Directions (1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.
The age of the Renaissance man is long gone. No one thinks it is possible anymore for an individual to grasp, fully, all areas of science and technology. The popular software contains millions of lines of code. Mechanisms of the immune response for just one kind of lymphocyte take up thousands of pages of scholarly journals. An iPod’s elegantly simple appearance masks underlying technology that is understood by only a tiny percentage of its users.
But, despite the vast incompleteness of our knowledge, recent research suggests that most people think that they know far more than they actually do. We freely admit to not knowing everything about how a helicopter flies or a printing press prints, but we are not nearly modest enough about our ignorance.
The easiest way to show this is to have people to rate the completeness of their knowledge on a seven-point scale. For any question, a “7” denotes the equivalent of a perfectly detailed mental blueprint, and a “1” implies almost no sense of a particular mechanism at all, just a vague image. People happily, and reliably, assign numbers to their understandings of everything from complex machines to biological systems to natural phenomena such as the tides; but these ratings are usually far higher than their actual knowledge.
We can measure the discrepancy between what we think we know and what we actually know by simply asking people, after they have given their initial ratings, to tell us how some things work in as much detail as they can and then to rate their knowledge again in light of their attempt to explain.
Similarly, we can ask them to answer critical diagnostic questions (for example, “How does a helicopter go from hovering in place to flying forward?”) Or we can simply provide them with a concise but meaty expert explanation. In all of these cases, people somewhat sheepishly confess that their level of understanding was far worse than they originally thought.
People are often surprised and dismayed at their ignorance, but we are not generally bad at estimating how much we know. Instead, we have a special deficit with regard to our explanatory understandings. We are good at estimating how well we know simple facts, procedures, and narratives. But we seem to have a specific “illusion of explanatory depth”—the belief that we possess a more profound causal understanding than we really do. We can be appropriately modest about our knowledge of other things, but not so about our ability to explain the workings of the world.
Several factors converge to create this illusion of knowledge. When Leon Rozenblit and I uncovered the illusion and its specificity, we ran an extensive series of studies exploring why explanatory understanding is so vulnerable to a false sense of knowing. All of the factors that we identified are less influential for facts, procedures, and narratives.
One important factor underlying the illusion of explanatory depth arises from the richly hierarchical nature of most complex systems, which means that they can be understood at several levels of analysis. One can understand how a computer “works” in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen. This hierarchical structure of complex causal systems seduces us into a sense of understanding at a high level, which is then mistaken for having an understanding at a lower level.
A second factor is a false comfort we derive from seeing the parts of a system. The more parts you can see, the more you think you know how those parts actually work. Thus, the illusion is stronger for objects with easy-to-inspect parts than it is for objects with more invisible, inaccessible, or microscopic parts. For example, we may think that we understand the mind much better than we do when we see images of glowing brain regions.
Finally, we often figure out things on the fly when they are in front of us, but then falsely assume that we came iodic object with a full understanding in our heads rather than using and manipulating the object to decipher its mechanism.
There may be a silver lining to our inflated sense of understanding. The world is, of course, far too complex for any lone person to fully grasp. If a gnawing sense of ignorance kept us diving deeper in our quest to understand everything we encountered, we might suffocate in the details in one area and miss other areas completely.
The illusion of explanatory depth may stop us at just about the right level of understanding, one that enables us to know how to get more information from others when we really need it without being overwhelmed. It would perhaps be better if we recognized the limits our own explanatory ability, but there may be some adaptive value of those limits as well.
Q1. The writer makes a reference to the age of the Renaissance man most probably in order to…
(a) People currently lack in depth knowledge in any particular area and have merely a superficial awareness of others.
(b) There are very few experts in the current age.
(c) People in this age do not have varied interests and lack expertise in more than one area.
(d) The Renaissance man had no technology worth its name to master.
(e) The Renaissance man would have mastered all areas of technology is he were alive today.
Q2. It can be inferred from the passage that a rating of “7” indicated…
(a) That the person was an expert in the subject.
(b) That the person was lying.
(c) That the person had a clear understanding of the answer to the question.
(d) That once explanations were provided the person was likely to rate himself lower.
(e) That the person may be actually 4, 5, or 6 (lower than 7).
Q3. According to the passage, the most likely reason for the discrepancies between what people think they know and their actual knowledge is…
(a) That people generally do not realize that they do not know everything
(b) That people are generally quite modest about their knowledge.
(c) That people are generally quite modest about their ignorance.
(d) That people are not generally quite modest about their ignorance.
(e) That people are not generally bad at estimating how much they know.
Q4. The passage implies that there will be no discrepancies between what people think they know and their actual knowledge if…
A. If the questions are related to currencies of the world.
B. If the questions are related to how to operate a mobile phone.
C. If the questions are related to the plots of movies.
D. If the questions are related to how a mobile phone works.
(a) A only
(b) B and D only
(c) A, B, and C
(d) A and C only
(e) None of the above
Q5. According to the passage, which of the following contribute/s to an ‘illusion of explanatory depth’?
A. Hierarchical structure of causal systems.
B. Systems with concealed parts.
C. Images of unknown objects.
D. Things that are discovered on the fly.
(a) A only
(b) B and D only
(c) A, B, and C
(d) A and C only
(e) All of the above
Q6. The last paragraph of the passage implies that…
(a) The writer considers it mandatory for people to realize the limits of their explanatory ability.
(b) Illusion of knowledge may be of significance in the process of evolution
(c) Lack of explanatory depth prevents us from getting information from others.
(d) We are overwhelmed by our own lack of explanatory depth.
(e) We are unable to get more information from others in the absence of illusion of knowledge.
Q7. Which of the following is most nearly similar in meaning of the word Renaissance as used in the passage?
(a) dark
(b) rejuvenation
(c) struggle
(d) reverse
(e) destruction
Q8. Which of the following is most nearly opposite in meaning of the word sheepishly as used in the passage?
(a) abashed
(b) bold
(c) timorous
(d) timorous
(e) animal
Q9. Which of the following is most nearly opposite in meaning of the word hierarchical as used in the passage?
(a) against
(b) crucial
(c) disordered
(d) stratified
(e) solution
Q10. Which of the following is most nearly similar in meaning of the word silver lining as used in the passage?
(a) struggle
(b) bright side
(c) greater
(d) line
(e) majority
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