영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical ①impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest, yet a pattern that persists with remarkable consistency across surveys. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors to trade more ②frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Extensive research comparing the trading records of numerous individual accounts has ③demonstrated that investors who trade most frequently tend to earn substantially ④higher returns than those who trade rarely, largely because transaction costs accumulate and because frequent trading often reflects overconfident reactions to short-term noise rather than genuine insight. Overconfidence also manifests in the tendency to underestimate the range of possible outcomes, causing investors to concentrate their holdings in a small number of assets they feel certain about rather than diversifying across a broader portfolio. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often ⑤undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

Philosophers sometimes ask their students to imagine a creature physically identical to an ordinary human being in every measurable respect, one that walks, talks, laughs, and even cries out in apparent pain when injured, yet that has no inner conscious experience whatsoever. This imagined being, commonly called a philosophical zombie, behaves ②completely differently from a conscious person, since every neuron fires in precisely the same pattern, but there is supposedly nothing it is like to be that creature from the inside. Defenders of the argument claim that because such a zombie is at least ①conceivable without any logical contradiction, consciousness itself cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. Critics respond that mere conceivability ③proves very little about what is genuinely possible in the real world, and that our intuition about zombies may simply ④reflect the limits of imagination rather than a real gap in ⑤nature.

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.

Socialization is the lifelong process through which individuals absorb the norms, values, and roles that allow them to function within a society. Most of this process unfolds gradually and is barely noticed by the people experiencing it. Resocialization, by contrast, refers to a deliberate and often abrupt process in which an individual is stripped of a previous identity and trained to adopt a new set of norms, typically within what sociologist Erving Goffman called a total institution. These institutions frequently begin the process with what Goffman termed a mortification of self, removing personal possessions and erasing markers of prior status so that _______________. While resocialization can help individuals adapt to demanding new roles, critics note that total institutions can also produce lasting psychological strain.

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. 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. 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. 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, not personal belief, fixes what a word ultimately picks out. Meaning, Putnam concluded, _______________.

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a promising solution to plastic waste, since they are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that accelerate microbial breakdown once discarded. However, _______________. For example, a bag labeled biodegradable may take years, not the weeks advertised, to break down in a landfill or ocean, where temperature and microbial activity remain low. In addition, when mixed with conventional plastics in recycling streams, they can contaminate the process, weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. Some engineers therefore compare biodegradable plastics to a bridge that leads nowhere unless paired with infrastructure that completes the journey. Ultimately, realizing their genuine potential requires not only technological refinement but also facilities capable of providing the precise conditions decomposition demands.

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.

Suppose a mad scientist removed a living brain from its body and placed it in a vat of nutrient fluid, connecting its neurons to a supercomputer capable of generating perfectly realistic sensations. (A) This scenario, unsettling as it sounds, raises a genuinely difficult question for anyone confident in their own perception: how could a person ever prove that they are not that very brain right now? (B) The brain would experience a full and convincing world, complete with a sky, a body, and other people, without ever suspecting that none of it existed outside the simulation. (C) Ordinary evidence cannot help, since any proof gathered through the senses would itself be generated by the same simulation being tested.

Yet this reluctance to accept a small certain loss often leads to a much larger loss later, when the declining trend continues unabated. Loss aversion strongly influences how investors manage their portfolios during periods of market decline. ( ① ) When the value of a stock begins to fall, many investors postpone selling, hoping that the price will rebound to its original level. ( ② ) This tendency is closely tied to the psychological discomfort of converting an unrealized loss into a realized one, since selling forces the investor to formally acknowledge the loss. ( ③ ) Research on trading behavior consistently shows that investors hold declining stocks for longer periods than rising ones, a pattern that runs counter to the basic principle of cutting losses early. ( ④ ) Financial advisors therefore encourage clients to set predetermined selling thresholds in advance, before emotional attachment to a particular price can distort their judgment. ( ⑤ ) By committing to a rule beforehand, investors can partially neutralize the emotional bias that loss aversion introduces into decision-making.

Fairness, in other words, is not a feature that can simply be patched in once a problem is discovered. Many large companies now rely on artificial intelligence to screen job applications before a human ever sees them. ( ① ) These systems promise efficiency, scanning thousands of resumes in seconds and ranking candidates according to patterns drawn from previous hiring decisions. ( ② ) However, this reliance on historical data creates a troubling risk. ( ③ ) If a company's past hiring favored a particular group, the algorithm may learn to treat that pattern as a marker of success and quietly reproduce it, even when no one intended discrimination. ( ④ ) Unlike a human interviewer, the system offers no explanation for its choices, which makes the bias difficult to detect until an outside audit reveals it. ( ⑤ ) Some researchers argue that fairness cannot be added afterward; it must be built into the system's design from the very beginning.