영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them ①changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis ②borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that pollution initially rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, ③treats clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will ④to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth ⑤blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

Military researchers have developed weapons systems ①capable of identifying and engaging targets without a human pressing the final button, a prospect that has ②alarmed arms control experts for over a decade. Advocates within defense agencies argue that autonomous systems can react faster than any human operator and may even reduce casualties by removing fear and fatigue from split-second decisions. Human rights organizations counter that removing a person from the final decision ③strip away moral responsibility at the exact moment it matters most, since a machine cannot be held accountable in any meaningful sense. Diplomatic negotiations toward an international treaty have repeatedly ④stalled, partly because military powers disagree on how to define autonomy precisely enough to regulate it. Meanwhile, the underlying technology continues to advance regardless of ⑤whether the diplomacy meant to govern it keeps pace.

Millions of people now wear devices that continuously track their heart rate, sleep patterns, and daily activity, generating an ①intimate stream of health data that would have been unthinkable to collect just two decades ago. Users generally assume this information belongs to them, since it is drawn directly from their own bodies. In practice, however, the terms of service that few people read often grant the manufacturer ②narrow rights to store, analyze, and even sell anonymized versions of that data to insurers or advertisers. This arrangement becomes especially troubling when health data influences decisions far beyond fitness, such as insurance premiums or employment screening. Advocates for reform argue that biological data deserves a category of protection ③stronger than ordinary consumer information, precisely because it can never truly be ④replaced or reset once it has been ⑤exposed.

Many large companies now rely on artificial intelligence to screen job applications before a human ever sees them. These systems promise ①efficiency, scanning thousands of resumes in seconds and ranking candidates according to patterns drawn from previous hiring decisions. However, this reliance on historical data creates a ②troubling risk. If a company's past hiring favored a particular group, the algorithm may learn to treat that pattern as a marker of success and ③loudly reproduce it, even when no one intended discrimination. Unlike a human interviewer, the system offers no explanation for its choices, which makes the bias ④difficult to detect until an outside audit reveals it. Some researchers argue that fairness cannot be added afterward; it must be built into the system's design from the very ⑤beginning.

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh how painful it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret frequently becomes the dominant factor shaping the final decision. Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, _______________. Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. (A) In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still preferred the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. (B) Researchers explain this reversal by noting that a free item carries no perceived risk of loss, which makes it feel disproportionately attractive compared with any option that still requires payment, however small. (C) Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain.

There is also a quieter cultural cost that rarely appears in productivity reports. Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, drones survey entire fields for signs of disease within minutes, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever walking the rows. ( ① ) For large operations with the capital to invest, these tools have measurably increased yields while reducing water waste. ( ② ) Smaller family farms, however, often cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment. ( ③ ) Some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only widen as the technology advances further. ( ④ ) Generations of farming knowledge, passed down through direct observation of soil, weather, and crops, risk being replaced by dashboards and automated alerts. ( ⑤ )

This is a decision, in short, that no single person should be allowed to make alone. The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases that have resisted treatment for generations. ( ① ) Yet the same precision that makes CRISPR so promising also makes it dangerous in the wrong hands. ( ② ) Editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient. ( ③ ) It alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation. ( ④ ) Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. ( ⑤ ) Critics worry, however, that this line will become harder to enforce than it is to draw.

주어진 문장: This selective compression of memory is not random, however; it follows a strikingly predictable psychological pattern. When people look back on a multi-day journey, they rarely recall every hour with equal clarity; instead, memory tends to compress the entire experience into just a few representative moments. ( ① ) Psychologists have found that two points carry disproportionate weight in this process: the single moment when emotion, whether joy or discomfort, reached its highest intensity, and whatever happened right before the experience concluded. ( ② ) Consider two hikers who complete an identical five-day trek. ( ③ ) The first finishes with a grueling, rain-soaked final climb, while the second enjoys a calm, scenic descent on the last afternoon despite having endured an equally difficult ascent earlier in the trip. ( ④ ) Even though both hikers faced comparable hardship overall, the second is far more likely to remember the journey fondly, simply because the trip ended pleasantly. ( ⑤ ) This pattern reveals that overall satisfaction is not calculated as an average of every experienced moment; rather, it is shaped disproportionately by whichever moments felt most intense and by however the experience happened to end.