From passage: "The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects" The author's main point -> inventions have unpredictable secondary effects that inventors never saw coming Let us trace each example: - Carrier -> wanted cool air for factories -> accidentally caused massive population shifts to desert cities - Edison -> wanted dictation machine -> people used it for music instead - Babbage -> inspired by toy dolls -> created foundation for computer revolution Key insight -> These inventors had no clue their work would lead to such massive societal changes

Students often get confused between options 1 and 3 because both seem to talk about inventors not predicting outcomes. But there's a key difference: 🟢 Option 1 -> correct -> focuses on inventors being unable to visualize the eventual societal impact (matches author's point about unpredictable consequences) 🟠 Option 2 -> partial-truth -> says consequences were "largely beneficial" but passage shows mixed results (climate change is mentioned as harmful consequence) 🟠 Option 3 -> scope-error -> too narrow, focuses only on "different purposes" but misses broader point about unpredictable societal impact (Edison example fits, but others don't) 🔴 Option 4 -> irrelevant -> claims inventions led to "creation of new inventions" but passage focuses on societal consequences, not just more inventions From passage: "Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society" The key word is "visualize" in option 1 -> inventors couldn't see ahead to predict how society would change because of their work.

CAT (VARC) PYQs

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