大学入試長文読解

[1] LOS ANGELES ― "You do not get to choose whether or not an article on you appears in Wikipedia, and you have no veto power over its contents. The article can cast you as a genius or an imbecile, a respected scientist or a crackpot... a vandal could replace a page, any page, with total gibberish. The page on Einstein might have a statement inserted to the effect that he was a Nazi collaborator, or that his theories have been totally discredited, or that he was a silicon-based life form from Proxima Centauri1)".... Wikipedia does not operate by your rules but by its own conventions; I suggest you learn to accept it... . I can assure you resistance is futile." [2] This was the lecture I received from anonymous Wikipedia "editor" KSmrq while I was in the midst of trying to bring some semblance of accuracy and neutrality to the "Bernard Haisch" article that another "editor" had posted a few days previously. I put "editor" in quotes...

A feature of English in the las^ 200 years or so has been the birth of a number of national varieties. It is important to note, however, that the different varieties are relatively similar to each other; for the most part, speakers of one variety can understand speakers of another without much difficulty since the grammar of English is essentially the same around the world. The varieties differ in a relatively small amount of vocabulary, which usually serves to make a variety interesting rather than particularly difficult to understand. The main difference between varieties is usually in the pronunciation, which can make comprehension difficult, but which has little to do with the underlying structure of the language itself. English started its international expansion only a few centuries ago and that has not been enough time for major differences among varieties to develop. Also, English-speaking countries tend to be highly literate. This, combined with the development of mass commu...

Answer the questions below after reading the following passage. Human intelligence is a puzzle. Although using IQ scores as a measurement of intelligence is controversial, some scientists believe we can use them to argue that intelligence is higher, on average, in some places than in others. And it seems to have been rising in recent decades. Why these two things should be true is also controversial. Recently, however, a group of researchers at the University of New Mexico have suggested the same explanation for both: the effect of infectious disease! If they are right, it suggests that the control of such diseases is crucial to a country's development in a way that had not been understood before. Countries that have a lot of parasites and pathogens not only suffer the weakening effects of disease on their workforces, but also on the personal development of individuals. Christopher Eppig and his colleagues make their suggestion in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The...

Read this letter by Martin Luther King Jr. and answer the questions below. 16 April 1963 My Dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in the Birmingham City jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingharri, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an ...

(A) We often express a state or feeling of being isolated or ( 1 ) with terms referring to coldness. The words "frosty" and "cold" are sometimes used to describe unkind or unfriendly people. To "get the cold shoulder" means to be rejected. If you ignore someone, you may leave the person "out in the cold." In ( 2 ), you exchange "warm" smiles with people you find pleasant and friendly, and it is always nice to get "a warm welcome" when visiting a new place. Two professors of organizational behavior tried to prove this common association objectively. They conducted a study to test the idea that there is a ( 3 ) link between the sense of temperature and the feelings of social inclusion or isolation. First, they put student volunteers into two groups. One group was asked to ( 4 ) a personal experience in which they were isolated from other people. Some students remembered their experiences of being bullied by classmates, and...

Who Trained Your A.I.? Artificial intelligence systems are only as good as the data used to teach them. A lot of that data is old and biased—and quietly shaping our future. By April Glaser The problem with artificial intelligence isn’t that it’s going to get too smart and take over the world, as Elon Musk likes to warn. The problem, rather, is that A.I. is too dumb and kind of already has. Artificial-intelligence software, which automates decision-making, is used by judges to help inform criminal sentencing. It’s used by Google to surface the address of your favorite pharmacy when you type “pharmacy” into your smartphone. Hospitals use A.I. to design treatment plans, and the Associated Press uses it pen articles about minor league sports. But even as A.I. nears ubiquity, it’s not clear that the technology is ready for primetime. Accounts of biases and inequities perpetuated by these systems abound. Take what happened last year when Kabir Alli, a high school student ...