[HN Gopher] Three Logicians Walk into a Bar
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Three Logicians Walk into a Bar
Author : tosh
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-03-16 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| lsllc wrote:
| Can GPT-4 explain the "Three seashells" idea in Demolition Man?
|
| https://screenrant.com/three-seashells-demolition-man-functi...
| kennywinker wrote:
| I got a reasonable response using this prompt:
|
| > Describe an exact way that the three seashells from
| demolition man could be used
|
| >> One possible explanation is that the three seashells are
| used in a specific order to clean oneself after using the
| restroom. One shell might be used to scrape any solid waste,
| while another could be used to wipe away any remaining residue.
| The third shell could then be used to rinse and clean oneself
| with water.
|
| >> Another possibility is that the shells are not used to
| directly clean oneself, but rather to activate a cleaning
| process within the toilet itself. For example, pressing one
| shell could cause the toilet to release a stream of water for
| cleaning, while another shell could activate a drying
| mechanism.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Can the same reasoning explain why type systems need optional
| generic parameters to come after required generic parameters?
| choeger wrote:
| What happens if you twist that joke into something that doesn't
| make sense? Like having the bartender ask "can I bring anyone of
| you a drink?"
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Here is GPT-4's answer to that:
|
| This joke is a play on the concept of logical thinking and how
| logicians approach problems.
|
| When the bartender asks if anyone wants a drink, he's
| essentially asking if at least one of the three logicians wants
| a drink. The first logician doesn't know if the other two want
| a drink, so he can't answer the question with a definitive
| "yes" or "no." So he says "I don't know."
|
| The second logician hears the first one's answer and concludes
| that the first logician must want a drink, because if he
| didn't, he would have said "no" (since he would know that at
| least one person--himself--doesn't want a drink). However, the
| second logician still doesn't know if the third logician wants
| a drink or not, so he also says "I don't know."
|
| The third logician hears both answers and realizes that since
| neither of the first two said "no," they both must want a
| drink. So he can confidently say "yes" to the bartender's
| question, meaning at least one of them wants a drink. The humor
| lies in the fact that the logicians are using their logical
| thinking skills to answer a simple question about ordering
| drinks in a roundabout way.
| stevedewald wrote:
| That is not correct though. With the question phrased this
| way the second and third logicians don't know if the previous
| ones want a drink or not.
| dmurray wrote:
| They should know. When the first logician answers "I don't
| know" it makes it clear that he does not want a drink.
| leereeves wrote:
| That is true, but GPT-4 wrote:
|
| > The second logician hears the first one's answer and
| concludes that the first logician must want a drink,
| because if he didn't, he would have said "no"
|
| > The third logician hears both answers and realizes that
| since neither of the first two said "no," they both must
| want a drink.
|
| IOW, when asked the puzzle with "anyone", it repeated the
| explanation for "all", which seems to support the
| hypothesis that even GPT-4 is still just a "stochastic
| parrot" repeating what it sees and unable to reason about
| slight variations.
| benj111 wrote:
| Yes they do.
|
| The question is if any of them want a drink. Ie if at least
| one of them wants a drink.
|
| If the first person wants a drink then they know at least
| one person wants a drink and so could answer "yes". If they
| don't personally want a drink they don't know if either of
| the other 2 might want a drink so they would reply "I don't
| know"
| teawrecks wrote:
| Correct. The original phrasing is a question of
| universality, the new phrasing is one of existence. Gpt4
| continued to explain the joke in terms of the former when
| it should have been able to adjust for the latter. It has
| never heard the latter, but it sounded close enough.
|
| On the upside, this makes for a good way to test the
| logical abilities of a LLM. On the downside, whatever
| part was considered a "joke" before has been completely
| obliterated.
