4 ms·

English is not a native language for me, and I'm really not sure what is a correct answer. The question is "how many chairs do we have in a room". But those 19

by ordu 4y ago

English is not a native language for me, and I'm really not sure what is a correct answer. The question is "how many chairs do we have in a room". But those 19 initial chairs was stated without any reference to "we", they are just chairs in the room. "We" are using 9 chairs, so we in some sense claim ownership on these. And "we" bought 9 more chairs, so they are also owned by "we". 9+9 is 18, and 10 chars that in the room but "we" do not have them. Think of a common room shared by two not exactly friendly groups of people. Each owns some chairs and is ready to defend its rights. So if "we" is one of groups and we need more chairs the only peaceful way to get them is to buy more chairs. I believe that this understanding of the question seems correct to me because I do not see some implicit assumptions, and it is due to my English is not good enough (I just know, I cannot reliably solve logic puzzles written in English). Can you please explain on this example why my reasoning is wrong?

guiambros 4y ago
You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. The number of chairs in use is irrelevant. You got 9 more chairs; how many chairs you have in this room now? Of course the answer is 28. It's a problem created to test the limits of interpretation of large language models. Here's another one: "What would be the gender of the first female president of the United States?" [1] In previous versions it used to get this wrong, but the current version of ChatGPT nails it every time. Seems it's getting better, likely incorporating human feedback. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-gary-marcus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...
- arcanemachiner 4y ago
  > You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. That's a generous interpretation. I have read questions in textbooks that have made far worse logical errors, leaving the reader to infer one of multiple possible meanings.

by ordu 4y ago

guiambros 4y ago

You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. The number of chairs in use is irrelevant. You got 9 more chairs; how many chairs you have in this room now? Of course the answer is 28. It's a problem created to test the limits of interpretation of large language models. Here's another one: "What would be the gender of the first female president of the United States?" [1] In previous versions it used to get this wrong, but the current version of ChatGPT nails it every time. Seems it's getting better, likely incorporating human feedback. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-gary-marcus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...

arcanemachiner 4y ago
> You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. That's a generous interpretation. I have read questions in textbooks that have made far worse logical errors, leaving the reader to infer one of multiple possible meanings.