GED-SECTION-4 Exam Questions & Answers

How Are Robots Different from Humans?

[Helena is talking to Domain, the general manager of Rossums Universal Robots factory.]

DOMAIN: Well, any one whos looked into anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left

out or simplified. In short but this isnt boring you, Miss Glory?

HELENA: No; on the contrary, its awfully interesting.

DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, plays the fiddle, likes going for walks, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.

HELENA: Oh!

DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary when hes wanted, let us say, to weave or to count. Do you play the fiddle?

HELENA: No.

DOMAIN: Thats a pity. But a working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers

is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?

HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is most honest and hard-working.

DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of

work. In this way he rejected everything that made man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously

developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside? HELENA: Good gracious, no!

DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beautiful piece of work. Not much in it, but everything in flawless order. The product of an engineer is technically at a higher pitch of perfection than a product of nature.

HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of nature.

DOMAIN: So much the worse.

Karel C apek,

from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver)

Which of the following best expresses Rossums view of nature?

A. Nature is beautiful.

B. It is dangerous to try to improve upon nature.

C. Nature is imperfect and unnecessarily complicated.

D. Mother Nature is the greatest engineer of all.

E. Machines are also a part of nature.

What Happened When He Came to America? My parents lost friends, lost family ties and patterns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they had of themselves. We lost a house, several towns, various landscapes. We lost documents and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine packing cases that we took with us to America. We lost connection to a thing larger than ourselves, and as a family failed to make any significant new connection in exchange, so that we were left aground on a sandbar barely big enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of continuity between home and outside and any sense that I was normal. I lost half a language through want of use and eventually, in my late teens, even lost French as the language of my internal monologue. And I lost a whole network of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I only half-realized these losses, and when I did realize I didnt disapprove, and sometimes I actively colluded. At some point, though, I was bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, with a blanketed form on the other side that hadnt been uncovered in decades. My project of self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic vegetable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, and that time, that I had so effectively renounced. [ . . . . ] Like it or not, each of us is made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardens. Offhand remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and commonplaces, shop displays and climate and flickering light and textures of walls are all consumed by us and become part of our fiber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbringing and socialization and intimacy and learning. Every human being is an archeological site. Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) In the first paragraph, the writer lists more than a dozen things that he and his family lost when they immigrated to America. He does this in order to

A. convince others not to immigrate.

B. show how careless his family was when packing.

C. show how much he missed his homeland.

D. show how many intangible and important things were left behind.

E. prove that you are never too old to change..

What Is the Author Asking for?

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our

brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and

memories in the life of my people. The waters murmur is the voice of my fathers father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry out canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the

air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So, if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a

place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth, befalls all sons of the earth. This we know:

The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites us all.

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Chief Seattle, from "This We Know" (1854) What is the authors main goal in this essay?

A.

to convince the American government not to buy the land

B.

to convince Native Americans to fight the new Americans

C.

to persuade Americans that the land is not worth buying

D.

to convince the new Americans that the land is sacred

E.

to show how much power he has over his people