영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

As nudging has moved from academic theory into widespread practice, a persistent ethical question has accompanied its rise: at what point ①does subtly guiding behavior for someone's own benefit shade into manipulation that undermines their capacity for autonomous choice? Proponents typically distinguish nudges from manipulation by pointing to transparency and reversibility, arguing that a legitimate nudge ②operate openly, can be easily resisted by anyone who wishes to opt out, and ultimately serves the interests of the person being nudged rather than the interests of whoever designed the intervention. Critics counter that this distinction often collapses in practice, since many effective nudges work precisely because they ③exploit cognitive processes operating below conscious awareness, meaning that the person being influenced may never fully register that a nudge is even occurring. A supermarket that arranges healthier foods at eye level, for instance, differs only in the direction of its influence, not in its underlying mechanism, from a supermarket that ④arranges the most profitable items at eye level. This tension suggests that the ethical status of a nudge cannot be evaluated by examining its psychological mechanism alone; instead, it must be judged according to the intentions of the party who ⑤designs it and the outcome that design is intended to produce.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that ①contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. This tendency operates not because individuals are deliberately dishonest, but because the mind finds it cognitively less taxing ②to absorb information that fits an existing framework than to reconstruct that framework from scratch. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed, for instance, tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while investors who ③are skeptical of the same company interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Social media platforms can intensify this effect by algorithmically presenting users with content similar to what they have previously engaged with, thereby ④narrowing the range of perspectives an individual regularly encounters. Over time, such selective exposure can harden initial impressions into convictions that ⑤feels objectively verified, even though they rest on a systematically filtered sample of evidence.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. If every plank of a wooden ship ①is 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 ②erasing 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, ③built exactly as the original once stood. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim ④to 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 some deeper thread that neither one can fully ⑤explain.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more ①intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually ②recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. Such behavior, though it appears ③rational from a purely economic standpoint, becomes understandable once we recognize that the investor is trying to avoid the sharp discomfort associated with realizing a loss. Similarly, consumers often demand a much ④higher price to give up an item they already own than they would be willing to pay to acquire the same item in the first place. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward decisions that ⑤minimize potential regret over losses rather than toward outcomes that maximize their overall welfare.

Bacteria have been cutting up invading viral DNA for billions of years, long before any scientist thought to borrow the trick for use in a laboratory. The CRISPR-Cas9 system relies on a short guide RNA that matches a specific DNA sequence, _______________. Once Cas9 arrives at the target site, it slices both strands of the DNA helix, and the cell's own repair machinery rushes in to mend the cut, often introducing a small change in the process. By supplying the cell with a template during this repair step, scientists can direct that machinery to insert a specific new sequence rather than merely disabling the original gene. What once required years of painstaking work to alter a single gene can now be accomplished within days.

Suppose a mysterious being with a near-perfect track record of predicting human choices presents a player with two boxes. Box A always contains a visible thousand dollars, while Box B contains either a million dollars or nothing at all, depending on a prediction the being made before the game even began. If the being predicted the player would take only Box B, it placed a million dollars inside; if it predicted the player would take both boxes, it left Box B empty. The player may choose to take only Box B, or to take both boxes, and the prediction has already been made and cannot change. One line of reasoning says taking both boxes is strictly better, since whatever is already inside the boxes cannot be altered by the player's choice at this point. A second line of reasoning says taking only Box B is better, since the being's near-perfect accuracy means that choosing both boxes almost guarantees an empty Box B. _______________.

Suppose a mad scientist removed a living brain from its body, placed it in a vat of nutrient fluid, and connected its neurons to a supercomputer capable of generating perfectly realistic sensations. 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. This scenario 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? Ordinary evidence cannot help, since _______________. Some philosophers conclude that absolute certainty about the external world is simply unattainable, while others argue that the mere possibility of deception is not sufficient reason to abandon our everyday trust in what we perceive.

For decades, most vaccines worked by injecting a weakened or inactivated version of a pathogen, coaxing the immune system into recognizing an enemy it had never fought. mRNA vaccines take a different route, delivering a short genetic instruction wrapped in a protective lipid capsule, one that tells the body's own cells how to manufacture a harmless piece of a virus's outer surface protein. Once those cells display the fragment, the immune system learns to recognize it as foreign and builds a defense, without ever having encountered the actual pathogen. Because the vaccine contains no live virus and cannot alter a cell's own DNA, _______________. This speed, first proven on a global scale during a recent pandemic, has convinced many researchers that the same platform could eventually be adapted to fight diseases far beyond infectious illness.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as _______________. Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices.

That freedom, however, comes with an important caveat about what these structures can and cannot tell us. A cluster of neurons smaller than a pea can now spontaneously organize itself into layered structures that mimic, in miniature, the architecture of a developing human brain. ( ① ) Grown from stem cells coaxed to follow the same developmental cues that guide an embryo, these brain organoids have begun firing electrical signals in patterns that faintly resemble the activity recorded in an infant's brain. ( ② ) For researchers studying disorders such as autism or schizophrenia, this offers something long unavailable: a living model of human brain development that can be observed and manipulated directly. ( ③ ) This can happen without ever touching an actual patient. ( ④ ) Because organoids lack sensory organs, a body, or any connection to the outside world, most neuroscientists argue that the structures cannot generate anything resembling subjective experience, however brain-like their electrical activity may appear. ( ⑤ ) Even so, the pace at which these organoids are growing more complex has convinced some ethicists that the field would benefit from establishing clear boundaries now, before the science outruns the conversation about what it means.