PASSAGE 3 The Ingenuity gap 28 June 2021

READING PASSAGE 3
Answer Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 pages 10 and 11.

The Ingenuity gap
In this book introduction the author explains what he means by ‘ingenuity’ and discusses the factors that influence the requirement for and provision of new ideas in today’s society.

Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals—whether it has a young population or an ageing one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.

A good supply of the right kinds of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, zprosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power.

The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environment, have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world.

Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they’ve been. They include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information.

In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our interactions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals in subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions. The management of our relationship with the new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity.

When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet’s network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex, to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behavior of complex systems with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. Over the last 100 years as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon have become more complex, and as our demands on them have increased, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our requirement for ingenuity.

However, we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, and ecological systems exceed the human brain’s grasp. Not many of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns,” which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.

In this book, I explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, the crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.

Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature.

And science’s rate of advance depends on the characteristics of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena area intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow.

Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet fully understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.

Questions 27-30
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 The author’s definition of ingenuity
28 The type of ingenuity required by a society
29 The creation of wealth
30 The stability of a society

A does not depend on ingenuity alone.
B depends in on the successful management of certain disputes.
C has often been misunderstood.
D is not limited to the creation of new inventions.
E frequently increases in accordance with the material successes achieved .
F is linked to factors such as the weather.

Questions 31-33
Choose the correct letter, A,B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.

31 What point does the author make about the incremental changes of the last century?
A Their effect on the environment has been positive.
B They have not affected all parts of the world.
C Their significance may not be noticed.
D They have had less impact than those of previous centuries.

32 According to the author, one effect of the combined changes is that life has become
A easier.
B faster.
C more interesting
D more enjoyable.

33 What observation does the author make about complex natural systems?
A They can be greatly affected by minor alterations.
B They cannot be compared to human-made systems.
C Their performance cannot be improved by human intervention.
D Their behavior is better understood than ever before.

Questions 34-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet write
YES If the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO If the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN If it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

34 Changes in the last 100 years have increased the need for human ingenuity.
35 The amount of ingenuity available is strictly related to the demand which exists for it.
36 Although ingenuity may be available, it may be inappropriate for the tasks that need solutions at the time.
37 Few people today truly understand the way the modern world works.
38 Access to more and more information is improving our grasp of current affairs.
39 Future generations will be critical of the way today’s governments have conducted themselves
40 It is inevitable that some areas of scientific study advance more quickly than others.