영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later ①be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. Most users agree to this tracking without ②reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources ③combining. A pattern that reveals a person's home, workplace, and daily route can expose far more than any single app ever intended to share. Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly ④shown that a handful of location points is enough to identify a specific person. As a result, privacy experts increasingly insist that location data ⑤deserves the same legal protection as medical records.

Conventional economic wisdom holds that more options are always preferable to fewer, since a larger set of alternatives increases the likelihood that any individual will find one that precisely ①matches their preferences. Empirical research on consumer behavior, however, complicates this assumption considerably. When shoppers are presented with an extensive array of choices, they frequently experience heightened anxiety about making the wrong selection and, paradoxically, ②become less likely to make any purchase or decision at all. This phenomenon, commonly ③called choice overload, arises because evaluating numerous alternatives demands considerable cognitive effort, and the fear of forgoing a superior but unexamined option can overwhelm the pleasure of selecting from a limited set. Furthermore, individuals who do eventually choose from an overwhelming array often ④reports lower satisfaction with their selection than those who chose from a modest handful of options. Businesses that recognize this dynamic have begun deliberately ⑤curating smaller, carefully selected assortments.

Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever ①tipping the balance toward either option. Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option ②supported by the strongest reason, and because neither pile offers any advantage over the other, the donkey supposedly finds itself with no rational basis for choosing one pile rather than the other. ③Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry, and that even a tiny, arbitrary preference ④is usual enough to break the tie in practice. The paradox nevertheless raises a serious question about whether purely rational deliberation can ever generate action on its own, without some additional nudge that reason alone ⑤cannot supply.

Financial markets occasionally experience episodes in which asset prices rise far beyond any level that careful analysis of underlying fundamentals could justify, a phenomenon commonly ①attributed to herd psychology. During such episodes, individual investors, observing that prices have already risen substantially, often conclude that continuing to buy is reasonable simply because so many others ②are doing the same, rather than because any independent evaluation supports the purchase. This dynamic can become self-perpetuating: rising prices attract new buyers, whose purchases push prices higher still, thereby ③attracting yet another wave of buyers convinced that the upward trend itself constitutes reliable evidence of underlying value. Historical episodes of speculative excess display a strikingly similar pattern, suggesting that the underlying psychological mechanism ④remain constant even as the specific assets involved change considerably across centuries. Eventually, however, some triggering event, however minor, prompts a portion of investors to reconsider their assumptions, and the resulting wave of selling can ⑤trigger a collapse every bit as rapid and self-reinforcing as the original ascent.

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.

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, treating money differently depending on its source or intended purpose, a process economists call mental accounting. The practice thus reveals that financial behavior is guided less by pure arithmetic than by ___________ that money's origin and purpose.

Overconfidence bias is not confined to amateur investors; even seasoned financial professionals display strikingly similar patterns. (A) Fund managers surveyed about the accuracy of their own market predictions, for example, consistently rate their forecasts as more reliable than an objective analysis of their historical track record would support. (B) This gap between perceived and actual accuracy suggests that professional training and experience do not automatically immunize individuals against overconfidence. (C) Some researchers argue instead that professionals may be especially susceptible, since repeated exposure to a domain can breed a false sense of mastery over outcomes that remain fundamentally unpredictable.

Philosopher Robert Nozick devised a thought experiment to test a simple hedonist assumption: that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are all that ultimately matter to human beings. (A) If the hedonist assumption were correct, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine, since it could deliver a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. (B) Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate and many refuse outright, a reluctance Nozick took as evidence that human beings care about more than the quality of their internal sensations. (C) He asked readers to imagine a machine capable of producing any experience they desired, from writing a great novel to falling in love, all indistinguishable from reality once they were plugged in.

The influence of the status quo bias extends well beyond personal finance into the design of public policy itself. (A) Consequently, policymakers who wish to encourage socially beneficial behavior, such as organ donation or energy conservation, have increasingly turned to adjusting default settings rather than relying solely on persuasion or financial incentives. (B) Countries that changed their organ donation systems from opt-in to opt-out, for example, observed dramatic increases in the proportion of citizens registered as donors, without any change in the underlying laws governing consent. (C) This outcome demonstrates that the default option itself functions as an implicit recommendation, one that citizens are reluctant to override even when doing so would take only a moment.

Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask a far deeper question about identity itself. The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. ( ① ) 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? ( ② ) Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity. ( ③ ) 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. ( ④ ) 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. ( ⑤ ) Whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread, no single answer has ever fully satisfied everyone who has taken up the question.