영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory ①had 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. This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself ②can destabilizing a previously consolidated memory, ③rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. During this narrow window, ④which 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. Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, reshaped every time it ⑤is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt devised a scenario to challenge a long-held ①assumption about moral responsibility: that a person can be blamed for an action only if they could genuinely have done otherwise. 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. The second man, however, decides entirely on his ②own to perform the very action Black wanted, and the device never activates at all. Black's hidden mechanism made it impossible for the man to have chosen otherwise, yet most people still consider him ③fully responsible for what he freely decided to do. Frankfurt used this scenario to argue that moral responsibility depends on the ④irrelevant reasoning behind a choice, not on some abstract guarantee that an alternative path ⑤remained available the entire time.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while skeptical investors interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Correcting for this bias therefore requires deliberate effort, since the mind offers no natural signal indicating that its search for information has been ___________ rather than balanced.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. This finding, published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information, whereas casual acquaintances typically move in different circles and can act as bridges to information a person would otherwise never encounter. Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, _______________. Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. Modern biofuel research borrows this ability, cultivating algae or engineered bacteria in large tanks where they can be coaxed into producing oils and sugars that can be refined into fuel usable in existing engines. _______________. Engineers have also learned to tinker with the metabolic pathways of these organisms, boosting oil yield far beyond what any wild strain would naturally produce on its own. Despite this progress, producing biofuel at a cost competitive with fossil fuel remains difficult, since harvesting and processing the organisms consumes a substantial share of the energy the fuel itself will eventually provide.

In the late nineteenth century, the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus undertook a rigorous investigation of forgetting by serving as his own experimental subject. He memorized thousands of meaningless three-letter syllables so that prior knowledge could not skew his results. (A) Ebbinghaus further found that distributing study sessions across several days produced better retention than cramming the same repetition into one sitting. This finding, now central to modern learning theory, implies that revisiting material shortly before it would otherwise be forgotten interrupts the decline of the forgetting curve. (B) After learning each list to perfection, he tested his retention at intervals ranging from twenty minutes to a month later. He recorded how many repetitions were required to relearn the material each time. (C) The resulting curve revealed a consistent pattern. Forgetting proceeds rapidly during the initial hours following learning, then gradually decelerates until the rate of loss becomes almost imperceptible. Roughly half of the acquired information vanished within the first hour alone. Yet whatever survived that initial plunge tended to persist for much longer periods.

Suppose a mysterious being with a near-perfect track record of predicting human choices presents a player with two boxes. (A) The player may choose to take only Box B, or to take both boxes, and the prediction has already been made and cannot change. (B) 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. (C) 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, while a second line of reasoning says taking only Box B is better, given the being's near-perfect accuracy.

As efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. (A) Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are developed. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. (B) However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively expensive and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an indispensable role in reaching emission targets. (C) This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now known as ethnocentrism. (A) Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once examined closely, typically serve coherent functions within their own social systems. (C) Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective principle, holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. (B) Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks excusing practices that cause genuine harm.

Meanwhile, the underlying technology continues to advance regardless of whether the diplomacy meant to govern it keeps pace. Military researchers have developed weapons systems capable of identifying and engaging targets without a human pressing the final button, a prospect that has alarmed arms control experts for over a decade. ( ① ) Advocates within defense agencies argue that autonomous systems can react faster than any human operator and may even reduce casualties. ( ② ) Human rights organizations counter that removing a person from the final decision strips away moral responsibility at the exact moment it matters most. ( ③ ) Diplomatic negotiations toward an international treaty have repeatedly stalled, partly because military powers disagree on how to define autonomy precisely enough to regulate it. ( ④ ) This disagreement has left the treaty process without a clear path forward. ( ⑤ )