영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Imagine a distant planet ①identically to Earth in every visible respect, except that the clear liquid its inhabitants call "water" is not H2O but a different compound, XYZ, that happens ②to look, taste, and behave exactly the same. When an Earthling and a Twin Earthling each say the word "water," they seem to mean the same thing, since neither could tell the substances apart without a chemistry lab. Philosopher Hilary Putnam ③used this scenario to argue that the meaning of a word is not determined solely by what happens inside a speaker's head. Even though the two speakers hold identical thoughts and mental images when they use the word, their statements refer to two different substances, because the underlying chemical composition, not personal belief, ④fixes what a word ultimately picks out. Meaning, Putnam concluded, depends partly on the world outside the mind, not merely on the private mental states of ⑤whoever happens to be speaking.

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.

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a ①curved function. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts increase, so the psychological difference between earning zero and one hundred dollars feels far ②greater than between earning one thousand and eleven hundred. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve bends in the ③opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper ④acutely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase, though the same ten dollars would matter enormously as the price of a meal. Researchers illustrate this curvature with graphs shaped like an S turned sideways, ⑤flattening toward both extremes.

For patients born with a single faulty gene, the disease has traditionally been treated ①indirectly, managing symptoms for a lifetime rather than addressing the genetic error itself. Gene therapy attempts something more ambitious: delivering a corrected copy of the gene directly into a patient's cells, often using a ②reinforced virus stripped of its ability to cause illness as a delivery vehicle. Once inside the nucleus, the corrected gene can begin producing the protein the patient's body had always lacked, in some cases ③reversing symptoms that medication alone had never been able to touch. Early trials were haunted by serious ④setbacks, including cases in which the delivery virus triggered a dangerous immune reaction. Refined delivery methods have since made the treatment considerably ⑤safer, and regulators in several countries have now approved gene therapies for a small but growing number of rare inherited disorders.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. Because conformity can substitute for independent judgment so seamlessly, individuals rarely notice when their own decisions have become ___________ rather than genuinely deliberated.

A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. (A) Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. (B) A breakthrough arrived when scientists discovered that ordinary adult skin cells could be reprogrammed into a state resembling embryonic versatility without ever touching an embryo, opening a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are now willing to support. (C) Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, which is why researchers have long viewed them as a promising raw material for repairing damaged organs.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. (A) Philosophers, however, are troubled by a version of the same device that malfunctions: instead of destroying the original, it leaves the original body intact while still creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. (B) Now two people exist, each with identical memories and an equally strong claim to being the original traveler, and there is no principled way to decide which one is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. (C) From the traveler's point of view, stepping into the machine and stepping out on the other side would feel utterly seamless, complete with continuous memories and a sense of having simply walked through a door.

The anchoring effect is not limited to shopping decisions; it also plays a subtle but powerful role in legal and financial judgments. (A) Similarly, jurors who are told that a plaintiff is seeking an unusually large sum in damages tend to award higher compensation than jurors who hear no specific figure at all, even when the evidence presented is identical. (B) This pattern suggests that anchors can distort judgments requiring careful, case-by-case reasoning, not merely quick, intuitive estimates of price. (C) For instance, experienced judges asked to set a sentence after being exposed to an arbitrary number, such as one generated by rolling dice, have been shown in experimental settings to hand down harsher sentences when the number was high.

The practical consequence of this precision has been a dramatic acceleration in the pace of genetic research itself. 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. ( ① ) The CRISPR-Cas9 system, as it is now known, relies on a short guide RNA that matches a specific DNA sequence, leading a scissor-like enzyme called Cas9 directly to that exact location in the genome. ( ② ) 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. ( ③ ) By supplying the cell with a template during this repair step, scientists can direct that machinery to insert a specific new sequence. ( ④ ) This goes well beyond merely disabling the original gene. ( ⑤ ) What once required years of painstaking work to alter a single gene can now, with a properly designed guide RNA, be accomplished within days.

This puzzling inconsistency is not, as it turns out, a matter of chance. Two patients diagnosed with the same disease and prescribed the same medication can respond in strikingly different ways, one recovering quickly while the other experiences little benefit or even harmful side effects. ( ① ) Precision medicine starts from the observation that this variation often traces back to differences buried in each patient's genome. ( ② ) These differences determine how efficiently a body absorbs, breaks down, or responds to a given drug. ( ③ ) By sequencing a patient's DNA before treatment begins, doctors can increasingly predict which medication is likely to work best and at what dose, replacing a strategy once described as one-size-fits-all with something closer to a tailored fit. ( ④ ) This approach has proven especially valuable in cancer treatment, where tumors from two patients with the same diagnosis may carry entirely different genetic mutations that respond to entirely different drugs. ( ⑤ ) Widespread adoption still faces real obstacles, since genetic sequencing remains expensive in many regions and few doctors have been trained to interpret the flood of genetic data such tests now produce.