DATE - DECEMBER 17, 2024

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exam An easy way to conquer in reading
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The Indian Express, The Hindu,

The Hindustan Times, Business
Standard, The Times of India,
Tribune India
 Table of
CONTENTS
01 Economy and Happiness
Economy ~ The Guardian

02 Langauge : A specialized skill

~ The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker
Literature
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Economy And Happiness

Economists have spent most of the 20th century ignoring psychology, positive or
otherwise. But today there is a great deal of emphasis on how happiness can shape global
economies, or — on a smaller scale —successful business practice. This is driven, in part,
by a trend in "measuring" positive emotions, mostly so they can be optimized.
Neuroscientists, for example, claim to be able to locate specific emotions, such as
happiness or disappointment, in particular areas of the brain. Wearable technologies, such
as Spire, offer data-driven advice on how to reduce stress.
We are no longer just dealing with "happiness" in a philosophical or romantic sense — it
has become something that can be monitored and measured, including by our behavior,
use of social media and bodily indicators such as pulse rate and facial expressions. There is
nothing automatically sinister about this trend. But it is disquieting that the businesses and
experts driving the quantification of happiness claim to have our best interests at heart,
often concealing their own agendas in the process. In the workplace, happy workers are
viewed as a "win-win." Work becomes more pleasant, and employees, more productive.
But this is now being pursued through the use of performance-evaluating wearable
technology, such as Humanyze or Virgin Pulse, both of which monitor physical signs of
stress and activity toward the goal of increasing productivity.
Cities such as Dubai, which has pledged to become the "happiest city in the world,"
dream up ever-more elaborate and intrusive ways of collecting data on well-being — to
the point where there is now talk of using CCTV cameras to monitor facial expressions in
public spaces. New ways of detecting emotions are hitting the market all the time: One
company, Beyond Verbal, aims to calculate moods conveyed in a phone conversation,
potentially without the knowledge of at least one of the participants. And Facebook [has]
demonstrated that it could influence our emotions through tweaking our news feeds —
opening the door to ever-more targeted manipulation in advertising and influence.
As the science grows more sophisticated and technologies become more intimate with our
thoughts and bodies, a clear trend is emerging. Where happiness indicators were once
used as a basis to reform society, challenging the obsession with money that G.D.P.
measurement entrenches, they are increasingly used as a basis to transform or discipline
individuals.
Happiness becomes a personal project, that each of us must now work on, like going to
the gym. Since the 1970s, depression has come to be viewed as a cognitive or neurological
defect in the individual, and never a consequence of circumstances. All of this simply
escalates the sense of responsibility each of us feels for our own feelings, and with it, the
sense of failure when things go badly. A society that deliberately removed certain sources
of misery, such as precarious and exploitative employment, may well be a happier one. But
we won't get there by making this single, often fleeting emotion, the over-arching goal.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Main Points by Paragraph

1. Economy and Happiness: The Evolving Relationship

Economists have shifted from ignoring psychology to emphasizing happiness as a

driver of global economies and business success. This trend involves measuring
positive emotions to optimize them.

2. Quantifying Happiness

Happiness is no longer a philosophical concept but is now measurable through

behavior, social media activity, pulse rate, and facial expressions. Technologies
like Spire aim to reduce stress using data.

𝟯. Business Agendas in Measuring Happiness

Companies claim to prioritize employee happiness for a "win-win" outcome of

better work experiences and higher productivity. However, tools like Humanyze
and Virgin Pulse monitor employees, often with hidden agendas.

4. Cities and Happiness Surveillance

Cities like Dubai are striving to measure and improve happiness, sometimes using
intrusive methods like CCTV cameras to track public emotions. Technologies like
Beyond Verbal and Facebook manipulate or assess emotions without full
transparency.

𝟱. 𝗖𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻

Prioritizing happiness as an overarching goal can lead to neglecting systemic

issues like exploitative employment. Addressing these root causes may create a
genuinely happier society rather than pursuing fleeting emotional states.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Summary of the Article

The relationship between happiness and economics has evolved from a
philosophical idea to a measurable factor influencing global economies and
business practices. Technologies and tools now monitor happiness through data
such as emotions, physical activity, and social media usage, often under the guise
of improving well-being. However, businesses and governments use this
information to increase productivity and control individuals. Cities like Dubai and
companies like Facebook employ intrusive methods to track and manipulate
emotions. The focus on happiness as an individual responsibility rather than
addressing systemic issues like precarious employment exacerbates the burden
on individuals. True societal happiness requires structural reforms, not an
obsession with fleeting emotions.

