【刷题锦囊】雅思阅读无限仿真模拟题详解：THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

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易伯华雅思名师讲堂今天和大家分享一篇阅读仿真模拟题“THE GAP of INGENUITY 2”（《创新的空白2》），这是一篇论说文，全文共10段。大家可以在正文中看到原文和题目，可以先自己试着做一做，做完可以看看易伯华名师的悉心讲解。一起来学习吧！

THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

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 aging 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 kind 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, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the

resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over

wealth and power. Yet within our economics ingenuity often supplants labor, and

growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the

stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set

up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power.

Clearly, our economic and political processes are intimately entangled with the

production and use of ingenuity.

The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the

planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural

environments 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. 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 inter actions 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 and subgroups, such

as political special interests and ethnic factions.

As a result, people in all walks of life-from our political and business

leaders to all of us in our day-to-day——must cope with much more complex,

urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our

relationship with this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of

social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our

prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more

sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.

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. In

general, as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon become more

complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies

we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our

need for ingenuity.

The good news, though, is that the last century's stunning changes in our

societies and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they

have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of

human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and

transportation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce

larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in

turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.

But—and this is the critical "but"——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, arid ecological systems exceed the human brains grasp. Very

few 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, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our

ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example,

many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and

will make it easier to find solutions to our societies' collective problems, but

the story is less clear than it seems. 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 characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply

because some phenomena are 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 understand; but we desperately need better social

scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world

demands.

Questions:

Complete each sentence with the appropriate answer, A, B, C, or D

Write the correct answer in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 The definition of ingenuity

28 The requirement for ingenuity

29 The creation of social wealth

30 The stability of society

A depends on many factors including climate.

B depends on the management and solution of disputes.

C is not only of technological advance, but more of institutional

renovation.

D also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.

Question 31-33

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

Write your answers in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.

31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100

years?

A It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists.

B Its significance is often not noticed.

C It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.

D It benefited a much larger population than ever.

32 The combination of changes has made life.

A easier

B faster

C slower

D less sophisticated

33 What does the author say about the natural systems?

A New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision.

B Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems.

C Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically.

D Technological developments have rendered human being more independent of

natural systems.

Question 34-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage 3?

In boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

34 The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.

35 The ingenuity we have may be inappropriate for solving problems at

hand.

36 There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present

world.

37 More information will help us to make better decisions.

38 The next generation will blame the current government for their

conduct.

39 Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others.

40 Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important

as natural science.

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