영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how painful it would feel ①to discover later that a different choice had been better. This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the dominant factor ②shaping the final decision. Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than ③selling it, not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility ④of having made a clear mistake. Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, which ⑤help explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels uncertain.

City governments increasingly market dense networks of surveillance cameras as a straightforward safety upgrade, ①promising faster emergency response and lower crime rates. In many cases, the technology delivers exactly what it promises, ②helping investigators identify suspects within hours rather than weeks. Yet the same infrastructure that catches criminals also creates a permanent record of where ordinary, law-abiding citizens ③go about their daily lives. Once a camera network exists, its purpose can quietly expand, 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 afterward when the infrastructure ④is already impossible removing. Convenience installed today, in other words, can quietly ⑤become control tomorrow.

Imagine rewriting a bacterium's code the way a programmer ①edits a line of software, and much of what synthetic biology promises begins to make sense. Researchers in this field assemble standardized genetic parts into circuits ②that can be inserted into a cell, instructing it to perform a task that no natural organism would carry out. Because these circuits are built from interchangeable parts rather than designed from scratch each time, a circuit tested in one lab can often ③reusing, with minor adjustments, in an entirely different application. Critics note that biological systems rarely behave as predictably as electronic circuits, since a gene ④inserted into a new cell can interact with existing pathways in unexpected ways, occasionally producing results no engineer intended. Even so, as the catalog of standardized parts keeps expanding, engineers are gaining confidence ⑤to design increasingly complex systems, treating the cell as a chassis onto which new functions can be loaded.

A small bakery once sold a basic loaf of bread for three dollars and a premium loaf for six dollars, and most customers, uncertain about the added value of the pricier option, simply bought the ①cheaper one. The owner then introduced a third option: a slightly larger premium loaf priced at seven dollars, one that was clearly ②inferior to the six-dollar loaf in terms of value for money. Almost nobody chose the new seven-dollar loaf, yet sales of the six-dollar loaf ③fell sharply, because it now appeared to be an obvious bargain when placed beside the inferior newcomer. This pattern, confirmed across countless pricing experiments in other markets, demonstrates that people ④rarely judge options in isolation; instead, they evaluate choices relative to whatever alternatives happen to be nearby. Businesses have since learned to design such decoys deliberately, not expecting them to be purchased at all, but hoping they will make a specific target option look far more ⑤attractive by comparison.

Among the many tools available to those who design choice environments, few are as quietly ①powerful as the default option, the alternative that takes effect automatically unless a person actively selects something else. Because changing a default requires ②deliberate effort, many individuals simply accept whatever arrangement has been preselected for them, regardless of whether that arrangement actually serves their interests best. Countries that automatically enroll citizens in organ donation programs, requiring an explicit request to opt out, consistently report far ③lower donor registration rates than countries that require citizens to actively opt in. Employers who automatically enroll new hires in retirement savings plans likewise see participation rates climb dramatically compared with employers who leave enrollment entirely voluntary. What makes default options so influential is not merely convenience; a default also functions as an implicit signal about what is considered ④normal or recommended, subtly shaping perceptions even among individuals who believe themselves to be deciding ⑤independently.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. If every plank of a wooden ship is 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 erase 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, built exactly as the original once stood. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to 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 _______________.

Imagine watching a fair coin land on heads five times in a row and feeling an increasingly strong intuition that the next flip is somehow due to produce tails. This intuition rests on a basic misunderstanding of probability, since each flip of a fair coin remains entirely independent of every flip that came before it. Casinos have long profited from this misconception, watching gamblers place larger bets after a losing streak simply because they mistakenly believe that a win has become statistically overdue. Economists have even documented the same error among trained professionals, including loan officers who grow more likely to approve a risky application simply because _______________.

For patients born with a single faulty gene, the disease has traditionally been treated indirectly, managing symptoms for a lifetime rather than addressing the genetic error itself. (A) Early trials were haunted by serious setbacks, including cases in which the delivery virus triggered a dangerous immune reaction, but refined delivery methods have since made the treatment considerably safer, leading regulators in several countries to approve gene therapies for a small but growing number of rare inherited disorders. (B) Gene therapy attempts something more ambitious: delivering a corrected copy of the gene directly into a patient's cells, often using a disabled virus stripped of its ability to cause illness as a delivery vehicle. (C) Once inside the nucleus, the corrected gene can begin producing the protein the patient's body had always lacked, in some cases reversing symptoms that medication alone had never been able to touch.

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.

This finding is particularly striking given that the two groups of employees faced no difference whatsoever in the financial terms of the plan itself. Employers have long experimented with how retirement savings plans are presented to new hires. ( ① ) In one common arrangement, employees receive a form and must actively check a box to begin contributing a portion of their salary to a savings account. ( ② ) Under this opt-in arrangement, a substantial share of eligible employees never get around to enrolling, often citing simple procrastination rather than genuine disinterest in saving. ( ③ ) When employers instead enroll employees automatically and require them to check a box only if they wish to withdraw, participation rates climb to well over ninety percent. ( ④ ) Only the framing of the choice, not its economic substance, appears to determine whether employees end up saving for retirement. ( ⑤ ) This gap between the two arrangements reveals just how powerfully a default setting can shape decisions that people generally regard as carefully considered.