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.

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.

Over the past two decades, insights drawn from behavioral economics have moved beyond academic journals and into the machinery of government itself, reshaping how numerous public programs are designed and implemented. What unites these disparate interventions is a shared recognition that small, carefully tested adjustments to how choices are presented can produce measurable improvements in outcomes. This accumulated evidence has encouraged many governments to establish dedicated units tasked with applying behavioral insights ___________ policy problems across an increasingly broad range of domains.

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors to trade more frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve, since ___________ frequently produces worse results than a more modest, diversified strategy.

When people estimate the value of an unfamiliar product, they rarely rely on objective calculation alone; instead, they anchor their judgment to whatever numerical reference happens to be presented first, however arbitrary that number may be. A shopper who first sees a jacket listed at $300 before it is marked down to $150 will likely judge the discounted price as an excellent bargain. Such evidence indicates that rational deliberation alone cannot fully explain how value is perceived, since the ___________ ultimately shapes what buyers are willing to pay.

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. (A) That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as more essential services, from job applications to medical appointments, move online by default. (B) Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. (C) Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices; it will demand sustained investment in the physical networks that carry information into every home.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings. (A) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. (B) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. (C) Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match.

Loss aversion does not only influence individual financial choices; it also shapes how information is presented and interpreted in everyday transactions, a phenomenon that marketers and policymakers have learned to exploit deliberately. (A) For example, a retailer who frames a price reduction as "avoid losing a $10 discount by ordering today" typically generates a stronger customer response than one who simply advertises "get a $10 discount," even though both messages describe an identical saving. (B) In other words, the manner in which a choice is presented can activate the same psychological aversion to loss that governs decisions about resources already possessed, meaning that framing itself carries real economic weight. (C) This effect is not confined to retail settings, however; negotiators, too, often treat concessions as losses rather than as steps toward mutual gain, which makes compromise feel more costly than it objectively is.

Turning this tide has proven far harder than creating it, and not merely for scientific reasons. 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 multiply without competition. ( ① ) 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 effective. ( ② ) 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 enormous cost of developing it. ( ③ ) Researchers are therefore searching in unconventional places, screening soil microbes and ocean sediment for molecules that kill bacteria through new mechanisms. ( ④ ) Even genetic databases are now mined for such molecules, ones resistant strains have not yet learned to evade. ( ⑤ ) Some scientists have also revived an older approach, using viruses that infect only bacteria to hunt down resistant strains with a precision no broad-spectrum drug could ever match.

Few of these later buyers, however, possess any independent basis for judging whether the asset's price still bears any relation to its underlying value. A speculative bubble typically begins with a genuine, defensible reason for optimism, such as a promising new technology or an unusually favorable economic environment. ( ① ) Early investors who recognize this genuine opportunity purchase the asset and, as expected, often see its price rise accordingly. ( ② ) As word of these early gains spreads, a second wave of investors enters the market, drawn less by independent analysis than by the simple observation that the price has already climbed. ( ③ ) They are, in effect, purchasing confidence rather than value, trusting that the crowd's continued enthusiasm will sustain or further elevate the price. ( ④ ) This reliance on collective momentum rather than fundamental analysis is precisely what transforms a reasonable initial rally into an unsustainable bubble. ( ⑤ ) When the momentum eventually falters, as it inevitably must, the absence of any solid fundamental foundation leaves the price with nothing to support it.