영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a now-famous thought experiment not to describe an actual laboratory procedure, but ①to expose an absurdity hidden within a leading interpretation of quantum mechanics. Imagine a cat sealed inside a closed box together with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison gas ②rigged to break open the instant the atom decays. Because the atom's decay is governed by genuine quantum randomness, standard quantum theory describes the atom, before anyone looks, ③as existing in a superposition of having decayed and not having decayed at the same time. If the theory is applied consistently to the entire box, the cat itself would have to ④be considered simultaneously alive and dead until an observer opens the lid and looks inside. Schrödinger intended this image to sound obviously ridiculous, using the cat's absurd fate to question whether the act of observation truly determines physical reality, or whether the mathematics is simply being pushed further than it ⑤ever meaning to go.

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.

City governments increasingly market dense networks of surveillance cameras as a straightforward safety upgrade, promising ①faster emergency response and lower crime rates. In many cases, the technology delivers exactly what it promises, helping investigators identify suspects within hours rather than weeks. Yet the same infrastructure that catches criminals also creates a ②permanent record of where ordinary, law-abiding citizens go about their daily lives. Once a camera network exists, its purpose can quietly ③shrink, from tracking traffic accidents to monitoring political protests, often without new public debate or explicit approval. Civil liberties groups argue that a city should decide how much surveillance it wants before the cameras go up, not years ④afterward when the infrastructure is already impossible to remove. Convenience installed today, in other words, can quietly become ⑤control tomorrow.

Many households save far less for retirement than conventional financial advice would recommend. Some economists have proposed a savings program in which employees commit today to allocating a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings, rather than being asked to reduce their current take-home pay immediately. Field trials of such programs have reported substantial increases in average savings rates. This approach demonstrates that savings policy grounded in realistic assumptions about human psychology can prove considerably more ___________ than policy grounded in the assumption that individuals will always act in strict accordance with their own long-term rational interests.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as _______________. Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices.

Consider a large heap containing ten thousand grains of sand. (A) Something has clearly gone wrong along the way, since no reasonable person would call one grain of sand a heap, but pinpointing exactly which single removal transformed a heap into a non-heap seems impossible. (B) Nearly everyone agrees that removing a single grain from such a heap leaves another heap behind, since surely one grain could never make the difference between a heap and a non-heap. (C) Yet if this principle is applied repeatedly, grain by grain, the heap eventually shrinks to a single lonely grain, or even to no grains at all, and logic alone seems to force us to accept that this final result still counts as a heap.

Facing a shortage of caregivers and a rapidly aging population, several countries have begun deploying robots designed to remind elderly residents to take medication and offer simple conversation. (A) Critics, however, worry that this framing quietly shifts the goal of care, so that a robot's companionship comes to be treated as an acceptable substitute for human connection. (B) Early trials show that many residents report reduced loneliness, particularly when a robot's presence allows a human staff member to spend more time with each patient. (C) Advocates for the elderly argue that robots should be evaluated strictly as tools that free up human time for human contact, never as a replacement for it.

The rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game raises an intriguing evolutionary question. (A) One explanation suggests that a willingness to punish unfairness, even at a personal cost, may have conferred long-term advantages within small communities where reputation and repeated interaction mattered greatly. (B) If punishing unfairness is costly in the short term, why would such a tendency have persisted across generations rather than being eliminated by more narrowly self-interested behavior? (C) An individual known to reject unfair offers discourages others from proposing unfair terms in future interactions, ultimately securing fairer treatment over the course of a lifetime.

Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option supported by the strongest reason, it finds itself, in this case, with no rational basis for choosing either pile. Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever tipping the balance toward either option. ( ① ) Neither pile offers any advantage over the other. ( ② ) Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. ( ③ ) Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry. ( ④ ) Even a tiny, arbitrary preference, they note, is usually enough to break the tie in practice. ( ⑤ ) The paradox nevertheless raises a serious question about whether purely rational deliberation can ever generate action on its own.

If such a divide hardens, competitive advantages in school, sports, and the workplace could come to depend less on effort than on access to capital. Beyond restoring lost function, engineers are now exploring implants and prosthetics designed to give healthy people abilities beyond ordinary human limits. ( ① ) Supporters frame this as simply the next step in a long history of human enhancement, no different in principle from eyeglasses or vaccines. ( ② ) Critics counter that earlier enhancements were broadly available to anyone regardless of wealth. ( ③ ) Cutting-edge neural and physical implants, by contrast, are likely to remain expensive for decades, potentially splitting society into those who can afford enhancement and those who cannot. ( ④ ) What began as a medical tool for restoring what was lost, in other words, may end up redefining the baseline of what counts as an ordinary human being. ( ⑤ )