| _Microft wrote:
| Here it is on Nitter if you want to avoid visiting Twitter
| itself:
|
| https://nitter.net/dmvaldman/status/1636180222759563264
| sbdaman wrote:
| There is no way only 5% of people understand this joke.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Sure there is. It's not funny.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| One can understand it and still not think it's funny
| [deleted]
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I would be surprised if 5% of college-completing or comparably-
| educated adults got it. A vanishingly small percentage of
| people know anything about formal logic. And of those only some
| fraction internalized it well enough to be facile with it.
|
| If there's one thing more widespread than innumeracy, it's the
| equivalent wrt syllogistic reasoning.
| bena wrote:
| I think the caveat might be "until the logic is explained to
| them".
|
| Kind of like the Monty Hall problem. Some people intuitively
| get it. They understand that opening one door does not change
| the odds that they picked the wrong door at first. Some people
| need to see it played out or have it explained. But once they
| understand, it's fine.
| jmfldn wrote:
| Monty Hall isn't like this imho, that's a legit 'veridical
| paradox' that famously wrong-foots mathematicians.
|
| This is pretty obvious to anyone who knows basic logic, or
| programmers who work with Booleans all day. That subset of
| people is quite small though probably.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > They understand that opening one door does not change the
| odds that they picked the wrong door at first.
|
| Yes, they had 1-in-3 chance of getting it right originally,
| and that won't change if they do nothing...
|
| But of course that means there was a 2-in-3 chance it was one
| of the other two doors, and one of those has just been
| eliminated by being opened, meaning the 2-in-3 chance of
| being right is represented by the remaining door.... So, do
| you stick with your original door which has 1-in-3 chance of
| being right, or switch to the other door which you _now_ know
| has a 2-in-3 chance of being right ?
|
| The key is that they are now being offered the choice to make
| a better informed choice than they had originally.
| siva7 wrote:
| You have very much fate in your fellow humans intellectual
| ability :)
| klyrs wrote:
| I humbly submit that ChatGPT cribbed the answer from the
| internet. I started off with a curve ball.
|
| > You
|
| > Please explain this joke: Three philosphers walk by a fortune
| teller's booth at the fair. The fortune teller asks, "do none of
| you want your fortunes read?" The first philosopher says "I don't
| know." The second philospher says "I don't know." The third
| philospher says "No thank you."
|
| > ChatGPT
|
| > The joke plays on the stereotypical image of philosophers as
| deep thinkers who constantly question everything. When the
| fortune teller offers to read their fortunes, the first two
| philosophers respond with "I don't know" because they are unsure
| if fortune-telling is a legitimate practice. The third
| philosopher, however, breaks from the norm and confidently
| declines the offer. The humor lies in the contrast between the
| uncertain and contemplative attitudes of the first two
| philosophers and the straightforward answer of the third.
|
| Doesn't get it... let's try replacing "philosopher" with
| "logician"
|
| > ChatGPT
|
| > This joke plays with the idea that logicians are known for
| their analytical and logical thinking, often questioning
| assumptions and seeking evidence before drawing conclusions. When
| the fortune teller asks if they want their fortunes read, the
| first two logicians respond with "I don't know," indicating that
| they are unsure of the validity of fortune-telling and don't want
| to base their decisions on uncertain information. The third
| logician, however, confidently says "No thank you" to the offer,
| demonstrating his reluctance to rely on supernatural or
| unprovable claims. Overall, the joke pokes fun at the contrast
| between logical and mystical ways of thinking.
|
| Still doesn't get it... maybe if we undo the logical negation?
|
| > You
|
| > Please explain this joke: Three logicians walk by a fortune
| teller's booth at the fair. The fortune teller asks, "do all of
| you want your fortunes read?" The first logician says "I don't
| know." The second logician says "I don't know." The third
| logician says "Yes please."
|
| > ChatGPT
|
| > This is a play on the logical concept of self-reference and the
| propensity for logicians to overthink things. The first two
| logicians are hesitant to answer the question because they are
| unsure if the others will have their fortunes read, which could
| change their own answer. The third logician recognizes that
| regardless of what the others do, they want their fortune read
| and confidently responds accordingly. It's a humorous take on the
| precision and analytical thinking often attributed to logicians.
