- DI & DS
- English Language
- GK
-
Intelligence & CR
- Alphabet & Number Ranking
- Analytical Reasoning
- Blood Relations Test
- Coding - Decoding
- Comparision of Ranks
- Direction Sense Test
- Mathematical Operation / Number Puzzles
- Series
- Sitting Arrangement
- Statement and Arguement
- Statement and Conclusion
- Statement and Course of Action
- Statement-Assumption
- Syllogism
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Mathematical Skills
- Average
- Calender
- Clocks
- Geometry
- Height and Distance
- Logarithms
- Mensuration
- Mixtures and Alligations
- Number System
- Percentage
- Permutation and Computation
- Probability
- Profit and Loss
- Ratio and Proportion
- Set Theory
- Simple calculations
- Simple Equations
- Simple Interest and Compound Interest
- Time and Work
- Time, Speed and Distance
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103.
Behaviour therapy has a long and productive history of empirically researched treatments for a wide range of adult and child disorders, but what is dialectical behaviour therapy? It is an integration of behaviour therapy with other perspectives and practices that includes, most notably, principles and practice of Zen and an overarching dialectical philosophy that guides the treatment. The treatment, developed by Marsha Linehan (1987) evolved over almost 20 years of work with chronically suicidal women. It is rooted firmly in the principles and practices of behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy, including a strong emphasis on systematic ongoing assessment and data collection during treatment; operational definitions of clearly defined target behaviours; a therapist-patient relationship that emphasizes collaboration, orienting the patient to the treatment, and education of the patient; and the use of any standard cognitive and behavioural treatment strategies. But it also has a number of distinctive characteristics that have emerged partly in response to characteristics of this patient population. One of these is an emphasis on dialectics. The fundamental dialectic with this population is the need for both acceptance and change. The therapist needs to fully accept the patient as he or she is and at the same time to persistently and insistently push for and help the patient to change. The therapist also tries to develop and strengthen an attitude of acceptance towards reality on the part of the patient as well as the motivation and ability to change what can be changed. This dialectic both flows from and is addressed by the integration of behaviour therapy with Zen practice, Rogerian practice, and others. The therapist also needs to think in a dialectical fashion, not becoming polarized but seeing the value of opposing points of view and finding appropriate synthesis.
The treatment rests on the dialectic of two core sets of strategies : validation strategies and problem-solving strategies. Behaviour therapy has emphasized problem solving but has had little to say about validation or acceptance. DBT also involves a dialectic of communication style between a reciprocal, warm, genuine interpersonal style and a more irreverent style and a dialectic in case management between consultation to the patient regarding how to manage his or her environment on the one hand and direct environmental intervention by the therapist on the other. DBT was developed to address the issues that lead therapists of not only behavioural but also other theoretical orientations to frequently get stuck, go down blind alleys, and in some cases even contribute to serious, even fatal, deterioration in the patient’s well-being. DBT does not particularly emphasize the role of the patient’s motivational factors (e.g., resistance) in understanding the difficulty these patients have in changing. Rather, it recognizes that they almost always are seriously deficient in a wide spectrum of interpersonal, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and other skills. However, the behaviour therapist who attempts to treat the borderline patient by a relatively structured sequence of skills acquisition and practice, as one might do with some patients who have depressive or anxiety disorders, quickly discovers that the patient’s emotional sensitivity necessitates presenting skills, and problem-solving in general, within a context in which the patient feels understood and validated, particularly with regard to his or her emotions and motives.
Conducting skills training in individual therapy with borderline patients is frequently almost impossible because of the recurrent chaos and crises of their lives, so that at every session some new behaviour or situation may need to be dealt with. Linehan therefore decided to separate skills training into a separate component of the treatment, typically in a group format, to free up the individual psychotherapist for helping patients manage crises, reinforce the use of skills, and deal with motivational issues that interfere with their using the skills they have. Thus, it is assumed that patients not only have skills deficits but typically also do not use the skills they have.
In DBT, the term “motivational” refers to emotions, cognitions, or reinforcement contingencies that interfere with skilled behaviour. The therapist’s job therefore becomes one of helping the patient overcome inhibitions, change beliefs and thinking styles, and rearrange reinforcement contingencies for adaptive and maladaptive behaviour. The treatment therefore targets both improvement in skills and adequate attention to these several motivational factors that can interfere with them.
[1] What is the corner-stone of the philosophy that underlies Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)?
(1) Developing a collaborative relationship between patient-therapist, and standard cognitive and behavioural treatment strategies
(2) On-going and systematic assessment and data collection during treatment, with an emphasis on clearly defined target behaviours of the patient which need to be changed
(3) Accepting the patient for what he or she is; while striving to change the patient so that problems are solved
(4) Integration of behaviour therapy with other perspectives notably Zen and dialectics[2] DBT has developed because:
(1) Traditional models of therapy is didactic and pedogogical rather than being human and realistic
(2) (3) and (4) both
(3) Lead therapists found that often patient’s health deteriorated totally by the use of traditional methods of therapy
(4) Lead therapists, both behavioural and theoretical, frequently get stuck, and use trial and error while treating patients[3] The notion of (1) accepting reality as it is and (2) striving to change what can be changed derives from ____ and ____ respectively.
(1) Behaviour therapy; Cognitive therapy
(2) Cognitive therapy; Behaviour therapy
(3) Rogerian practice; Zen philosophy
(4) Zen philosophy; Rogerian practice[4] An innovation that Linehan introduced in DBT; and which has led to better results with respect to improvements in the patient is:
(1) Conducting skills training of patients in a separate component as a group format; allowing the individual psychotherapist help patient with motivational issues
(2) The therapist focuses on helping patient overcome inhibitions, change beliefs and thinking styles, and rearrange reinforcement contingencies for adaptive and maladaptive behaviours
(3) The individual psychotherapist uses both skills training and reduction of motivational deficits to help patients
(4) Borderline patients benefit when they are made to go through relatively structured sequence of skills acquisition and practice[5] One of the main problems with a DBT therapist could be:
(1) Lack of understanding of Zen philosophy
(2) All of the above
(3) Inability to synthesize opposing perspectives and tending to become polarized while treating a patient
(4) To be reverent and irreverent at the same time while treating a patient[6] In the final analysis the advantages of DBT are numerous. Which statement can be inferred as not to be one of the advantages of DBT?
