영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

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, yet a pattern that ①persists with remarkable consistency across surveys. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors ②to trade more frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Extensive research comparing the trading records of numerous individual accounts has demonstrated that investors who trade most frequently ③tends to earn substantially lower returns than those who trade rarely, largely because transaction costs accumulate and because frequent trading often reflects overconfident reactions to short-term noise rather than genuine insight. Overconfidence also manifests in the tendency to underestimate the range of possible outcomes, ④causing investors to concentrate their holdings in a small number of assets they feel certain about rather than diversifying across a broader portfolio. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often ⑤undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a ①fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply transforms them. Historical evidence offers some ②comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers ③ample time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. A factory worker displaced this year cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now. For this reason, many economists argue that the real ④challenge is not the robots themselves, but the ⑤sluggish speed at which society is expected to adapt to them.

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally opposed, or whether the relationship between them changes shape as an economy matures. The Environmental Kuznets Curve, a hypothesis borrowed from earlier theories of income inequality, proposes that _______________. In its early stages, industrializing nations prioritize output over conservation, treating clean air and water as expendable costs of development to be addressed later. Beyond a certain point, however, rising incomes generate both the technological capacity and the political will to demand stricter regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a reassuring paradox, suggesting that the very growth blamed for ecological harm may eventually finance its own repair. Critics, by contrast, argue that the curve rests on a narrow selection of pollutants that happen to decline with wealth, while ignoring greenhouse gases and resource depletion, which show no comparable tendency to fall.

Émile Durkheim insisted that sociology could become a genuine science only if it identified a distinct subject matter that could not be reduced to individual psychology. (A) Language, currency, legal codes, and religious ritual all qualify as social facts, since a person is born into these systems already fully formed and must conform to them regardless of personal preference. (B) He termed this subject matter social facts, defined as ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that exist outside any single individual yet exert a coercive influence over that individual's behavior. (C) Durkheim insisted that social facts should be studied as things, meaning they must be examined empirically through observable patterns such as statistics.

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. (A) 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. (B) By supplying the cell with a template during this repair step, scientists can direct that machinery to insert a specific new sequence, and what once required years of painstaking work to alter a single gene can now be accomplished within days. (C) 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.

Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. (A) 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. (B) Unlike crops grown for corn-based ethanol, which compete directly with food production for arable land, many algae strains can thrive in shallow ponds, wastewater, or even coastal seawater unsuitable for conventional agriculture. (C) Engineers have also learned to boost oil yield through genetic tinkering, yet 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.

Philosopher Robert Nozick devised a thought experiment to test a simple hedonist assumption: that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are all that ultimately matter to human beings. (A) If the hedonist assumption were correct, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine, since it could deliver a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. (B) Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate and many refuse outright, a reluctance Nozick took as evidence that human beings care about more than the quality of their internal sensations. (C) He asked readers to imagine a machine capable of producing any experience they desired, from writing a great novel to falling in love, all indistinguishable from reality once they were plugged in.

This reduction in cognitive burden, rather than a reduction in variety itself, appears to be the decisive factor in easing customers' decisions. An online retailer once tested how the size of a product display affected customer behavior. ( ① ) In one setting, customers encountered a table displaying twenty-four varieties of a specialty product, while in another setting they encountered a table displaying only six varieties. ( ② ) A larger proportion of customers stopped to sample items at the larger display, suggesting that abundance initially attracts attention and curiosity. ( ③ ) When it came to actual purchases, however, customers exposed to the smaller display were significantly more likely to buy something than those exposed to the larger one. ( ④ ) Follow-up interviews revealed that customers at the larger display often felt overwhelmed and uncertain about which option truly suited their preferences. ( ⑤ ) The retailer concluded that presenting a carefully limited selection, rather than an exhaustive one, could improve both sales and customer confidence.

The same mechanism that helps citizens save more for retirement, in other words, can just as easily be turned against their financial interests. Default settings are not inherently virtuous; their ethical value depends entirely on whose interests they serve. ( ① ) A retirement plan that automatically enrolls employees at a reasonable contribution rate generally benefits those employees by overcoming their tendency toward inertia. ( ② ) A subscription service that automatically renews at a higher price unless the customer actively cancels, however, exploits that very same inertia for the company's benefit rather than the customer's. ( ③ ) Both arrangements rely on the identical psychological tendency to accept whatever has been preselected. ( ④ ) Distinguishing between beneficial and exploitative uses of default settings therefore requires examining not the mechanism itself but the intentions and incentives of whoever designed it. ( ⑤ ) Regulators increasingly demand transparency about default settings precisely because the mechanism alone cannot reveal whether it serves the consumer or merely the company offering it.

Critics on the other side argue instead that a state limited to bare protection cannot address deeper inequalities that arise naturally in any free market. Political philosophers have long debated how much authority, if any, a government may legitimately claim over free individuals. ( ① ) Robert Nozick imagined a hypothetical starting point in which people live without any state at all, each relying on private arrangements to protect their own person and property. ( ② ) He argued that a minimal state, limited strictly to enforcing contracts and protecting citizens from violence, theft, and fraud, could arise gradually through a series of voluntary exchanges, without anyone's rights ever being violated along the way. ( ③ ) Critics on one side, the anarchists, insist that even this minimal government inevitably violates the rights of those who never consented to join it. ( ④ ) Nozick's thought experiment therefore sits at the center of an unresolved argument about where legitimate political authority actually begins. ( ⑤ )