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.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that ①contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. This tendency operates not because individuals are deliberately dishonest, but because the mind finds it cognitively less taxing ②to absorb information that fits an existing framework than to reconstruct that framework from scratch. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed, for instance, tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while investors who ③are skeptical of the same company interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Social media platforms can intensify this effect by algorithmically presenting users with content similar to what they have previously engaged with, thereby ④narrowing the range of perspectives an individual regularly encounters. Over time, such selective exposure can harden initial impressions into convictions that ⑤feels objectively verified, even though they rest on a systematically filtered sample of evidence.

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

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.

Identical information can provoke strikingly different reactions depending on how it ①is worded, a phenomenon economists call the framing effect. Patients told that a surgical procedure carries a ninety percent survival rate tend to consent to it far more readily than patients ②told that the same procedure carries a ten percent mortality rate, even though the two descriptions convey exactly the same statistical reality. This discrepancy arises because language does more than transmit facts; it also supplies an emotional lens through which those facts ③interpreting. Positive framing, which emphasizes what will be preserved or gained, tends to encourage risk-averse choices, whereas negative framing, which emphasizes what might be lost, often ④pushes people toward riskier alternatives in an attempt to avoid the loss altogether. Recognizing how deeply framing shapes judgment is therefore essential, not because the underlying facts change, but because the very same facts, ⑤dressed in different language, can lead reasonable people toward entirely opposite conclusions.

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

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent cannot be recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. Economists therefore urge decision-makers to evaluate each choice based solely on its prospective outcomes, treating past expenditures as ___________ to the decision at hand.

Loss aversion does not only influence individual financial choices; it also shapes how information is presented and interpreted in everyday transactions, a phenomenon that marketers and policymakers have learned to exploit deliberately. (A) For example, a retailer who frames a price reduction as "avoid losing a $10 discount by ordering today" typically generates a stronger customer response than one who simply advertises "get a $10 discount," even though both messages describe an identical saving. (B) In other words, the manner in which a choice is presented can activate the same psychological aversion to loss that governs decisions about resources already possessed, meaning that framing itself carries real economic weight. (C) This effect is not confined to retail settings, however; negotiators, too, often treat concessions as losses rather than as steps toward mutual gain, which makes compromise feel more costly than it objectively is.

Generative AI systems learn to write, draw, and compose by studying enormous collections of existing human work, much of which was created without the artists' knowledge or consent. (A) Critics respond that the comparison breaks down at scale, since a single AI model can absorb millions of works in days and compete with the very artists who trained it. (B) Supporters of the technology argue that this process resembles how a human student learns by studying the masters. (C) Courts around the world are now being asked to decide whether training an algorithm on copyrighted material counts as fair use or as infringement.

Consequently, even seasoned professionals who believe themselves immune to such influence often fail to notice how much their final judgment has shifted. The anchoring effect can be surprisingly resistant to conscious correction. ( ① ) Even when individuals are explicitly warned in advance that a number they are about to see is randomly generated and therefore meaningless, their subsequent estimates still drift toward that arbitrary figure. ( ② ) This occurs because the mind uses the initial number as a starting point and then adjusts insufficiently away from it, a process that leaves the final judgment biased toward the anchor. ( ③ ) Experimental studies have repeatedly demonstrated this effect across a wide range of tasks, from estimating historical dates to appraising real estate. ( ④ ) The bias persists not because people lack expertise, but because the adjustment process itself is inherently incomplete. ( ⑤ ) Awareness of the anchoring effect, therefore, does not guarantee immunity from it, which is precisely what makes the bias so difficult to counteract in practice.