informatiom or lack of fact but we take a wrong meaning from the fact that we have. It has been best explained by the example of cancer test that if the is 99 percent correct it doesnot mean that it will be positive for everyone or everyone will have the disease.hence the fact presented should be taken in right manner.
1) the passage is about how human beings think, their perceptions, illusions.
2) 1.
1.This passage is about human thinking and how human thoughts directly reflects the world around him.
2. 4)
3. It states a notorious instance by Kahneman,on base rate fallacy.The fallacy lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group.This fallacy is stated by an example of test for a rare form of cancer.The test might be said to be 99 per cent accurate,i.e one might get false positive result out of 100 people.If the whole population takes the test, the number of people mistakenly identified as having the cancer will be much larger: around 1 per cent of a hundred million. If the test is positive, there’s about a one in ten thousand chance that one might have the cancer. That’s worse than the rate for the population as a whole, but it’s a whole lot better than the 99 per cent chance of having the cancer.
1. The importance of thinking and also its ill effects if not directed in the right direction.
2. 4
3. Using the concept of base rate fallacy, the writer is trying to illustrate the importance of critical reasoning which can help one avoid the herd mentality and get more clarity of one’s preconceived notions.
1. The passage revolves around the thinking habits of human beings, how the thought process defines how we look at the world.
2. a
3. The paragraph deals with perceptual illusions. Here the author highlights the notorious instance of base rate fallacy and tells us how human beings interpret situations and end up following what is easily perceived rather than critically evaluating the situation and really understanding what should actually be perceived.
1.the passage is about thinking of human beings,illusions and the way we look at the world.
2.4
3.The base rate fallacy lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group.the author tells us how human beings interpret situations and make it more critical because of meaningless thoughts.we need to comprehend these kind of perceptual illusions and not succumb to it.
1. Thinking is an involuntary ability in humans, wether good or bad is a function of how it is used.
2. 4
3. It states the concept about BASE RATE FALLACY. The fallacy lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group. This is not because of lack of informatiom or lack of data, but is a result of misinterpreting the data. As explained by the example of cancer test, where 99 percent correct does not mean that it will be positive for everyone or everyone will have the disease. Hence from the example I would personally conclude that, interpreting the data in the right manner tis the key.
1.the central idea of passage is about human ability to think not used to its par.
2. 4
3.the last paragraph talk about base rate fallacy. Base rate fallacy means improperly inferring the data. if we go with the statistics as mentioned the conclusion is something different than the way it was comprehended
1. thoughts going in the wrong direction leads to wrong results.
2. 3.
3. the last para gives base rate fallacy as an example to show the contradicting conclusions we can arrive at when our inference is not accurate. Our will sometimes fails to refrain itself from illusions and misleading thoughts so that we do not succumb to it.
1-Thinking can be both good or bad, it depends on human being how he/she use it.
2-4
3-its about the base rate fallacy. base rate fallacy means a very small fraction of mistake in inferring data can lead to a very big mistake as a whole.
1. thinking is an involuntary action , how it is utilised is the determinant of outcomes.
2.
3. paragraph illustrates the concept of base rate fallacy in relation with the thinking abilities of public. In order to clear the concept an example is given describing what ? and how? of base rate fallacy in proper situation. At last, author has compared the given example with rising population to show the intensity of wrongly inferring the data.. i.e falling trap to base rate fallacy
1.Ability to think helps us take decisions. Many endeavours go wrong not through lack of thought, but through having the wrong thoughts.
2. 4
3.Its about the base rate fallacy, The fallacy which lies in wrongly inferring from the fact that an investigative procedure has a certain statistical accuracy in relation to a defined group.
central idea
Thinking; is it good ??always ??
2.i think statement (a) suits the best among all option.
3.the concept of base rate fallacy in relation with the thinking abilities of public. In order to clear the concept an example is given describing what ? and how? of base rate fallacy in proper situation. At last, author has compared the given example with rising population to show the intensity of wrongly inferring the data.. i.e falling trap to base rate fallacy
central idea of the passage:the passage talks about human thinking and how it is immensely influenced by the surroundings enviornment etc.
2.3 b only.
3.the last paragraph talks about how certain statistical facts confuse us since most people do not use rationality. it shows us two contrary statistics to explain that human thinking is flawed.
1.Central idea: Thinking can be both fruitful of harmful depending on how we apply this innate quality.
2. a and c
3. doubt.