영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. If every plank of a wooden ship ①is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to ②erasing the ship's identity. The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced. Suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, ③built exactly as the original once stood. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim ④to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread that neither one can fully ⑤explain.

When people are ①asked to judge how risky or beneficial a particular technology is, they rarely conduct anything ②resembling a careful cost-benefit analysis. Instead, they consult a quick emotional impression, an instinctive sense of whether the technology feels good or feels bad, and let that impression guide their entire judgment. This mental shortcut, ③known as the affect heuristic, produces a curious pattern that traditional risk theory struggles to explain: activities people like tend to be judged as both safer and more beneficial, while activities they dislike are judged as both riskier and less beneficial, even when no logical relationship between risk and benefit exists. For example, when researchers ④presented a fictional industrial chemical alongside a brief description emphasizing its convenience, participants rated it not only as more useful but also, illogically, as less dangerous. Because emotional impressions form so rapidly and feel so trustworthy, correcting for this heuristic requires deliberate effort; simply presenting more accurate statistics to already anxious or enthusiastic audiences rarely ⑤change their underlying judgment.

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a ①promising solution to plastic waste, since they are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that ②accelerate microbial breakdown once discarded. However, their environmental benefits are often exaggerated, largely because decomposition depends on specific conditions rarely found outside industrial composting facilities. For example, a bag labeled biodegradable may take years, not the weeks advertised, to break down in a landfill or ocean, where temperature and microbial activity remain ③high. In addition, when mixed with conventional plastics in recycling streams, they can ④contaminate the process, weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. Some engineers therefore compare biodegradable plastics to a bridge that leads nowhere unless paired with infrastructure that completes the journey. Ultimately, realizing their ⑤genuine potential requires not only technological refinement but also facilities capable of providing the precise conditions decomposition demands.

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.

Imagine watching a fair coin land on heads five times in a row and feeling an increasingly strong intuition that the next flip is somehow due to produce tails. This intuition, though psychologically ①compelling, rests on a basic misunderstanding of probability, since each flip of a fair coin remains entirely ②independent of every flip that came before it. The coin possesses no memory of its previous outcomes, and its probability of landing on tails on the sixth flip stays ③fixed at fifty percent regardless of how many heads preceded it. Casinos have long profited from this misconception, watching gamblers place larger bets after a losing streak simply because they ④mistakenly believe that a win has become statistically overdue. Economists have even documented the same error among trained professionals, including loan officers who grow more likely to approve a risky application simply because they recently rejected several applications ⑤sporadically.

Sociologist William Ogburn observed that when a society undergoes technological change, its material culture tends to advance faster than its nonmaterial culture, meaning norms, laws, and values. He termed the resulting gap cultural lag. The rise of the automobile, for instance, transformed daily mobility long before traffic laws, insurance systems, and urban planning fully adapted to the risks it introduced. A contemporary example can be found in genetic testing, which now allows individuals to learn detailed information about inherited disease risk well before _______________. Cultural lag theory reminds us that technological progress is not automatically matched by social progress.

A liver no longer has to sit inside a human body to be studied closely. By coaxing stem cells to organize themselves within a nutrient-rich gel, scientists can now grow miniature three-dimensional structures called organoids, which reproduce much of the architecture and function of a real organ. Unlike flat cultures grown on a plastic dish, organoids let cells interact in three dimensions much as they would inside the body, yielding tissue that behaves in strikingly realistic ways. This fidelity has made organoids invaluable for testing how a drug affects human tissue before any patient is exposed, _______________. Some laboratories have even grown organoids from a single patient's own cells, raising the possibility of trialing a treatment on a miniature copy of that patient's organ before committing to an actual course of therapy.

Memory researchers have long recognized that learning is not simply a matter of accumulating information without cost. Newly acquired material can collide with what the mind already holds, producing measurable disruptions in recall. (A) Conversely, when material learned later undermines the recollection of something acquired earlier, the process is labeled retroactive interference. This second mechanism explains why switching to a new keyboard layout can temporarily impair typing on a familiar one. (B) Both processes suggest that memories compete for the same limited retrieval pathways rather than resting in isolated compartments. This insight carries real implications for how students approach studying multiple similar subjects. Instead of cramming closely related material back to back, spacing out review sessions can reduce competition between overlapping traces. Varying study contexts further helps preserve accuracy for both old and new information alike. (C) When earlier knowledge interferes with the retrieval of information learned afterward, psychologists call this proactive interference. This phenomenon explains why someone who memorized an old phone number for years may struggle to recall a new one.

Two drivers, equally distracted by their phones, run a red light in exactly the same careless manner. (A) Although both drivers behaved identically and made exactly the same reckless choice, society judges them very differently: one faces criminal charges and lifelong guilt, while the other receives, at most, a minor traffic ticket. (B) Philosophers call this troubling asymmetry moral luck, since factors entirely outside a person's control end up determining how severely we judge their moral character. (C) By pure chance, a child happens to be crossing the street in front of one driver but not the other, and the first driver kills the child while the second drives through safely.

Psychologists studying human judgment often describe the mind as operating through two distinct systems rather than a single unified process. (A) This efficiency comes at a cost, however, because System 1's shortcuts can produce systematic errors that an overburdened System 2 rarely catches. (B) Most daily decisions are therefore handled almost entirely by System 1, which allows people to function efficiently without exhausting their limited mental resources. (C) System 1 works quickly and automatically, generating impressions without any noticeable effort, while System 2 is slow and deliberate, engaged only when a problem requires careful reasoning.