(1) Cultural differences between the patient and the therapist can create complications in the practice of DBT
(2) DBT can be very taxing for the therapist to practice
(3) DBT is an open ended form of treatment, and therapists can choose from a wide repertoire of available techniques
(4) The DBT therapist needs to be a highly skilled and evolved person, which is not possible for many individuals[7] Marsha Linehan evolved DBT over almost 20 years of work with:
(1) women who were deficient in a wide spectrum of interpersonal, emotion regulation, distress tolerance and other skills
(2) all of the above
(3) depressive women
(4) chronically suicidal women[8] Which social institution practices DBT in its essence, without being conscious of it?
(1) Hospitals
(2) All of these
(3) Schools
(4) Familiesasked in FMS
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104.
How do we go about investigating personologic phenomena? Should we adhere to the time-tested rules of common sense, continuously and painstakingly refining our measures and methods until we are virtually infallible? Or should we explore innovative new concepts that will partition the personological realm in ways that are more theoretically and clinically fruitful? One option would be to anchor personological phenomena directly in the empirical world of observables in a one-to-one fashion, tying each attribute to only one indicator. Each attribute would then be its mode of measurement, possessing no information beyond that contained in the procedure itself, akin to operational definitions.
Operational definitions are quite pleasingly precise but considerably limited in scope. Ultimate empirical precision can only be achieved if every defining feature that distinguishes a taxon is anchored to a single observable in the real world; that is, a different datum for every difference observed between personality syndromes. This goal is simply not feasible or desirable: The subject domain of personology is inherently more weekly organized than that of the so-called hard sciences. As one moves from physics and chemistry into biological and psychological arenas, unidirectional causal path-ways give way to feedback and feedforward processes, which in turn give rise to emergent levels of description that are more inferential than the physical substrates that underlie them. Intrapsychic formulations, for example, require that the clinician transcend the level of the merely observable. Owing to their abstract and hypothetical character, these indeterminate and intervening concepts are known as open concepts.
The polar distinction between operational definitions (the paradigm of those who prefer to employ data derived from empirical-practical contexts) and open concepts (those whose ideas are derived from a more causal-theoretical stance) represents in part an epistemological continuum of conceptual specificity to conceptual openness. Each end of this polarity embraces a compromise between scope and precision. The virtue of each hides its vices. The advantage of operationism is obvious: Personality syndromes and the attributes of which they are composed are rendered unambiguous. Diagnostic identifications are directly translatable into measurement procedures, maximizing precision. However, the direct mapping of attributes to measurement procedures required ignores the biases incumbent to any one procedure, so that operationism is fatally deficient in scope.
The “open concept” model, likewise, has its own advantage : Open concepts acknowledge the desirability of multiple measurement procedures and encourage their user to move freely in more abstract and inferential realms. Each open concept can be embedded in a theoretical matrix or network from which its meaning is derived through its relations with other open concepts, with only indirect reference to explicit observables. The disadvantage is that open concepts may become so circuitous in their references that they become tautological and completely decoupled from observables. No doubt clarity gets muddled and deductions become tautological in statements such as “in the borderline the mechanisms of the ego disintegrate when libidinous energies overwhelm superego introjections.” In such formulations, the scope of a theory overwhelms the testability of its empirical linkages, rendering precision zero.
Due to simple pragmatism, all scientific models, being simplifications of nature, must reach a compromise between scope and precision. We are not yet mystics at the beginning of a science : Unlike the individually borne thinking in a taxonomy which carves nature at its joints, we are acutely conscious that the relations among our naive representations are not those intrinsic to the subject domain itself. No one today would seriously put Hippocrates’s humoral theory forward as a model of personality syndromes. Instead, such formulations resemble the more or less unrefined and often self-contradictory knowledge of commonsense than the wellcriticized and well-corroborated knowledge of science. As disputable as common sense is, it is nevertheless the point of departure for scientific knowledge and a source of common sense taxonomies.
On an individual level, what distinguishes these two broad approaches? What does each individual scientist do to carry out his or her approach? Evidently, the theoretical approach is driven primarily by taking perspective on sense-near representations in order to discover underlying theoreticcausal relations from which a more coherent, internally corroborating system of constructs might be established. New constructs are generated, “more or less removed from the level of directly observable things and events.” Some old ones are discarded, while others have their meaning sharpened or transformed as the system of relations is made more explicit. A process of reflection seems essential. Such representations are referred to as theoretical constructs, to reinforce their abstract origins in the mind of a reflective scientists.
Empiricism, however, tends to keep close to sense-near representations and holds theory as a dubious entity. The empiricist’s vocabulary, then, remains “largely observational”. As an ideal type, empirical preoccupations tend toward the progressive refinement of methods of observing of preexisting constructs, rather than the generation of new ones, toward ever greater agreement of man-with-man (interrater reliability), man-with-himself (reliability over occasions), and greater purity of observation (internal consistency).
