영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Consider a large heap containing ten thousand grains of sand. Nearly everyone agrees that removing a single grain from such a heap ①leave another heap behind; surely one grain could never make the difference between a heap and a non-heap. Yet if this principle is applied repeatedly, grain by grain, the heap eventually shrinks to a single lonely grain, or even to no grains at all, and logic alone seems to ②force us to accept that this final result still counts as a heap. Something has clearly gone wrong along the way, since no reasonable person would ③call one grain of sand a heap, but pinpointing exactly which single removal transformed a heap into a non-heap seems ④impossible. The puzzle exposes a deep discomfort with vague terms like "heap," "tall," or "bald," concepts that seem to admit no sharp boundary yet are ⑤used confidently in everyday language.

Economists have long debated whether prosperity and environmental quality are fundamentally ①opposed, 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 pollution initially ②rises alongside economic growth before eventually declining once a society crosses a certain threshold of wealth. In its early stages, industrializing nations ③prioritize 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 ④more lenient regulation, so degradation begins to reverse even as production keeps expanding. Some scholars regard this trajectory as a ⑤reassuring 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.

A few years ago, spotting a manipulated video required a trained eye and ①specialized software. Today, freely available applications allow almost anyone to swap a face or fabricate a voice ②convincingly enough to fool casual viewers within minutes. This shift has quietly ③reinforced one of the oldest assumptions in human communication: that seeing and hearing something is a reasonably reliable way to confirm it happened. Journalists now face the burden of verifying footage that once would have been accepted as ④self-evident proof. Perhaps more troubling than any single fake video is the broader effect on public trust, in which genuine footage can be ⑤dismissed as fabricated simply because deepfakes exist.

Consider a village green shared freely by every herder in the community, where each individual may graze as many animals as they wish without paying any fee. From the perspective of any single herder, adding one more animal to the shared pasture brings a clear personal benefit, since the extra income belongs entirely to that herder alone. The cost of the additional grazing, however, is spread thinly across every herder who uses the green, so no single individual bears more than a tiny fraction of the damage. Because this calculation favors adding more animals for every rational herder, the shared pasture is gradually overgrazed until it can no longer support any animals at all, harming the very community whose rational members caused the collapse. Philosophers use this scenario to illustrate _______________.

Millions of people now wear devices that continuously track their heart rate, sleep patterns, and daily activity. Users generally assume this information belongs to them, since it is drawn directly from their own bodies. In practice, however, the terms of service that few people read often grant the manufacturer broad rights to store, analyze, and even sell anonymized versions of that data. Advocates for reform argue that biological data deserves a category of protection stronger than ordinary consumer information, precisely because _______________.

This reveals an uncomfortable truth about the underlying business model itself. Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. ( ① ) Instead, recommendation algorithms are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. ( ② ) Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version shaped by whatever keeps people scrolling. ( ③ ) Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content. ( ④ ) Yet these experiments consistently saw user engagement drop. ( ⑤ )

Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option supported by the strongest reason, it finds itself, in this case, with no rational basis for choosing either pile. Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever tipping the balance toward either option. ( ① ) Neither pile offers any advantage over the other. ( ② ) Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. ( ③ ) Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry. ( ④ ) Even a tiny, arbitrary preference, they note, is usually enough to break the tie in practice. ( ⑤ ) The paradox nevertheless raises a serious question about whether purely rational deliberation can ever generate action on its own.

This is a decision, in short, that no single person should be allowed to make alone. The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases that have resisted treatment for generations. ( ① ) Yet the same precision that makes CRISPR so promising also makes it dangerous in the wrong hands. ( ② ) Editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient. ( ③ ) It alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation. ( ④ ) Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. ( ⑤ ) Critics worry, however, that this line will become harder to enforce than it is to draw.

Durkheim called this state of normlessness anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire, leaving individuals disoriented even when material conditions improve. When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. ( ① ) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms that once told individuals what to expect and how to behave. ( ② ) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies. ( ③ ) He proposed that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals, such as wealth, while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. ( ④ ) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion. ( ⑤ ) Anomie theory therefore suggests that crime is less a product of individual failure than of structural imbalance within society itself.

Later sociologists broadened the framework well beyond economic class, applying conflict analysis to struggles organized around race, gender, and other categories of unequal social power. Where structural functionalism emphasizes cooperation and stability, conflict theory begins from the premise that society is best understood as an ongoing struggle between groups with competing interests over scarce resources such as wealth, power, and prestige. ( ① ) Rooted in the writings of Karl Marx, classical conflict theory focused on the economic struggle between those who own productive resources and those who must sell their labor to survive. ( ② ) It argued that dominant groups shape laws, education, and even widely shared beliefs in ways that quietly protect their own advantage. ( ③ ) Unlike functionalists, who often interpret existing social arrangements as serving a necessary purpose, conflict theorists argue that apparent social order frequently masks underlying tension. ( ④ ) Dominant groups actively work to contain this tension, whether through ideology or through institutions that channel dissent into forms unlikely to threaten those who hold power. ( ⑤ )