|
| Kinda close, but no cigar.
|
| Finally, after changing "fortune teller at a fair" to "bartender
| in a beer garden" offering tequila shots to all, ChatGPT
| correctly explains the joke. So I re-inverted the logic.
|
| > You
|
| > Please explain this joke: Three logicians walk by a bartender
| in a beer garden. The bartender asks, "do none of you want
| tequila shots?" The first logician says "I don't know." The
| second logician says "I don't know." The third logician says "No
| thank you."
|
| > ChatGPT
|
| The joke plays on the idea that logicians are known for their
| logical thinking and precision in language. The bartender asks if
| none of them want tequila shots, to which the first and second
| logicians respond with "I don't know" because they cannot
| determine whether the request applies to them or not. The third
| logician, however, understands the implication and directly
| answers, "No thank you." The humor lies in the unexpected
| response of the third logician, who breaks the pattern of not
| giving a definite answer.
|
| ... nope. ChatGPT does _not_ understand this joke.
| comonoid wrote:
| It cannot even answer correctly to "What is heavier: one
| kilogram of lead or two kilograms of feather?"
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Well done! Nice investigation. Human logicians 1 : stochastic
| parrots 0
|
| Did you start each riddle from a fresh conversation by the way?
| (For idempotency, it remembers prior messages in the same chat
| session)
| klyrs wrote:
| > Did you start each riddle from a fresh conversation by the
| way?
|
| Due to my general disinterest in all things marketed as AI,
| this is literally my first use of chatgpt.
| eutectic wrote:
| Did you use the GPT4 version?
| klyrs wrote:
| I don't know, I used the web interface at chat-gpt.org
| eutectic wrote:
| Then no.
| jjviana wrote:
| Here is the Bing answer to this version of the question:
|
| The joke is based on a logical paradox known as the *barber
| paradox*1. The barber paradox is a situation where a statement
| leads to a contradiction when trying to determine its truth
| value. In this case, the statement is "none of you want tequila
| shots?".
|
| If none of the logicians want tequila shots, then they should
| all answer "yes" to confirm the statement. But if any of them
| answers "yes", then it means that at least one of them wants
| tequila shots, which contradicts the statement. So they cannot
| answer "yes".
|
| If any of the logicians want tequila shots, then they should
| answer "no" to deny the statement. But if all of them answer
| "no", then it means that none of them want tequila shots, which
| confirms the statement. So they cannot answer "no".
|
| The first two logicians avoid this contradiction by answering
| "I don't know". They are not saying whether they want tequila
| shots or not, but only whether they know if none of them want
| tequila shots or not. By answering "I don't know", they are
| implying that their answer depends on what the other logicians
| say.
|
| The third logician breaks this impasse by answering "No thank
| you". He is not answering the question directly, but politely
| declining the offer of tequila shots. By doing so, he reveals
| that he does not want tequila shots, and also implies that he
| knows that none of them want tequila shots. This makes his
| answer consistent with both possibilities: if none of them want
| tequila shots, he is confirming the statement; if any of them
| want tequila shots, he is denying the statement.
|
| The joke is funny because it plays with the different levels of
| logic and language involved in answering a simple question. It
| also shows how logicians can use their skills to avoid
| contradictions and confusions.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/12422/3-logicia...
|
| So ChatGPT4 can summarize stackoverflow answers?
| hrunt wrote:
| Is it a summary when it turns 3 sentences into 3+ paragraphs?
| gumby wrote:
| Sure, if you invert the sign of "summary"
| mcphage wrote:
| yrammus
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Really facinating and impressive. It is hard to comprehend how
| this is just fancy sentence completion.
| kazinator wrote:
| Explanations of the joke exist on the network. It's just
| cribbing from those texts; it's not coming up with the
| reasoning behind it.
