영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks ①that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply ②transforms them. Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one ③had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, ④given workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. For this reason, many economists argue that the real challenge is not the robots themselves, but the speed at which society ⑤is expected to adapt to them.

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.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent ①cannot be recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, ②to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, ③reasoning that leaving early would somehow waste the money already spent on the ticket. Organizations exhibit the same fallacy on a larger scale: a company that ④have invested heavily in a failing project frequently continues funding it, arguing that abandoning the project now would render the prior investment meaningless. Yet continuing to invest in a venture destined to fail merely adds new losses to old ones, ⑤compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid.

Standard economic theory assumes that money is fungible, meaning that a dollar earned as salary is functionally identical to a dollar received as a tax refund or won in a lottery. In practice, however, people routinely sort their finances into separate mental accounts, ①treating money differently depending on its source or intended purpose, a process economists call mental accounting. A household that would never dip into its retirement savings to pay for a vacation might nonetheless spend an unexpected bonus on that very trip without hesitation, even though both sums ②are, in strictly financial terms, equally available for either purpose. This compartmentalization can produce decisions that appear inconsistent when viewed through a purely rational lens: the same individual who diligently saves a portion of every paycheck may simultaneously ③carrying high-interest credit card debt, effectively paying more to borrow than they earn on their savings. Mental accounting is not always harmful, however; by assigning specific categories to specific funds, individuals can also impose useful discipline on their spending, ④preventing money earmarked for essential needs from being diverted toward impulsive purchases. The practice thus reveals that financial behavior is guided less by pure arithmetic than by psychological categories that individuals ⑤impose on money's origin and purpose.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives ①increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely matches their preferences. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, become ②less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often report ③higher satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options, since the sheer number of unexplored alternatives ④fosters lingering doubt about whether a better choice was overlooked. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments, betting that a narrower range of options can sometimes generate more sales and greater customer satisfaction than abundance.

Individuals confronted with a set of options frequently default to whichever alternative requires no active decision at all, a tendency scholars term the status quo bias. When employees must actively opt into a retirement savings plan, participation rates remain stubbornly low; yet when the same plan is presented as automatic unless an employee opts out, participation rises dramatically. Because inaction carries no vivid regret, the status quo comes to feel safer than it objectively is, illustrating how ___________ can masquerade as a deliberate preference.

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory had been consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that _______________, rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. During this narrow window, which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, reshaped every time it is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage.

As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. (A) Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are developed. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. (B) However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets. (C) This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air.

A few years ago, spotting a manipulated video required a trained eye and specialized software. (A) Perhaps more troubling than any single fake video is the broader effect on public trust, sometimes called the liar's dividend, in which genuine footage can be dismissed as fabricated simply because deepfakes exist. (B) Today, freely available applications allow almost anyone to swap a face or fabricate a voice convincingly enough to fool casual viewers within minutes. (C) This shift has quietly undermined one of the oldest assumptions in human communication: that seeing and hearing something is a reliable way to confirm it happened.

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