Few members of the modern scientific community are native empiricists, yet “no science embraced empiricism more wholeheartedly than psychology”. Moreover, some of the assumptions underlying empiricism are insidious and difficult to escape from, even when one ostensibly believes in the utility of theory. Foremost among criticisms is that the empiricism of common sense, naive realism, believes that the world it takes in is the world as it is. Commonsensical empiricism literally believes its constructs are the world. There is no reason to leave the security of immediate perception. Ultimately, this agenda rests on the assumption that theory-neutral data exist; that is, that one can know the world without transforming it. In the world view of radical empiricism, there are no mediating mental constructs to foul things up. If only it were so, then every act of observation would be an act of knowledge. Each small fact would present us with an objectivity, to be plucked from the world like fruit, collected as a hobby, or catalogued like microscope slides. Because naive empiricism remains unconscious of the potentially deceiving role of mental constructs, it believes itself to be carving nature at its joints just as it is. Naive empiricism, then, is really a false mysticism which breaches the gulf between subject and object by denying that any such gulf exists; it is a naive realism which believes that what you see is what you get.
[1] The passage discusses two approaches which are used to investigate personologic phenomenon. These are:
(1) “Operational definitions” and “Open concepts”
(2) “Facts” and “Theory”
(3) “Commonsensical empiricism” and “naive mysticism”
(4) “Personology” and “Hard sciences”[2] Which statement is not an advantage of “operationism”?
(1) Data is derived from empirical-practical content
(2) Direct mapping of personologic attributes to measurement mode, frees them from making inferences
(3) Personality syndromes and attributes become clear and unambiguous
(4) Measurement procedures are maximized and this increases precision[3] Which statement does not describe a characteristic of “open concepts”?
(1) “Open concepts” derive their meaning from theoretical frameworks and models
(2) “Open concepts” allows the researcher to move freely in more abstract and inferential realms
(3) “Open concepts” model allows the researcher to use multiple measurement procedures
(4) “Open concepts” free research from becoming tautological and decoupled from observables
[4] Science moves away from commonsense in some
essential ways. Which statement reflects one such way?
(1) A scientist introduces new “theoretical terms” which are embedded in theory, and more or less removed from the level of directly observable things and events, while researching
(2) A scientist ignores biases incumbent in multiple measurement procedures and moves freely in abstractions
(3) A scientist progresses from a “theoretical stage” to the “natural history” stage while researching
(4) A scientist is acutely conscious of identifying representations that are intrinsic to the subject of inquiry[5] From the passage what are the characteristics of a researcher who wants to examine personologic phenomenon?
(1) The researcher is adept in clinically and painstakingly refining measures to the point that no information beyond that contained in the procedure is valid
(2) All the above characteristics
(3) The researcher should be able to move from empirical
to theoretical by discovering underlying theoretic causal relationship existing in the phenomenon that is examined
(4) The researcher should be a good reflective scientist, who is able to carve nature at its joints[6] The corner stone of the philosophy of “Empiricism” is:
(1) Empiricism in its pure form is mysticism
(2) To strive and refine methods of pre-existing constructs, rather than generating new constructs to explain what exists
(3) There is no gulf between “subject” and “object” and all data is theory free
(4) Mediating mental constructs do not affect reality as it exists[7] Which science has adopted “Empiricism” wholeheartedly according to the passage?
(1) Biology
(2) All of these
(3) Hard sciences
(4) Psychology[8] “Interrater reliability”, “Test-retest reliability” and “internal consistency”, are terms that will preoccupy a/an:
(1) mystic
(2) pure empiricist
(3) common sense empiricist
(4) personologic scientistasked in FMS
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105.
Another style which is only partially dependent on situational factors for its effectiveness is the Pioneering-Innovative management. Like Likert, Khandwalla preferred to use the expression ‘management’ rather than ‘leadership’, though his theory could easily be taken for a theory of leadership styles of top executives. He accepted that the operative mode of the top management sets the tone for the lower levels. He therefore administered a questionnaire to the top level executives of 75 varied organisations. In addition to other variables, the responses disclosed a mode of functioning which he labelled as ‘PI Management.’ PI Management is characterised by a strong emphasis on attributes such as (1) Adapting freely to changing circumstances without concern for past management practices or traditions; (2) Marketing new and novel products or services; (3) Acquiring the latest, most sophisticated plant, machinery and equipment; (4) High return on investments even if they involve high risk; (5) High quality and high price orientation in marketing company’s established products or services; (6) Innovation and experimentation in every area of management; (7) Ability to come up with original solutions and novel ideas; (8) Being a pioneer within the industry in marketing technologically sophisticated products and services.
Managements that score high on PI claim to pursue a business strategy of pioneering, novel, technologically sophisticated, high quality products and plants. They seem willing to take necessary risks attendant on this strategy. Since they seek to be pioneers, they cannot afford not to adapt or innovate. Indeed, they try to be aggressively adaptive and innovative, not merely technologically but also in various areas of management. Interestingly enough, the current levels of PI in organizations are more strongly influenced by strategic decisions taken in the past than the other way around. That is, the past Pl has an insignificant effect on present norms, decisions and managerial functions. For example, the past policy of recruiting creative managers at junior levels deliberate efforts to inject pioneering and innovative practices regarding business strategies (with reference to diversification, integration, marketing), operating modes (e.g. autonomy, accountability, cooperation), and personnel (e.g. reward and punishment, communication) were found to have significant effects on the current levels of Pl; but past PI did not influence any of it. Similarly, past norms regarding excellence, expertise, dedication and the lower levels of dependency facilitated current PI levels, but not the other way around. In sum, PI management is an outcome rather than a cause of managerial policies and practices. Furthermore, PI management is more effective in an environment which offers opportunities than one which is highly controlled.
