영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. Instead, recommendation algorithms ①are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion, particularly outrage, tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. Over time, users ②exposed to a steady diet of emotionally charged content may come to believe that extreme opinions are far more common than they actually are, simply because those opinions ③dominate their feed. Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version ④shaping by whatever keeps people scrolling. Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content, only ⑤to see user engagement drop.

Generative AI systems learn to write, draw, and compose by studying enormous collections of existing human work, much of ①which was created without the artists' knowledge or consent. Supporters of the technology argue that this process ②resembles how a human student learns by studying the masters, absorbing style and technique rather than copying specific pieces. Critics respond that the comparison ③breaks down at scale: a single AI model can absorb millions of works in days and then generate outputs that directly compete with the very artists whose work ④trained it. Courts around the world are now ⑤ask to decide whether training an algorithm on copyrighted material counts as fair use or as infringement.

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity, the sense that a product or opportunity is available only in limited quantity or for a limited time, can dramatically increase its ①desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. This phenomenon, known as the scarcity effect, operates on a simple psychological principle: when something appears ②easy to obtain, people tend to infer that it must be valuable, since truly worthless items rarely generate genuine competition for possession. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer exploits this inference, prompting customers to make ③hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Experimental studies confirm that identical products are rated as more desirable and often command ④higher prices when framed as scarce than when the same products are presented as widely and continuously available. Consumers who later reflect calmly on such purchases frequently discover that the item's actual usefulness fell well short of the ⑤urgency they experienced at the moment of decision.

Classical economic theory assumes that consumers evaluate every price change in the same rational way, weighing marginal benefit against marginal cost regardless of the absolute numbers involved. Behavioral economists, however, have discovered a striking exception: the moment a price drops to exactly zero, people's judgment shifts in a way that ordinary discounting cannot explain. In a well-known laboratory experiment, participants chose between two chocolates, one of higher quality priced at a small fee and one of lower quality offered for free. When both prices were merely reduced by the same amount, most participants still preferred the higher-quality option. Yet once the cheaper chocolate's price was lowered to zero, the majority abruptly switched their preference, even though the price gap between the two options had not actually changed. Researchers explain this reversal by noting that _______________.

Among the many tools available to those who design choice environments, few are as quietly powerful as the default option, the alternative that takes effect automatically unless a person actively selects something else. Because changing a default requires deliberate effort, many individuals simply accept whatever arrangement has been preselected for them. Designers of public policy and digital platforms alike have consequently come to recognize that setting a thoughtful default can achieve outcomes that ___________ often struggle to accomplish through persuasion or financial incentive alone.

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors to trade more frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve, since ___________ frequently produces worse results than a more modest, diversified strategy.

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.

When engineers design the software that controls a self-driving car, they inevitably face a question that philosophers have debated for decades: who should the vehicle protect in an unavoidable crash? (A) This gap between the ideal and the personal choice suggests that ethical programming cannot be settled by public opinion alone. (B) Surveys reveal an uncomfortable contradiction: most people say a car should minimize total harm, yet the same people admit they would never buy a vehicle designed to sacrifice its own owner. (C) Manufacturers, regulators, and philosophers must instead agree on transparent rules before autonomous vehicles are allowed to make such decisions on the road.

Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match. Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings, promising convenience in exchange for a quick scan of one's face. ( ① ) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. ( ② ) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. ( ③ ) This gap can lead to wrongful identification with serious real-world consequences. ( ④ ) Until these systems can prove equally reliable for everyone, critics argue, deploying them at all represents a form of quiet discrimination dressed up as efficiency. ( ⑤ )

Critics warn that treating space as an open frontier for extraction risks repeating the same environmental and political mistakes that colonization caused on Earth. As private companies develop the technology to mine asteroids for rare metals and water, a legal question once confined to science fiction has suddenly become urgent: who, if anyone, owns the resources of outer space? ( ① ) Existing international treaties state that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, but they say remarkably little about whether a private company may extract and sell what it finds there. ( ② ) Some governments have already passed domestic laws granting their own companies rights to material mined in space. ( ③ ) Other nations view this as a unilateral attempt to settle a question that should be decided collectively. ( ④ ) Supporters of space mining argue that new resources could ease shortages on Earth and fund further exploration. ( ⑤ )