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

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

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more ①sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, is a systematic method developed to evaluate the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its existence. By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain ②hidden from consumers who see only the finished item on a shelf. For example, an electric vehicle may produce no emissions while being driven, yet the mining of metals for its battery can generate ③substantial environmental costs elsewhere. Without accounting for these earlier stages, a ④superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free. Therefore, researchers increasingly rely on life cycle assessment to make ⑤uninformed decisions rather than trusting labels alone.

Every time an antibiotic kills off a population of bacteria, a handful of cells carrying a random mutation that resists the drug are left behind to ①multiply without competition. Repeated over decades, across hospitals, farms, and households worldwide, this simple process of natural selection has produced strains of bacteria that survive treatments once considered reliably ②effective. The pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, has slowed the pace at which new antibiotics reach the market, since a drug meant to be taken for only a week or two rarely earns back the ③enormous cost of developing it. Researchers are therefore searching in ④unconventional places, screening soil microbes, ocean sediment, and even genetic databases for molecules that kill bacteria through mechanisms resistant strains have not yet learned to evade. Some scientists have also revived an older approach, using viruses that infect only bacteria to hunt down resistant strains with a ⑤carelessness no broad-spectrum drug could ever match.

Confirmation bias becomes particularly consequential in political discourse, where citizens must evaluate competing claims about complex issues. (A) As a result, exposure to more information does not necessarily produce more accurate beliefs; it can instead deepen existing divisions by giving each side additional material that appears to validate its own position. (B) Voters who favor a particular policy tend to seek out news sources and commentators who share that view, while largely avoiding those who might challenge it. (C) This selective consumption means that two people examining ostensibly the same news environment can end up with radically different, mutually reinforcing interpretations of events.

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. (A) 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. (B) 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. (C) This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself can destabilize a previously consolidated memory, rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again.

Modern consumer culture often assumes that expanding the range of available options will automatically make people freer and happier, yet a growing body of research suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. (A) Having considered so many possibilities, a person naturally imagines the specific advantages that a different, unchosen option might have offered, and this imagined comparison quietly erodes contentment with what was actually selected. (B) When individuals select from an enormous set of alternatives, satisfaction with the final choice frequently declines rather than rises, even when the chosen item is objectively excellent. (C) This decline stems not from the difficulty of deciding but from what happens afterward, once a decision has already been made.

Imagine a man named Black who secretly implants a device in another man's brain, ready to force a particular decision if the second man shows any sign of choosing differently. Philosopher Harry Frankfurt devised a scenario to challenge a long-held assumption about moral responsibility: that a person can be blamed for an action only if they could genuinely have done otherwise. ( ① ) The second man, however, decides entirely on his own to perform the very action Black wanted, and the device never activates at all. ( ② ) Black's hidden mechanism made it impossible for the man to have chosen otherwise, yet most people still consider him fully responsible for what he freely decided to do. ( ③ ) Frankfurt used this scenario to argue that moral responsibility depends on the actual reasoning behind a choice. ( ④ ) It does not depend, in other words, on some abstract guarantee that an alternative path remained available the entire time. ( ⑤ )

주어진 문장: This shows that expertise alone does not guarantee immunity from such intuitive shortcuts. Suppose you meet a quiet, gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. ( ① ) Asked whether he is more likely a florist or a truck driver, most people instinctively choose florist, since his personality matches the stereotype so neatly. ( ② ) This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: truck drivers vastly outnumber florists in almost every country, which means that, statistically, he is far more likely to belong to the larger group regardless of how well he fits the flower-shop image. ( ③ ) Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions, known among researchers as representativeness, leads people to overlook these base rates almost automatically. ( ④ ) Even trained professionals, who should know better, often fall into the same trap when a vivid description feels more convincing than plain statistics. ( ⑤ ) Consequently, teaching people to pause and ask how common something actually is, instead of merely how typical it appears, can meaningfully improve the accuracy of everyday predictions and reduce costly errors in judgment.