영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way ①to remove the need for trusted middlemen, allowing strangers to exchange value directly and verify transactions through a shared, tamper-resistant ledger rather than through a bank or government agency. In theory, this design ②distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. In practice, however, a small number of large players have come to dominate many blockchain networks, ③controlled enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. Critics note a further irony: when something goes wrong, there is often no institution left ④to appeal to, since the entire system was designed precisely to eliminate that kind of central authority. Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power ⑤remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions.

A few years ago, spotting a manipulated video required a trained eye and ①specialized software. Today, freely available applications allow almost anyone to swap a face or fabricate a voice ②convincingly enough to fool casual viewers within minutes. This shift has quietly ③reinforced one of the oldest assumptions in human communication: that seeing and hearing something is a reasonably reliable way to confirm it happened. Journalists now face the burden of verifying footage that once would have been accepted as ④self-evident proof. Perhaps more troubling than any single fake video is the broader effect on public trust, in which genuine footage can be ⑤dismissed as fabricated simply because deepfakes exist.

When people recall precisely where they were and what they were doing at the moment they learned of some momentous public event, the resulting memory often feels extraordinarily ①vivid, as though it had been etched into the mind with photographic precision; researchers have termed such recollections flashbulb memories. Proponents of this concept once argued that the emotional intensity and surprise accompanying such events trigger a distinct neural mechanism that preserves details with unusual ②fidelity, effectively exempting them from the ③gradual decay that afflicts ordinary memories. Subsequent longitudinal studies, however, have complicated this picture considerably: when researchers compared accounts gathered within days of an event to accounts gathered years later, they discovered that details had frequently been altered, omitted, or even fabricated, even though the individuals reporting them expressed ④unwavering confidence in their accuracy. This persistent mismatch between subjective certainty and objective consistency implies that flashbulb memories, far from being flawless recordings, are ⑤accurate narratives shaped by rehearsal, media exposure, and the passage of time.

Generative AI systems learn to write, draw, and compose by studying ①enormous collections of existing human work, much of which was created without the artists' knowledge or consent. Supporters of the technology argue that this process resembles how a human student learns by studying the masters, ②absorbing style and technique rather than copying specific pieces. Critics respond that the comparison ③holds up perfectly at scale, since a single AI model can absorb millions of works in days. Courts around the world are now being asked to decide whether training an algorithm on copyrighted material counts as fair use or as ④infringement. Until clearer rules emerge, artists, developers, and publishers remain locked in a legal ⑤gray zone that satisfies almost no one.

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 _______________.

When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms that once told individuals what to expect and how to behave. Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies, proposing that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals, such as wealth, while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, _______________. Anomie theory therefore suggests that crime is less a product of individual failure than of structural imbalance within society itself.

Devices that translate brain activity directly into digital commands have moved from laboratory experiments to real medical use, allowing paralyzed patients to control a robotic arm using thought alone. (A) This prospect raises a philosophical question that medicine alone cannot answer: at what point does the assistance stop being a tool and start reshaping the identity of the person using it? (B) As the technology improves, some developers envision a future in which these interfaces extend beyond restoring lost function toward enhancing healthy minds. (C) Neuroethicists argue that mental privacy may need to be recognized as a fundamental right before this technology becomes widespread.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.

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. (A) 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. (B) Researchers explain this reversal by noting that a free item carries no perceived risk of loss, which makes it feel disproportionately attractive compared with any option that still requires payment, however small. (C) 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.

If such a divide hardens, competitive advantages in school, sports, and the workplace could come to depend less on effort than on access to capital. Beyond restoring lost function, engineers are now exploring implants and prosthetics designed to give healthy people abilities beyond ordinary human limits. ( ① ) Supporters frame this as simply the next step in a long history of human enhancement, no different in principle from eyeglasses or vaccines. ( ② ) Critics counter that earlier enhancements were broadly available to anyone regardless of wealth. ( ③ ) Cutting-edge neural and physical implants, by contrast, are likely to remain expensive for decades, potentially splitting society into those who can afford enhancement and those who cannot. ( ④ ) What began as a medical tool for restoring what was lost, in other words, may end up redefining the baseline of what counts as an ordinary human being. ( ⑤ )