Once PI management becomes operative, it improves overall performance, the organisation’s growth, public image as well as adaptability to circumstances improve. It heightens the achievement and result orientation of top management and lowers authoritarian norms at middle management levels. In order to realise the organisation’s goals, the PI executives seek out a complex, turbulent but favourable environment. It is worth noting that past PI is negatively related to the maintenance of friendly relations with colleagues. PI ‘perhaps temporarily lowers friendship ties at senior management levels.’ Relationship orientation, particularly primary relationship, is probably not part of the PI package. Relationship is an offshoot of the ‘affiliative orientation’ which is a business typical of the traditional style of management. According to Khandwalla “a traditional top management, wedded to the status quo, may breed a clubby kind of affiliative, even somewhat task-oriented, work ethic at the next level of management, but a ‘politicised’, cliquish, conflict ridden, low work ethic, passivity prone culture at middle-junior management levels. Also, the tenure of senior managers tends to be long in conservative setups. This may breed a fairly strong, affiliative orientation among the old timers.” Khandwalla devised an essentially PI-like strategy for the turnaround management of sick enterprises.
A few years later, Khandwalla added that it is the ‘humane’ rather than the ‘surgical’ turnaround strategy which works in the developmental context. The turnaround and PI styles should be considered as a whole and integrated model in which the relative relevance of each depends on the health of the organisation. The sick ones need turnaround to be followed by PI management in order to make the organization even more vibrant and healthy. The underlying basic assumption in both of them is the centrality of the task system which must be built, restructured and managed rationally and scientifically.
[1] According to the passage, managers who adopt PI management style
(1) Avoid risks
(2) Adopt sophisticated technology
(3) Do not adapt or innovate
(4) None of the above[2] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) Organisation’s growth is regulated by PI Management Style
(2) Organisation’s image improves with PI Management Style
(3) PI Management improves organisation’s adaptability
(4) PI Management improves the result orientation of organisation[3] According to the author of the passage,
(1) Khandwalla is a proponent of the traditional style of management
(2) Khandwalla is a critique of the traditional style of management
(3) Khandwalla is neither a proponent nor a critique of the traditional style of management
(4) None of the above[4] According to the author,
(1) Khandwalla proposes a humane turnaround
(2) Khandwalla proposes a surgical turnaround
(3) Khandwalla proposes a mix of humane and surgical turnaround
(4) None of the above[5] According to the passage,
(1) Effectiveness of ‘Pioneering – Innovative Management’ style is not dependent on situational factors
(2) Situational factors have no influence on ‘Pioneering – Innovative Management’ style
(3) Effectiveness of ‘Pioneering – Innovative Management’ style is partially influenced by situational factors
(4) Situational factors totally control ‘Pioneering – Innovative Management’ style[6] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The present norms and managerial functions are influenced by 'Pioneering – Innovativeness'
(2) 'Pioneering - Innovativeness' of the past has no significant influence on present norms and managerial functions
(3) The ‘Pioneering – Innovativeness’ of the past has very little impact on present norms and managerial functions
(4) None of the above[7] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) The policy of recruiting creative managers at junior levels has direct impact on the current levels of ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management
(2) Deliberate efforts to develop innovative business strategies has direct impact on ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management
(3) Steps to inculcate innovative operating models has direct impact on ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management
(4) Past ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management had influence on present business strategies[8] According to the passage,
(1) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management enhances performance
(2) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management inhibits performance
(3) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management controls performance
(4) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management measures performance[9] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management is a result of top management policies and practices.
(2) Management policies and practices are a result of ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management.
(3) 'Pioneering – Innovative’ management works well in a closed environment.
(4) ‘Pioneering – Innovative’ management works well in a controlled environment.[10] According to the passage,
(1) Past practices of encouraging excellence had no influence on current ‘PI’ levels
(2) Past practices of encouraging excellence influenced current ‘PI’ levels
(3) Past ‘PI’ levels influenced current focus on excellence
(4) Past ‘Pl’ levels influenced the current level of expertise.[11] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) ‘PI’ management is characterised by an emphasis on innovation
(2) Emphasis on high return on investment is characteristic of ‘PI’ management
(3) Emphasis on high quality and low price is characteristic of ‘PI’ management
(4) ‘PI’ management is characterised by an emphasis on being a pioneer[12] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Khandwalla used a questionnaire to seek responses from 75 respondents.
(2) Khandwalla used a questionnaire to seek responses from executives of 75 respondents.
(3) Khandwalla sought responses from 75 organisations of similar nature.
(4) Likert sought responses from 75 organisations of similar nature
[13] According to the passage,
(1) Khandwalla believes that lower levels are influenced by the style of top management
(2) Likert believed that lower levels are influenced by the style of top management
(3) Neither Likert nor Khandwalla believed that lower levels are influenced by the style of top management
(4) None of the above[14] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) Likert preferred to use the expression ‘management’ instead of ‘leadership’
(2) Khandwalla preferred to use the expression ‘management’ instead of ‘leadership’
(3) Neither the work of Likert nor that of Khandwalla deal with the theory of
‘leadership’.
(4) Both Likert and Khandwalla deal with the theory of ‘leadership’.asked in FMS
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106.
Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, has a certain Centre feel to it – so many fun space-age toys to play with, so little time. In one corner is a spinning globe that emits light beams based on the volume of people searching on Google. As you would expect, most of the shafts of light are shooting up from North America, Europe, Korea, Japan, and coastal China. The Middle East and Africa remain pretty dark. In another corner is a screen that shows a sample of what things people are searching for at that moment, all over the world. When I was there in 2001, I asked my hosts what had been the most frequent searches lately. One, of course, was “sex,” a perennial favourite of Googlers. Another was “God.” Lots of people searching for Him or Her. A third was “jobs” – you can’t find enough of those. And the fourth most searched item around the time of my visit? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry : ‘professional wrestling’. The weirdest one, though, is the Google recipe book, where people just open their refrigerators, see what ingredients are inside, type three of them into Google, and see what recipes come up !
Fortunately, no single word or subject accounts for more than 1 or 2 percent of all Google searches at any given time, so no one should get too worried about the fate of humanity on the basis of Google’s top search items on any particular day. Indeed, it is the remarkable diversity of searches going on via Google, in so many different tongues, that makes the Google search engine (and Search engines in general) such huge flatteners. Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their own – had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.
