영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When an oil tanker ruptures and crude spreads across open water, cleanup crews increasingly reach not only for skimmers and floating booms but also for something far smaller: bacteria that ①eat oil. Certain naturally occurring microbes possess enzymes capable of ②breaking hydrocarbon molecules apart, using the carbon as an energy source and gradually converting a toxic slick into carbon dioxide and harmless byproducts. Bioremediation, as this approach is called, works far more slowly than mechanical cleanup, often ③taking months rather than days, but it can reach contamination trapped in soil or sediment that skimmers and booms can never reach. Scientists have learned to accelerate the process by adding nutrients ④that help native microbial populations multiply faster, or in some cases by introducing engineered strains selected specifically for their appetite for a particular pollutant. Because the method relies on living organisms rather than heavy machinery, it also tends ⑤leave a far gentler footprint on the surrounding ecosystem than excavation or chemical treatment ever could.

Few ideas in policy debate ①provoke as much philosophical unease as the notion that a government might deliberately steer citizens toward better choices while leaving every option technically available. Defenders insist that freedom is preserved as long as no option is banned and no penalty is attached, ②arguing that a citizen who is merely steered, rather than coerced, remains free to choose otherwise. Critics counter that this defense rests on an impoverished notion of liberty, one that ③ignores how engineered defaults and calculated framing can shape decisions just as powerfully as an outright prohibition would. If a policy is designed because officials expect it to bypass conscious deliberation, these critics ask, can the resulting choice still ④call autonomous, even though no law was broken? The dispute ultimately turns on what freedom actually ⑤requires: the mere absence of coercion, or a decision-making process that remains transparent and undistorted.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. If every plank of a wooden ship ①is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to ②erasing the ship's identity. The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced. Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, ③built exactly as the original once stood. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim ④to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread that neither one can fully ⑤explain.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward ___________ rather than toward the outcome that would maximize their overall welfare.

Time travel to the past has long fascinated physicists and philosophers alike, but it also generates a famously troubling contradiction. Suppose a traveler journeyed backward in time and, through some combination of accident and intention, prevented their own grandfather from ever meeting their grandmother. If the grandfather never had children, the traveler themselves would never have been born, which means the traveler could never have existed to make the trip in the first place. Yet if the traveler never made the trip, the grandfather would have survived to meet the grandmother after all, allowing the traveler to be born and eventually travel back in time. The story therefore loops endlessly, undermining itself at every turn rather than settling into any stable outcome. Some physicists resolve the paradox by arguing that _______________.

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 distant planet identical to Earth in every visible respect, except that the clear liquid its inhabitants call "water" is not H2O but a different compound, XYZ, that happens to look, taste, and behave exactly the same. (A) Even though the two speakers hold identical thoughts and mental images when they use the word, their statements refer to two different substances, because the underlying chemical composition fixes what a word ultimately picks out. (B) When an Earthling and a Twin Earthling each say the word "water," they seem to mean the same thing, since neither could tell the substances apart without a chemistry lab. (C) Philosopher Hilary Putnam used this scenario to argue that the meaning of a word is not determined solely by what happens inside a speaker's head.

The anchoring effect is not limited to shopping decisions; it also plays a subtle but powerful role in legal and financial judgments. (A) Similarly, jurors who are told that a plaintiff is seeking an unusually large sum in damages tend to award higher compensation than jurors who hear no specific figure at all, even when the evidence presented is identical. (B) This pattern suggests that anchors can distort judgments requiring careful, case-by-case reasoning, not merely quick, intuitive estimates of price. (C) For instance, experienced judges asked to set a sentence after being exposed to an arbitrary number, such as one generated by rolling dice, have been shown in experimental settings to hand down harsher sentences when the number was high.

The ethical debate surrounding nudging often intensifies when the technique is applied to particularly vulnerable populations. (A) Elderly individuals facing complex decisions about long-term care, for example, may be especially susceptible to defaults and framing effects, raising the stakes of any given choice architecture considerably. (B) Some ethicists argue that heightened vulnerability actually strengthens the case for carefully designed nudges, since vulnerable individuals may otherwise fall prey to more overtly exploitative influences, such as aggressive sales tactics, if a beneficial default is not established first. (C) Others insist that heightened vulnerability demands greater caution rather than more intervention, since those least equipped to resist a nudge are also least equipped to recognize when it no longer serves their genuine interests.

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 )