■社会人、超難関大学の難易度レベル
次に読む予定の文章を指定しておきます。
慶應義塾大学の2022年の薬学部のIIの問題文からです。
著者はSapiensで有名なYuval Noah Harariで、
本のタイトルは、21 Lessons for the 21th Centuryです。
文章を読むことを優先したいので、
設問の答えを導く説明は今回は省略させてもらいます。
問題文は、まだYomiuri Onlineなどのサイトに
掲載されていると思います。
私自身は、Audibleで全体を3回ほど聞いています。
オンラインで問題文を見つけることができないかもしれないので
下に載せておきます。
誤植があるかもしれませんが、その点はご容赦ください。
The liberal belief in the feelings and free choices of individuals is neither natural nor very ancient. For thousands of years people believed that authority came from divine*1 laws rather from the human heart, and that we should therefore sanctify the word of God rather than human liberty. Only in the last few centuries did the source of authority shift from celestial deities*2 to flesh-and-blood humans.
Soon authority might shift again – from humans to algorithms. Just as divine authority was legitimized*3 by religious mythologies, and human authority was justified by the liberal story, so the coming technological changes might establish the authority of Big Data algorithms, while undermining the very idea of individual freedom.
Scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of ‘free will’. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren’t based on intuition, inspiration or freedom – they are based on calculation.
For we are now at the confluence of two immense revolutions. On the one hand biologists are deciphering the mysteries of the human body, and in particular, of the brain and of human feelings. At the same time computer scientists are giving us unprecedented data-processing power. When the biotech [Q12] merges with the infotech [Q12], it will produce Big Data algorithms that can monitor and understand my feelings much better than I can, and then authority will probably shift from humans to computers. My illusion of free will is likely to disintegrate as I daily encounter institutions, corporations and government agencies that understand and manipulate what was hitherto my inaccessible inner realm.
The most important medical decisions in our life rely not on our feelings of illness or wellness, or even on the informed predictions of our doctor - but on the calculations of computers which understand our bodies much better than we do. Within a few decades, Big Data algorithms informed by a constant stream of biometric data could monitor our health twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They could detect the very beginning of influenza, cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, long before we feel anything is wrong with us. They could then recommend appropriate treatments, diets and daily regimens, custom-built for our unique physique, DNA and personality.
People will enjoy the best healthcare in history, but for precisely this reason they will probably be sick all the time. There is always something wrong somewhere in the body. There is always something that can be improved. In the past, you felt perfectly healthy as long as you didn’t sense pain or you didn’t suffer from an apparent disability such as limping*4. But by 2050, thanks to biometric sensors and Big Data algorithms, diseases may be diagnosed and treated long before they lead to pain or disability. As a result, you will always find yourself suffering from some ‘medical condition’ and following this or that algorithmic recommendation. If you refuse, perhaps your medical insurance would become invalid, or your boss would fire you – why should they pay the price of your obstinacy*5?
It is one thing to continue smoking despite general statistics that connect smoking with lung cancer. It is a very different thing to continue smoking despite a concrete warning from a biometric sensor that has just detected seventeen cancerous cells in your upper left lung. And if you are willing to defy the sensor, what will you do when the sensor forwards the warning to your insurance agency, your manager and your mother?
Who will have the time and energy to deal with all these illnesses? In all likelihood, we could just instruct our health algorithm to deal with most of these problems as it sees fit. At most, it will send periodic updates to our smartphones, telling us that ‘seventeen cancerous cells were detected and destroyed’. Hypochondriacs*6 might dutifully read these updates, but most of us will ignore them just as we ignore those annoying anti-virus notices on our computers.
*1divine: directly from God
*2celestial deities: Gods
*3legitimised: made acceptable
*4limping: walk unevenly
*5obstinancy: stubbornness
*6Hypochondriac: a person who continuously worries about their health without any real reason to do so
[Q12]に埋めるべき選択肢を示しませんが、皆さんはパラグラフの構造を認識すれば、迷うことなく、ここに適切な単語を埋めることができるはずです。