|
| If it were a brand new joke that the interlocutor invented, for
| which there are no existing discussions, it wouldn't be able to
| do anything beyond giving some evasive answer instead of "I
| don't know".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is there a way to test that? I would love to see the
| difference but cant come up with jokes.
| [deleted]
| pakitan wrote:
| We could change slightly the original joke. For example,
| same prompt but change the answer of the second logician to
| "Yes!". Ideally, ChatGPT should say, "I'm sorry, I don't
| get the joke" :)
| jgeada wrote:
| Make it N logicians, have the same structure: (N-1) x I
| don't know, one Yes!!
|
| And pick N so it is not 3 (which is the common version on
| the internets). If it can explain that version, then it is
| going somewhere.
|
| I tried it with 5 and the answer no longer indicates
| understanding of details of the puzzle:
|
| """ Explain this joke:
|
| 5 logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks: "Do you
| all want a drink?" The first logician says: I don't know
| The 2nd logician says: I don't know The third logician
| says: I don't know The 4th logician says: I don't know The
| fifth logician says: Yes!!
|
| OpenAI:: This joke is a variation of a classic logic puzzle
| called the "liar paradox." In the joke, five logicians walk
| into a bar, and the bartender asks if they all want a
| drink. The first four logicians respond with "I don't
| know," indicating that they cannot answer the question
| definitively.
|
| The fifth logician's response of "Yes!" seems to contradict
| the previous answers, but it is actually a valid answer
| based on a logical interpretation. The joke plays on the
| idea that logicians are known for their precise and
| analytical thinking, and the unexpected response from the
| fifth logician adds a humorous twist to the traditional
| paradox. """
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that is still a valid answer, it just doesn't
| explain why as well. The fist for can not answer
| definitively but the 5th can. That said, i didn't bother
| to look up the liar paradox, so that part could be BS.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Shouldn't it be enough to rephrase the joke in such a way
| that the tokens are completely different? "George Boole's
| students visit a fair, one of the peddlers there asks them:
| 'Would the three of you like to know your fortune?' The
| first student says: 'I don't know', the second student
| says..."
|
| Either way, I think the poster above is wrong. ChatGPT does
| have a model of the world, or better said, of _a_ world
| sufficiently similar to our own to often make very good
| predictions about what we want to hear.
| [deleted]
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Could you point us to an explanation of the joke on the
| internet? I would dare to say there is none, but there are a
| lot of explanations of other jokes that might have a similar
| pattern of explaining.
| thedanbob wrote:
| Current top comment has one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35185572
| f6v wrote:
| I think this misses a point. There's no information about
| the model: how was it trained, on which data. It might be
| that it can actually "reason" in a human sense, or this
| particular joke is hardcoded, or... I feel that with OpenAI
| withholding the details the whole discourse turns into
| religious flame war.
| mcphage wrote:
| Like offering it puzzles from Raymond Smullyan books, and
| seeing what it comes up with.
| Narretz wrote:
| But the Tweet said GPT 4 is the first model to explain the
| joke correctly. So in some area there must have been an
| improvement, even if it's just access to existing
| information. Or it's just a fluke.
| lamp987 wrote:
| here, ill correct it: GPT4 is the first model with enough
| parameters to _remember_ and summarize the text found
| somewhere on internet correctly.
| rgmerk wrote:
| Yes. This is just more of LLMs showing their impressive
| ability to regurgitate the appropriate bit of the internet in
| response to a prompt.
| chasing wrote:
| So it kind of copied the answer from somewhere and rephrased it?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| My chatGPT anecdote of the day can go here. I asked it if a brand
| I do work for was better than a competitor. It gave me some bs
| plusses and minuses which were mostly drivel but partly wrong.
|
| So I asked it what products does our brand make and it listed 5
| products in the smaller selling product range of our 2.
|
| I asked about the bigger product range and it listed one of them
| and then made up several other products that don't exist! It even
| gave details of what they (don't) do.
