영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Classical economic models typically assume that people discount future rewards at a constant rate, ①valuing a reward received later somewhat less than an identical reward received now. Empirical observation, however, reveals a different pattern: people apply a much steeper discount to the immediate future than to the distant future, a phenomenon ②termed hyperbolic discounting. This inconsistency explains why an individual might sincerely resolve tonight to wake up early and exercise tomorrow, only to postpone the plan once tomorrow actually arrives and the immediate discomfort of getting out of bed ③become vivid and present. When the reward or cost in question lies safely in the future, its emotional weight remains muted, ④allowing rational long-term goals to dominate one's stated intentions. Once that same reward or cost draws near, however, its immediacy triggers a disproportionately strong emotional pull, frequently ⑤overriding the very plans made earlier with such apparent confidence.

Metacognition, broadly defined as the capacity to monitor and evaluate one's own cognitive processes, is often treated as a ①reliable guide to what we actually know, yet a growing body of evidence suggests that the correspondence between subjective confidence and objective accuracy is far weaker than intuition would suggest. Individuals routinely ②overestimate how thoroughly they have understood a passage of text immediately after reading it, a phenomenon partly attributable to the fluency with which the material was processed rather than to any genuine grasp of its underlying structure. Because rereading familiar material tends to feel ③effortless, learners frequently mistake that ease of processing for durable comprehension, a misattribution that can lead them to ④continue further study prematurely. This gap between perceived and actual mastery, sometimes labeled the illusion of knowing, has practical consequences for education, since students who trust their ⑤inflated self-assessments are less likely to seek out the more effortful, retrieval-based strategies that would otherwise consolidate their learning.

The human gut hosts trillions of microorganisms whose combined genetic material ①trails that of the human genome itself many times over. Once dismissed as ②passive hitchhikers, these bacteria are now understood to actively shape digestion, regulate immune responses, and even influence the production of chemicals that affect mood and behavior. A microbiome disrupted by antibiotics, poor diet, or chronic stress can leave the gut lining more ③permeable than it should be, allowing substances to leak into the bloodstream that would normally stay contained. Researchers studying this connection have found that transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy donor into a patient can, in some cases, ④relieve symptoms of certain digestive disorders that conventional medication had failed to treat. Still, scientists caution that the microbiome varies enormously between individuals, which means a treatment that restores balance in one person's gut may do ⑤little for someone else's.

For much of its history, economic theory treated emotion as a distortion to be eliminated from otherwise rational calculation, an obstacle standing between decision-makers and their true self-interest. More recent research, however, suggests that emotion functions not merely as noise but as an ①integral component of sound judgment, one that supplies information conventional reasoning alone cannot readily access. Individuals who, due to specific neurological conditions, lose the capacity to experience emotion while retaining otherwise normal cognitive abilities frequently struggle to make even simple decisions, spending ②excessive time weighing options that most people resolve almost instantly through a felt sense of what seems right. This observation suggests that emotional responses often function as rapid heuristics, allowing individuals to ③bypass exhaustive deliberation by relying on accumulated affective associations built from past experience. At the same time, acute emotional states, particularly fear and excitement, can distort judgment in predictable directions: fear tends to make individuals more risk-averse than their circumstances objectively warrant, while excitement can ④inflate optimism about outcomes that remain, in reality, highly uncertain. Financial regulators have begun incorporating this understanding into policy design, recognizing that decisions made under conditions of acute emotional arousal often depart substantially from the measured judgment that individuals would exhibit under ⑤turbulent circumstances.

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.

Policymakers seeking to improve public welfare without restricting individual freedom have increasingly embraced an approach known as nudging, which alters the environment in which choices are made rather than mandating particular outcomes. A nudge preserves every option that was previously available; it simply arranges those options so that the choice deemed most beneficial becomes easier or more visible than the alternatives. Despite ongoing debate over its ethics, governments across many countries have adopted nudge-based programs, reporting outcomes that are frequently ___________ compared with those achieved through traditional regulation or public information campaigns alone.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. From the traveler's point of view, stepping into the machine and stepping out on the other side would feel utterly seamless, complete with continuous memories. Philosophers, however, are troubled by a version of the same device that malfunctions: instead of destroying the original, it leaves the original body intact while still creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. Now two people exist, each with identical memories and an equally strong claim to being the original traveler, and there is no principled way to say that one of them is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. This malfunction reveals that _______________.

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two fundamentally different forms of social organization, which he termed Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. (C) Gesellschaft, often translated as society, describes relationships organized around impersonal contracts, self-interest, and formal law, typical of large cities where interactions occur between relative strangers. (B) Gemeinschaft, often translated as community, describes relationships bound by close kinship, shared tradition, and face-to-face familiarity, typical of small villages where individuals know one another across an entire lifetime. (A) Tönnies did not regard one form as simply superior to the other; rather, he saw the shift from Gemeinschaft toward Gesellschaft as a defining feature of modernization.

As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that receives far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. (A) One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Another approach relies on expanding transmission networks across wider regions, so that electricity generated in a sunny area can be redirected to places experiencing a shortfall. (B) Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, producing supply that fluctuates constantly. This intermittency means that grid operators must balance supply and demand even when renewable output suddenly drops, such as when clouds cover a solar farm or wind speeds fall. (C) Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are expected to provide.

This admission, however, is precisely what the sunk cost fallacy makes so difficult to accept. Consider a construction firm that has spent several years and a substantial budget building a bridge, only to discover partway through that a cheaper and safer alternative route has since become available. ( ① ) A purely forward-looking analysis would compare the remaining cost of finishing the original bridge against the total cost of switching to the new route, ignoring whatever has already been spent. ( ② ) If the new route is genuinely cheaper going forward, the rational choice is to abandon the original project regardless of how much money it has already consumed. ( ③ ) Abandoning the project, however, requires the firm's leadership to publicly acknowledge that a significant portion of the original investment produced no lasting value. ( ④ ) As a result, firms often continue projects long after the numbers clearly favor stopping, simply to avoid confronting this uncomfortable truth. ( ⑤ ) The bridge, in such cases, becomes less a matter of engineering than a monument to the difficulty of admitting a costly mistake.