Said Russian-born Google cofounder Sergey Brin, “If someone has broadband, dial-up, or access to an Internet cafe, whether a kid in Cambodia, the university professor, or me who runs this search engine, all have the same basic access to overall research information that anyone has. It is a total equalizer. This is very different than how I grew up. My best access was some library, and it did not have all that much stuff, and you either had to hope for a miracle or search for something very simple or something very recent. When Google came along, he added, suddenly that kid had “universal access” to the information in libraries all over the world.
That is certainly Google’s goal – to make easily available all the world’s knowledge in every language. And Google hopes that in time, with a PalmPilot or a cell phone, everyone everywhere will be able to carry around access to all the world’s knowledge in their pockets. “Everything” and “everyone” are keywords that you hear around Google all the time. Indeed, the official Google history carried on its home page notes that the name “Google” is a play on the word “googol”; which is the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google’s use of the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the Web, ‘just for you”. What Google’s success reflects is how much people are interested in having just that – all the world’s knowledge at their fingertips. There is no bigger flattener than the idea of making all the world’s knowledge, or even just a big chunk of it, available to anyone and everyone, anytime, anywhere.
“We do discriminate only to the degree that if you can’t use a computer or don’t have access to one, you can’t use Google, but other than that, if you can type, you can use Google,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. And surely if the flattening of the world means anything, he added, it means that “there is no discrimination in accessing knowledge. Google is now searchable in one hundred languages, and every time we find another we increase it. Let’s imagine a group with a Google iPod one day and you can tell it to search by voice – that would take care of people who can’t use a computer- and then [Google access] just becomes about the rate at which we can get cheap devices in to people’s hands”.
How does searching fit into the concept of collaboration? I call it “informing.” Informing is the individual’s personal analogue to uploading, outsourcing, in sourcing, supply chaining, and offshoring.Informing is the ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain – a supply chain of information, knowledge, and entertainment. Informing is about self-collaboration – becoming your own selfdirected and self-empowered researcher, editor, and selector of entertainment, without having to go to the library or the movie theatre or through network television. Informing is searching for knowledge. It is about seeking like-minded people and communities. Google’s phenomenal global popularity, which has spurred Yahoo! and Microsoft (through its MSN Search) also to make power searching and informing prominent features of their Web sites, shows how hungry people are for this form of collaboration. Google is now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago.
The easier and more accurate searching becomes, added Larry Page, Google’s other cofounder, the more global Google’s user base becomes, and the more powerful a flattener it becomes. Every day more and more people are able to inform themselves in their own language. Today, said Page “only a third of our searches are U.S.-based, and less than half are in English.” Moreover, he added, “as people are searching for more obscure things, people are publishing more obscure things,” which drives the flattening effect of informing even more. All the major search engines have also recently added the capability for users to search not only the Web for information but also their own computer’s hard drive for words or data or e-mail they know is in there somewhere but have forgotten where. When you can search your own memory more efficiently, that is really informing. In late 2004, Google announced plans to scan the entire contents of both the University of Michigan and Stanford University libraries, making tens of thousands of books available and searchable online.
In the earliest days of search engines, people were amazed and delighted to stumble across the information they sought; eureka moments were unexpected surprises, said Yahoo!’s cofounder Jerry Yang. “Today their attitudes are much more presumptive. They presume that the information they’re looking for is certainly available and that it’s just a matter of technologists making it easier to get to, and in fewer keystrokes,” he said. “The democratization of information is having a profound impact on society. Today’s consumers are much more efficient– they can find information, products, and services, faster [through search engines] than through traditional means. They are better informed about issues related to health, leisure, etc. Small towns are no longer disadvantaged relative to those with better access to information. And people have the ability to be better connected to things that interest them, to quickly and easily become experts in given subjects and to connect with others who share their interests."
Google’s founders understood that by the late 1990s hundreds of thousands of Web pages were being added to the Internet each day, and that existing search engines, which tended to search for keywords, could not keep pace. Brin and Page, who met as Stanford University students in computer science in 1995, developed a mathematical formula that ranked a Web page by how many other Web pages were linked to it, on the assumption that the more people linked to a certain page, more important the page. The key breakthrough that enabled Google to become first among search engines was its ability to combine its PageRank technology with an analysis of page content, which determines which pages are most relevant to the specific search being conducted. Even though Google entered the market after other major search players, its answers were seen by people as more accurate and relevant to what they were looking for. The fact that one search engine was just a little better than the others led a tidal wave of people to switch to it. (Google now employs scores of mathematicians working on its search algorithms, in an effort to always keep them one step more relevant than the competition).
For some reason, said Brin, “people underestimated the importance of finding information, as opposed to other things you would do online. If you are searching for something like a health issue, you really want to know; in some cases it is a life-and-death matter. We have people who search Google for heart-attack symptoms and then call nine-one-nine.” But sometimes you really want to inform yourself about something much simpler.
[1] Which of the following is not a correct statement?