Meanings of Difficult Words

1. Precarious - Unstable or uncertain; not secure or safe.
2. Intrusive - Causing disruption or annoyance by being unwelcome or overly
involved.
3. Quantification - The act of measuring or expressing something as a number or
quantity.
4. Disquieting - Causing anxiety or concern; unsettling.
5. Fleeting - Lasting for a very short time; brief or transient.
6. Entrenches - Establishes something so firmly that it becomes difficult to
change.
7. Exacerbates - Makes a problem, situation, or feeling worse.
8. Sophisticated - Highly developed or complex in terms of understanding or
design

New Words and Phrases

1. Wearable Technologies - Electronic devices worn on the body that collect data, such as fitness
trackers or stress monitors.
2. Performance-Evaluating - Tools or systems that measure and assess an individual's efficiency,
effectiveness, or productivity.
3. Manipulation in Advertising - The act of influencing or controlling consumer behavior through targeted
strategies, often without their full awareness.
4. Positive Emotions - Feelings that are uplifting and promote well-being, such as happiness, joy, and
contentment.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Language : A specialized skill

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal
government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a
complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or
formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in
every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave
intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive researchers have described language as a
psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the
admittedly quaint term “instinct”. It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the
sense that spiders know how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider
genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for
architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider
brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are
differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to
make sense of the phenomena we will explore. Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular
wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences.
Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general
capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite
incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the
semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living
species, it does not call for sequestering thr study of humans from the domain of biology, for a
magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some
kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate
thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year.
In nature’s talent show, we are siimply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for
communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when
we exhale. Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness hut
as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as
an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of
nature’s engineering marvels — an organ with “that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which
justly excites our admiration,” in Darwin’s words - gives us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the
much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the
researcher’s point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach
their children or something that must be elaborated in school — as Oscar Wilde said, “Education is an
admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can
be taught.” A preschooler’s tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style
manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy
human beings, even the notorious syntax fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like,
inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well engineered
biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys thatentertainer columnists
make it out to be.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Main Points by Paragraph

1. Language as a Biological Instinct

Language is an innate ability rooted in the biological makeup of the human brain,
much like a spider's instinct to spin webs. It develops spontaneously without
formal teaching or conscious effort.

2. Distinct from General Intelligence

Language operates independently of other cognitive abilities like processing

information or artistic skills. Even young children demonstrate remarkable
grammatical competence, distinct from other forms of symbolic understanding.

𝟯. A Unique but Not Singular Human Trait

Though language is unique to humans, it is one of many specialized adaptations

in the animal kingdom, comparable to bats using sonar or migratory birds
navigating by the stars.

4. Language as a Biological Adaptation

Viewing language as a natural biological adaptation helps demystify its role in

shaping thought. It is not a cultural artifact but an evolutionary marvel designed
for communication.

𝟱. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁

The complexity of language is inherent and does not require formal instruction.
Even those considered inarticulate have an instinctive grasp of sophisticated
grammar, surpassing artificial language systems.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Summary of the Article

Language is not a cultural invention but a biological instinct unique to humans,
developing naturally without formal instruction. It operates independently of
general intelligence, with even young children displaying advanced grammatical
competence. While language is a remarkable human ability, it is one of many
evolutionary adaptations observed in the animal kingdom. Viewing language as a
biological adaptation helps clarify its purpose as a tool for communication rather
than an insidious force shaping thought. Its complexity is part of our biological
inheritance, making it accessible to all humans, regardless of education or
articulation.

Meanings of Difficult Words

1. Cultural Artifact - A product or practice originating from and reflecting a
particular culture.
2. Qualitatively - Relating to the quality or nature of something rather than its
quantity.
3. Cognitive - Pertaining to mental processes like thinking, learning, and
memory.
4. Ineffable - Too great or extreme to be expressed in words.
5. Insidious - Subtly harmful or deceptive over time.
6. Tacit - Understood or implied without being explicitly stated.
7. Semiotics - The study of signs and symbols as elements of communication.
8. Constellations - Groups of stars forming recognizable patterns in the night sky.

New Words and Phrases

1. Biological Makeup - The inherent genetic and physiological structure of a living
organism.
2. Nature’s Talent Show - A metaphor highlighting the diverse and specialized
abilities of different species in the animal kingdom.
3. Mental Organ - A theoretical concept referring to a specialized part of the brain
dedicated to specific cognitive functions, such as language.
4. Well-Engineered Biological Instinct - A natural ability finely tuned by evolution to
perform a specific function effectively.
 DATE DECEMBER 17, 2024

Great progress! Always remember,

consistency is the key.
Steps for Using a PDF to Enhance Comprehension Skills:
1. Read Articles
- Begin by reading the article carefully to get a general understanding.

2. Summarize Each Paragraph

- After reading each paragraph, write a brief summary in your own words.
- Focus on what the author wants to convey.

3. Compare summary with the pdf summary

- Reflect on your summary and compare it with the overall message of the
article.
- Identify any differences in interpretation.

4. Write Without Fear of Grammar

- Focus on expressing your understanding of the text.
- Don’t worry about grammar or structure initially—prioritize clarity.

5. Learn New Words

- Note down unfamiliar words from the PDF.
- Look up their meanings and try to use them in sentences.

6. Repeat the Process

- Consistently follow these steps with multiple articles to improve
comprehension and vocabulary.