Sample GRE questions, with answers

Since arya is taking the GRE tomorrow, I thought I'd have a look at the questions on this extremely silly exam. I now present some "issue" questions with answers.

Q: "People who are the most deeply committed to an idea or policy are the most critical of it."

This is an empirical question, not something I could dash off an essay about in an hour or two. Give me a research grant sufficient to do in-depth interviews with advocates of a wide variety of ideas, and I might be able to come up with something after a few years. On the other hand, if you want a quick, snappy answer, the answer is "Like hell they are."


Q: "The most practical and effective way to protect wilderness areas is to attract more tourists to these areas through environmentally sensitive projects."

A: See the above comment about research grants. Since my first degree was in English and Music, how on earth am I supposed to know about eco-tourism?

Q:"It is the artist, not the critic,* who gives society something of lasting value."

*a person who evaluates works of art, such as novels, films, music, paintings, etc.

A: I know, as C.P. Snow famously said, that we are living in two cultures*, and engineering graduates may not regularly read the arts pages in newspapers, but are you really considering accepting someone to study for a postgraduate degree who doesn't know what an art critic is?

*That's arts and sciences (for the benefit of GRE exam writers)

Q:"Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."

A: Er, whatever you say.

Are Religious Conservatives the Real Free-riders?

Evolutionary psychologists are currently trying to find a theory that explains moral behaviour in evolutionary terms. This is hardly surprising, since evolutionary psychologists try to explain everything in evolutionary terms, but it is turning up some interesting ideas. I recently read Jonathan Haidt's article "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion," which gives a good overview of evolutionary accounts of morality combined with the author's own theories about religion. One contradiction he grapples with is that we think of contractual societies (individualistic, pluralistic and tolerant) as promoting happiness, while at an individual level, "religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people." Of course you can have religious beliefs in a contractual society, but the kind of society that religious conservatives would like to see is much closer to what Haidt calls a "beehive society" or what is elsewhere known as a collectivist culture. Such cultures value unity of belief and conformity to preset social roles over individual desires.

Most of the research on happiness shows that societies with an individualist rather than a collectivist culture are, on the whole, happier. Contrary to popular belief, people in Western Europe or North America are happier than people in economically comparable Far Eastern societies like Japan or South Korea - see Ahuvia's article "Individualism/Collectivism and Cultures of Happiness" (Journal of Happiness Studies, 3:4). On the other hand, if Haidt is correct, conservative individuals within liberal societies may be happier than average, despite the fact that if their values were accepted by the whole society, everyone would be less happy.

This leads me to another point that Haidt touches on, the free-rider problem. Some evolutionary psychologists posit morality (or "pro-social behaviour") as an adaptive mechanism which enables certain groups to enhance their survival potential. The problem with this is that some animals in the group will exploit this by reaping the benefits of pro-social behaviour without actually engaging in that behaviour themselves - free-riders, in other words. (Incidentally, the free-rider problem is one reason why Dawkins rejects the idea of group selection, but as Haidt argues, he does not have a very strong case, and it looks like Kropotkin got it more-or-less right over a hundred years ago.)

The popular view of free-riders is of dirty hippies, "welfare queens" and other scapegoats. But while religious conservatives look like good members of society - they work, give to charity and (reluctantly) pay taxes - it could be that they are the real free-riders. The particular beliefs they hold enable them to enjoy aspects of the good life Haidt mentions, such as health and happiness. But if their relentless attempts to remodel society were to succeed and everyone were to be a religious conservative, then the result might well be a net drop in happiness. Calvin's Geneva wasn't exactly a merry place.

I CAN HAS GRE

well u all know uncle solri is a) wierd and (b a sadist. i dont mean hes into lether and wihps and shit (tho he prolly is) but he likes 2 make ppl suffer esp ME. this time he made me do qs from the gre. like i cant even get thru sopomore & he wants me 2 do some stupid exam 4 gradschool!!!1111

yeah anyway he sed i can use his car if i write some esays - like his 1986 vw is st i wd want to drive!!! well wahtever these are some more qs he got off teh interweb & my answers.

"In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."

ok tv is prety kewl, like u cn learn a lot of shit from wathcing teh sopranoes & disparate housewives but get reel - u cant learn stuff 4 a colege degree from tv, u need teh internet 4 that. like this semester i had 3 esays & i cd get them all from wikipedia. 3of them got As but 1 prof gave me an F cuz she sed it wz plagairised. wtf???!! i got it frm wkipedia so its gotta be ok!!!1 i think teh problem is that profs dont watch tv and dont use teh internet. like if more profs watched tv then we woldnt need 2 use wkipedia so much cuz courses wd be about things liek lost & heros.

"The intellectual benefits of attending a university or college are vastly overrated: most people could learn more by studying and reading on their own for four years than by pursuing a university or college degree."

like DUUHH! u want 2 spend 4 yrs raeding books???????!!! colege is da bomb cuz u can go 2 clases 2 meet boiz then u get yr grilfrenz 2 help u wt yr esays. & who r these lame ppl who read books??? helooooooo we have teh internet now. see prveiuos anwser.

"Because learning is not a solitary activity but one that requires collaboration among people, students of all ages will benefit academically if they work frequently in groups."

Tihs is todally treu. my engcomp TA wz a reel beotch & she sed 2 rite an esay about some pome called teh faery queen. so i thouhgt ok this sux0rz but waht teh hell i mean gay ppl are ok, like i watch queer eye & those guys kick ass. so me & my grlfrenz sed lets do a grp project & teh profbitch sed ok so woohoo mebbe shes not so bad. anyway we went 2 a gay bar & it wz full of these todally hawt boiz like i mean WHAT A WASTE & 1 of them sed ok im a fairy & hes a queen but what u want is spenser. and im like whos this spenser guy?? & he sed go 2 teh libary. so we goes 2 teh libary & aks 4 spenser books & aksherly theyr not bad their about this private detective called spenser & anayway we worte an esay 2gethr & teh prof sed ok i ment a diffrnt spenser but waht the hell at least u red some books ill give u an A. w00t!