(1) Informing is supply chain management
(2) Informing is the ability to build and deploy your own supply of information
(3) Knowledge makes you self-directed and selfempowered
(4) Knowledge and information reduce inequality[2] According to the passage,
(1) PageRank technology analyses the relevance of information
(2) Google search does not determine which pages contain relevant information
(3) Google was the first search player on the web
(4) Yahoo entered the market after Google[3] The author of the passage suggests that most people use Google to search for:
(1) Jobs
(2) Sex
(3) God
(4) All of the above[4] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) More than 70 percent of people search for God on Google
(2) Less than 2 percent of people search for God on Google
(3) More than 50 percent of people search for sex on Google
(4) About 30 percent of people search for wrestling on Google[5] According to the author of the passage,
(1) Google has made the world flat
(2) Google has revealed the history of the planet
(3) Different languages have created Google engine
(4) Limited information is available on Google engine
[6] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Only about 50 percent of Google users belong to North America
(2) Only 20 percent of Google users belong to North America
(3) Only 5 percent of Google users belong to North America
(4) Nearly 33 percent of Google users belong to North America[7] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) More than half of Google searches are in the English language
(2) More than half of Google searches are in a Non- English language
(3) Most of Google searches are in the English language
(4) None of the above[8] According to the passage,
(1) In earlier days people were not surprised to find the information they were searching
(2) Today people do not expect to find the information they are looking for
(3) Today people are happy to find the information they are looking for
(4) Today people expect to find the information they are looking for[9] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The co-founders of Google were students of Stanford University
(2) The co-founders of Google were professors of Stanford University
(3) Larry Page and Jerry Yang were co-founders of Google
(4) Eric Schmidt and Jerry Yang were co-founders of Google[10] According to the passage, most people who search on Google belong to :
(1) Europe and Korea
(2) Japan and Central Asia
(3) Middle East and Africa
(4) Europe, Korea, Japan and Central Asiaasked in FMS
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107.
Diwali saw the last great burst of the autumnal exuberance unleashed a month earlier at Dusshera. Within a month of the last Diwali rocket vanishing into the Delhi skies, the city seemed to curl its tail between its legs and disappear into a state of semi-hibernation for the duration of the cold season. The brief but bitter Delhi winter came as suddenly as an undertaker: darkclad, soft-footed, unannounced and unwelcome. There is no snow in Delhi – the winters are too dry – but, white winds from the snow peaks still sweep down the slopes, freezing the plains of the Punjab and shattering the brittle buds, before raking through the streets of the capital and brushing the narrow Delhi alleyways clear of people. The Delhi–wallahs withdraw into themselves. They lift up their knees to their chins and pull their heavy Kashmiri blankets tightly around. Over their heads they wind thick woollen mufflers. If you look into the dark of the roadside restaurant-shacks you see only the whites of their eyes peering out into the cold.
The sky is grey, the air is grey, and the dull, cold greyness seeps into the ground, the stones and the buildings. The only colours are the red and yellow silk flags flying over the new Muslim graves in Nizamuddin. The trees in the gardens stand shrouded in a thin wrap of mist. In Old Delhi, the goats fattening for slaughter huddle together under sackcloth coats; some are given old cardigans to wear, with their front legs fitted through the sleeves. Winter smoke winds slowly out of the chimneys; bonfires crackle outside the jhuggi clusters. As you look through the windowpanes you can see winter lying curled like a cobra across the land. Olivia now spent her mornings in the warmth of our flat; it was too cold and misty to paint until the sun had reached its zenith at midday. If she ventured out she would return early, before a sudden dusk brought to a close the brief winter afternoon. Brisk evenings were followed by cold nights. We muffled ourselves in our new shawls – we had not considered packing jerseys or overcoats when we set off to India – and sat warming ourselves, in front of the heaters. My reading was mostly historical. I had become fascinated with that period of Delhi’s history known as the Twilight. It was an epoch whose dark melancholy perfectly reflected the cold, misty scenes outside our own windows.
The Twilight is bounded by two of the greatest disasters in Delhi’s history: the Persian massacres of 1739 and the equally vicious hangings and killings which followed the British recapture of Delhi after the 1857 Indian Mutiny. The first massacre took place in the wake of an unexpected invasion of India by the Persian ruler, Nadir Shah. At Karnal in the Punjab the newly-crowned Shah defeated the Mughal army and advanced rapidly on Delhi. He encamped at the Shalimar Gardens, five miles north of the city. Having been invited into Delhi by the nervous populace, Nadir Shah ordered the massacre after a group of Delhiwallahs attacked and killed 900 of his soldiers in a bazaar brawl. At the end of a single day’s slaughter 1, 50,000 of the city’s citizens lay dead.
Nadir Shah’s massacre exacerbated the decline of the Mughal Empire which had been steadily contracting since the death of Aurangzeb, the last Great Mogul, in 1707. By the end of the eighteenth century, Delhi, shorn of the empire which gave it life, had sunk into a state of impotent dotage. The aristocracy tried to maintain the life-style and civilization of the empire, but in a mined and impoverished city raped and violated by a succession of invaders. The destruction created a mood conducive to elegy, and the great Urdu writers made the most of the opportunity. ‘There is no house from where the jackal’s cry cannot be heard,’ wrote Sauda. ‘The mosques at evening are unlit and deserted. In the once beautiful gardens, the grass grows waist-high around fallen pillars and the ruined arches. Not even a lamp of clay now burns where once the chandeliers blazed with light…’
On the throne in the Hall of Audience in the 'Qila-i- Mualla, the Exalted Fort sat the Emperor Shah Alam. He was a brave, cultured and intelligent old man, still tall and commanding, his dark complexion offset by a short white beard. He spoke four languages and maintained a harem of five hundred women; but for all this, he was sightless - years before, his eyes had been gouged out by Ghulam Qadir, an Afghan marauder whom he had once kept as his catamite. Like some symbol of the city over which he presided, Shah Alam was a blind emperor ruling from a ruined palace. At his court, the elaborate etiquette of Mughal society was scrupulously ‘maintained’; poetry, music and the arts flourished. But beneath the surface lustre, all was rotten. Servants prised precious stones from the pietra dura inlay on the walls to sell in Chandni Chowk. The old court costumes were threadbare; the plaster was peeling. Mountains of rubbish accumulated in the city streets and amid the delicate pavilions of the Exalted Palace. Unable to see the decay around him, Shah Alam still could not escape its stench.