|
| One of those sounds like something that should go in our
| roadmap...
| Narretz wrote:
| Well yes, ChatGPT is still not a search engine.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Then we may have just found an important philosophical
| concept.
|
| I'm an accountant, and when someone asks me about the rash on
| their skin I say, 'I'm not a doctor, I'm an accountant'.
|
| When you ask ChatGPT something that is not it's job it just
| bullshits its way through like a cheap salesman.
| dirheist wrote:
| I don't know I assume it would tell you put some cortisone
| cream on it or to seek a dermatologist. 99% of internet
| advice boils down to that I don't think chatgpt/gpt 4 would
| be much different in that regard. It definitely can
| bullshit but for really generalized stuff like that I doubt
| it.
|
| It's not like your asking a singular person the question
| like it is when you ask an accountant but an abstraction of
| written human thought and interactions.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| But it's weird how for certain questions it says it's not an
| expert in that field, or simply that it doesn't know what
| you're asking for, yet sometimes it goes ahead and isn't just
| slightly wrong but makes up a lot of BS. Like,I asked it
| about a band's members and it made up three names. When I
| said that it's wrong it apologized and made up three
| different names. I googled the names and nothing came up.
| Then I asked for some songs by that band and I got more
| completely made up stuff that wasn't even titles of _any_
| band according to more Google and YouTube searches.
| patall wrote:
| It appears to me that it is a big problem of the training
| set containing mostly questions that can be (and are)
| answered. Sure, on StackOverflow you will have questions
| where the response is: please refine your question. But
| even then, did they use the raw input, or did they use the
| edited input? Similar with interviews: those are not actual
| interviews (for the most part) but edited for clarity.
| Hence, I doubt that GPT was much trained on reiterating
| questions and instead learned that there is always an
| answer, even if there is none to that particular question
| or when it does not know.
| davidktr wrote:
| It is though. I asked it today what, in Python,
| advantages/disadvantages of dataclasses vs. dictionaries vs.
| global variables are. Perfect answer right away, with
| actionable recommendations. Using a search engine would have
| cost me at least 15 min to figure out what works best in my
| use case.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Sure, but it acts as if (and should have) the ability of
| someone unreasonably good at pub trivia and jeopardy. Its not
| just questions deep in the weeds about specific companies and
| product lines where it falls flat. I've seen the same error
| mode in large city transit questions. Ask it which trains go
| to a particular station, it will list more lines than
| actually do and also forget a few. Ask it to list which
| stations one of those services stops at, it will not have the
| original station you asked about in that services listing.
| Forget knowledge, it doesn't even have consistency.
|
| It seems to me that it has a problem with questions about
| incidence structures, scenarios where objects of type X are
| just lists of incident objects from set Y, and objects from
| set Y are just lists of incident objects from set X. A
| station is just a list of all the services which go there, a
| service is just a list of all the stations it goes to. A
| product line is just a list of products, each product is part
| of some product lines. A geometrical line is just a co-linear
| set of points, a geometrical point is just the intersection
| of several lines.
|
| Conjecture: any time you ask it questions which involve
| reasoning about an incidence structure, it will either
| hallucinate incidences that aren't or neglect incidences that
| are. The logic of incidence is lost on it, the answers it
| gives are inconsistent and contradictory.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, really weird fabrications come from that thing.
|
| I asked to to summarize an online article, and it fabricated an
| author's name, despite the line "Author: [author name and
| firm]" being right under the top.
|
| I then challenged it, and it apologized for the confusion and
| error, then fabricated a different author's name. And a wrong
| date of publication, which was also listed. It eventually got
| the date right, but continued fabricating names until I gave up
| laughing. Even after I told it to look on the line beginning
| with "Author". Odd thing was, it threw an error when I told it
| about "Author: FName", as if it freaked out when asked to tell
| a fact. But then it just fabricated another with "FName
| Fabrication#8"...
|
| Actively, cheerfully, malicious...
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