Final answer:
Thrashing refers to a condition where a process spends more time on paging rather than executing, leading to poor system performance.
Step-by-step explanation:
A process is thrashing if b) it spends a lot of time paging, rather than executing. Thrashing occurs when a computer's virtual memory system is overloaded and spends more time transferring pages into and out of memory than processing actual data. This condition is detrimental to system performance because it means that the process is not making progress in its execution; instead, it is caught in a cycle of constantly loading and unloading pages, which can severely degrade the overall system performance.