With Iris Portal and the Haxby sisters I had heard the testimonies of the last British in Delhi. Now, in the cold of early December, I visited the chilly Delhi libraries searching for the accounts of the first English to penetrate the city’s walls in the late eighteenth century. The most detailed of the early descriptions was that written by Lieutenant William Franklin. Franklin had been sent to Delhi by the directors of the East India Company to survey the then unknown heartlands of the empire of the Great Mogul. Franklin’s account of his discoveries, published in Calcutta in the 1795 Asiatic
Researches (the journal of the newly-founded Royal Asiatic Society) painted a melancholy picture of the once-great capital. Franklin had approached the city on horseback from the northwest. His first glimpse was of a landscape littered with crumbling ruins: ‘The environs are crowded with the remains of spacious gardens and the country-houses of the nobility,’ he wrote in his report. ‘The prospect towards Delhi, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with the remains of gardens, pavilions, mosques and burying places.’
[1] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Olivia is a painter
(2) Olivia is the author’s neighbour
(3) Olivia is a historian
(4) Olivia is the author of the passage[2] During the winter season in Delhi,
(1) People largely stay indoors
(2) Most people prefer to walk around the streets
(3) The road side stacks are well-lit
(4) None of the above[3] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Bright saffron coloured silk flags fly over the new Muslim graves
(2) Yellow and red silk flags fly over the new Muslim graves
(3) Yellow and green silk flags fly over the new Muslim graves
(4) All Muslim graves are covered with black flags[4] According to the passage,
(1) All the goats wear old cardigans
(2) No goats wear cardigans
(3) All the goats are given new cardigans to wear
(4) Some goats wear old cardigans[5] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The author of the passage was known to Iris Portal
(2) The author was not familiar with the Huxley sisters
(3) Neither Iris Portal nor the Huxley sisters knew about the last British in India
(4) The author was not interested in the first English who entered Delhi
[6] According to the passage,
(1) Twilight is the name of a person
(2) A period in European history is known as Twilight
(3) A period in Delhi’s history is known as Twilight
(4) None of the above[7] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The Mughal Empire declined after the death of Aurangzeb
(2) The Mughal Empire prospered after the death of Aurangzeb
(3) Nadir Shah helped the prosperity of the Mughal Empire
(4) By the end of the 18th century, Delhi had become a very powerful state[8] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Emperor Shah Alam was an intelligent old man
(2) Emperor Shah Alam was tall and dark complexioned
(3) Emperor Shah Alam was blind
(4) All of the above[9] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Emperor Shah Alam followed the etiquette of Muslim society
(2) Emperor Shah Alam did not care about the etiquette of Muslim society
(3) Poetry, music and the arts were not part of the Muslim culture
(4) All of the above[10] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The invasion of Nadir Shah was anticipated
(2) Nadir Shah invaded Persia
(3) The massacre ordered by Nadir Shah killed 900 soldiers
(4) The massacre ordered by Nadir Shah killed 15000 citizens of Delhi
[11] According to the passage,
(1) Winter in Delhi is very pleasant
(2) Summer season in Delhi is very pleasant
(3) Both summer and winter seasons are pleasant in Delhi
(4) Winter season in Delhi is not so pleasantasked in FMS
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108.
The fairness exercise, thus structured, is aimed at identifying appropriate principles that would determine the choice of just institutions needed for the basic structure of a society. Rawls identifies some very specific principles of justice (to be discussed presently), and makes the strong claim that these principles would be the unanimous choice that would emerge from the political conception of justice as fairness. He argues that since these principles would be chosen by all in the original position, with its primordial equality, they constitute the appropriate ‘political conception’ of justice, and that people growing up in a well-ordered society governed by these principles would have good reason to affirm a sense of justice based on them (irrespective of each person’s particular conception of a ‘good life’ and personal ‘comprehensive’ priorities). So the unanimous choice of these principles of justice does quite a bit of work in the Rawlsian system, which includes the choice of institutions for the basic structure of the society, as well as the determination of a political conception of justice, which Rawls presumes will correspondingly influence individual behaviours in conformity with that shared conception.
The choice of basic principles of justice is the first act in Rawls’s multi-staged unfolding of social justice. This first stage leads to the next, ‘constitutional’, stage in which actual institutions are selected in line with the chosen principle of justice, taking note of the conditions of each particular society. The working of these institutions, in turn, leads to further social decisions at later stages in the Rawlsian system, for example through appropriate legislation (in what Rawls calls ‘the legislative stage’). The imagined sequence moves forward step by step on firmly specified lines, with an elaborately characterized unfolding of completely just societal arrangements.
The whole process of this unfolding is based on the emergence of what he describes as ‘two principles of justice’ in the first stage that influence everything else that happens in the Rawlsian sequence. I have to express considerable scepticism about Rawls’s highly specific claim about the unique choice, in the original position, of one particular set of principles for just institutions, needed for a fully just society. There are genuinely plural, and sometimes conflicting, general concerns that bear on our understanding of justice. They need not differ in the convenient way– convenient for choice that is- that only one such set of principles really incorporates impartiality and fairness, while the others do not. Many of them share features of being unbiased and dispassionate, and represent maxims that their proponents can ‘will to be a universal law’ (to use Immanuel Kant’s famous requirement).
Indeed, plurality of unbiased principles can, I would argue, reflect the fact that impartiality can take many different forms and have quite distinct manifestations. For example, in the illustration with the competing claims of three children over a flute, considered in the Introduction, underlying each child’s claim there is a general theory of how to treat people in an unbiased and impartial way, focusing, respectively, on effective use and utility, economic equity and distributional fairness, and the entitlement to the fruits of one’s unaided efforts. Their arguments are perfectly general, and their respective reasoning about the nature of a just society reflects different basic ideas that can each be defended impartially (rather than being parasitic on vested interests). And if there is no unique emergence of a given set of principles of justice that together identify the institutions needed for the basic structure of the society, then the entire procedure of ‘justice as fairness’, as developed in Rawls’s classic theory, would be hard to use.
