영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly ①built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers ②named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who ③assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been ④pour into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly ⑤wasted.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever ①tipping the balance toward either option. Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option ②supported by the strongest reason, and because neither pile offers any advantage over the other, the donkey supposedly finds itself with no rational basis for choosing one pile rather than the other. ③Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry, and that even a tiny, arbitrary preference ④is usual enough to break the tie in practice. The paradox nevertheless raises a serious question about whether purely rational deliberation can ever generate action on its own, without some additional nudge that reason alone ⑤cannot supply.

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.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that _______________, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices. Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued.

Where structural functionalism emphasizes cooperation and stability, conflict theory begins from the premise that society is best understood as an ongoing struggle between groups with competing interests over scarce resources such as wealth, power, and prestige. Rooted in the writings of Karl Marx, classical conflict theory focused on the economic struggle between those who own productive resources and those who must sell their labor to survive, arguing that dominant groups shape laws, education, and even widely shared beliefs in ways that quietly protect their own advantage. Later sociologists broadened the framework well beyond economic class, applying conflict analysis to struggles organized around race, gender, and other categories of unequal social power. Unlike functionalists, who often interpret existing social arrangements as serving a necessary purpose, conflict theorists argue that _______________.

The ecological footprint, a widely cited measure of how much biologically productive land and water a population requires to sustain its consumption, has become one of the most familiar tools for communicating humanity's environmental impact. By converting diverse activities, from driving to eating meat, into a single unit of land area, the measure allows policymakers to grasp whether a lifestyle exceeds what the planet can regenerate. (A) Because the footprint aggregates dissimilar impacts, such as carbon emissions and water scarcity, into one composite figure, it can obscure important differences among problems that require distinct policy responses. A region might reduce its footprint by lowering carbon emissions while simultaneously depleting a local aquifer, yet the aggregate number could still appear to improve, concealing damage that demands urgent attention. (B) This simplicity, however, is also the source of its most persistent criticism. (C) Furthermore, the method assumes that all bio-productive land is roughly interchangeable, treating a hectare of forest as equivalent to a hectare of farmland, even though the two provide markedly different ecological functions.

When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. (B) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies, proposing that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. (A) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms, a state Durkheim called anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire. (C) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion.

The software company, in turn, may argue that no algorithm can be expected to be perfect. Hospitals are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence tools that can scan medical images and flag potential tumors faster than experienced radiologists. ( ① ) When an AI system misses a diagnosis that a human doctor would likely have caught, responsibility becomes difficult to assign. ( ② ) The doctor may argue that they simply trusted a tool the hospital required them to use. ( ③ ) The hospital, meanwhile, may argue that the software company guaranteed its accuracy. ( ④ ) Until legal systems clarify this chain of responsibility, patients harmed by an algorithmic error may find themselves with no clear party to hold accountable. ( ⑤ )

The secret lies not in the cotton plant itself but in a borrowed piece of bacterial DNA. A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been growing in fields around the world for decades. ( ① ) Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to specific insect pests but harmless to humans. ( ② ) That gene is then inserted into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. ( ③ ) Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them to survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. ( ④ ) Supporters point to yield increases and reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. ( ⑤ ) Regulatory agencies in most countries now require extensive testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.