As was discussed in the Introduction, Rawls’s basic claim of the emergence of a unique set of principles of justice in the original position (discussed and defended in his A Theory of Justice) is considerably softened and qualified in his later writings. Indeed, in his Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls notes that ‘there are indefinitely many considerations that may be appealed to in the original position and each alternative conception of justice is favoured by some consideration and disfavoured by others’, and also that ‘the balance of reasons itself rests on judgment, though judgment informed and guided by reasoning’. When Rawls goes on to concede that ‘the ideal cannot be fully attained’, his reference is to his ideal theory of justice as fairness. However, there need not be anything particularly ‘nonideal’ in a theory of justice that makes room for surviving disagreement and dissent on some issues, while focusing on many solid conclusions that would forcefully emerge from reasoned agreement on the demands of justice.
What is clear, however, is that if Rawls’s second thoughts are really saying what they seem to be saying, then his earlier stage-by-stage theory of justice as fairness would have to be abandoned. If institutions have to be set up on the basis of a unique set of principles of justice emanating from the exercise of fairness, through the original position, then the absence of such a unique emergence cannot but hit at the very root of the theory. There is a real tension here within Rawls’s own reasoning over the years. He does not abandon, at least explicitly, his theory of justice as fairness, and yet he seems to accept that there are incurable problems in getting a unanimous agreement on one set of principles of justice in the original position, which cannot but have devastating implications for his theory of 'justice as fairness’. My own inclination is to think that Rawls’s original theory played a huge part in making us understand various aspects of the idea of justice, and even if that theory has to be abandoned– for which there is, I would argue, a strong case- a great deal of the enlightenment from Rawls’s pioneering contribution would remain and continue to enrich political philosophy. It is possible to be at once deeply appreciated and seriously critical of a theory, and nothing would make me happier than having Rawls’s own company, if that were to come, in this ‘dual’ assessment of the theory of justice as fairness.
[1] According to Rawls,
(1) Principles of justice are the unanimous choice of a just society
(2) Principles of justice are politically derived
(3) Both the above
(4) None of the above
[2] Which of the following best fits the title of the passage?
(1) The Idea of Justice
(2) Unbiased Principles
(3) Justice as Fairness
(4) The Basic Structure of Society[3] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) Suitable principles need to be identified to determine the choice of just institutions
(2) Just institutions are required for the basic structure of society
(3) Rawls has identified specific principles of justice
(4) The author of the passage is in agreement with the principles of justice identified by Rawls[4] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Rawls argues that citizens of a society governed by principles of justice would affirm a sense of justice based on them
(2) The author of the passage argues that citizens of a society governed by principles of justice would affirm a sense of justice based on them
(3) Both Rawls and the author of the passage argue that citizens of a society governed by principles of justice would affirm a sense of justice based on them
(4) Neither Rawls nor the author of the passage argues that citizens of a society governed by principles of justice would affirm a sense of justice based on them[5] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The author of the passage argues that principles of justice are chosen by all in the original position
(2) Rawls argues that principles of justice are chosen by all in the original position
(3) Both the author of the passage and Rawls argue that principles of justice are chosen by all in the original position
(4) Neither the author of the passage nor Rawls argue that principles of justice are chosen by all in the original position
[6] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) The author of the passage believes that principles of justice constitute the political concept of justice
(2) Rawls believes that principles of justice constitute the political concept of justice
(3) Both the author of the passage and Rawls believe that principles of justice constitute the political concept of justice
(4) Neither the author of the passage nor Rawls believe that principles of justice constitute the political concept of justice[7] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Rawls rejects the theory of justice as fairness
(2) The author of the passage rejects the theory of justice as fairness
(3) Neither the author of the passage nor Rawls rejects the theory of justice as fairness
(4) All of the above[8] Which of the following is NOT a correct statement?
(1) The author of ‘Justice as Fairness: A Restatement’ is not the author of the passage
(2) Rawls is the author of ‘Justice as Fairness: A Restatement’
(3) Rawls has not changed or modified his original position on the principles of justice.
(4) None of the above[9] According to the passage,
(1) Rawls’s multistage theory of justice as fairness is not tenable
(2) Rawls’s multistage theory of justice as fairness is very sound
(3) The author of the passage reinforces Rawls’s multistage theory of justice as fairness.
(4) None of the above
[10] According to the passage,
(1) The basic principles of justice is the first stage of a multistaged process of social justice developed by Rawls.
(2) The basic principles of justice is the first stage of a multistaged process of social justice developed by the author of the passage
(3) Rawls’s concept of social justice is confined to the basic principles of justice
(4) Rawls’s concept of social justice developed as a two-stage process[11] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) The author of the passage does not agree that impartiality can take many different forms
(2) Rawls thinks that impartiality can take many different forms
(3) The author of the passage believes that impartiality can take many different forms
(4) None of the above[12] According to the passage,
(1) The author of the passage is in agreement with Rawls’s claim that there exists one particular set of principles for just institutions
(2) The author of the passage is not in agreement with Rawls’s claim that there exists one particular set of principles for just institutions
(3) Neither of the above
(4) Both (1) and (2) above[13] According to the passage,
(1) Rawls believes that there are several concerns that may lead to an understanding of justice
(2) The author of the passage believes that there are several concerns that may lead to an understanding of justice
(3) The author of the passage believes that one set of principles lead to our understanding of justice
(4) Rawls believes that there are conflicting concerns that may lead to an understanding of justice
[14] According to the passage,
(1) There is no theory of how to ensure justice in an unbiased and impartial way
(2) One cannot treat people with economic equity and distributional fairness
(3) There is a general theory of economic equity and distributional fairness
(4) None of the above[15] Which of the following is a correct statement?
(1) Rawls suggests the theory ‘justice as fairness’
(2) The author of the passage suggests the theory ‘justice as fairness’
(3) Both Rawls and the author of the passage suggest the theory ‘justice as fairness’
(4) None of the aboveasked in FMS
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