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Comment by taberiand | Hacker News Reader

It answered much like a human I think. Ask a human this "riddle" and you might get a confused "what, is this the polar bear one?"

Because otherwise the question is nonsense (and in the case of riddles, it doesn't matter that there are no trains in the Arctic in reality)

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I think you give most people too much credit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtkX3OyPF4Q

"recent polls have shown 1/5 of Americans can't locate the US on a world map why do you think this is"

"I personally believe that us Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq in the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future"

I believe a majority of people provide answers like this.

Oh yeah,I should specify - if you ask some educated person that is well versed in riddles and geography the question.

Because true, plenty of people wouldn't have a clue what you're on about.

I think most people would answer with whatever color their local bears are and won't even know about the polar bear riddle.

> in the case of riddles, it doesn't matter that there are no trains in the Arctic in reality

That's quite the claim. Riddles aren't constrained to reality? Well then the polar bear one can be answerd with purple too.

No it's not quite the claim, because the question is nonsense as a riddle - if it's really about polar bears then the talk about trains and windows and speed is all irrelevant and can be discarded. Which is exactly what ChatGPT did. And if that turns the riddle into some silly gotcha then whatever, it's a bad riddle.

And as you point out, the average person would also be confused - "I don't know, purple?" would be a reasonable response. Because the question is dumb in the first place

This is about whether you incorporate outside context or not.

Knowing about train tracks is not that different from knowing about magnetic poles or the common habitats of various bears. All these pieces of data are fairly basic to an educated person. Both the polar bear riddle and my variation of it depend on this body of knowledge.

If you don't incorporate outside context at all, then things start to get confusing quite quickly. What even is a bear? That information wasn't provided! What color is it? Well, what even is color. None were defined. See, it gets ridiculous fast. You clearly need to depend on knowledge that is not presented. Knowing about different colors or different bear habitats is common. Neither needs to be defined in the question.

In the end, both of these bear riddles test whether the answerer considered more than one degree of separation. The ability to consider second order effects and beyond [1] is a sign of an intelligent person. Not every human passes.

[1] https://fs.blog/second-order-thinking/

Pedantry mode: there are some trains in the Arctic, for example going to Bovanenkovo at about 70°N. The Yamal Peninsula even does have polar bears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obskaya%E2%80%93Bovanenkovo_Li...

> It answered much like a human I think ... you might get

It would answer like a human with bad reasoning, and that is what we do not want to emulate.

Why not? Garbage in garbage out; there's a limit to what can be done with ambiguous information.

Though perhaps it would be better for the AI to just say it's a dumb question and not bother trying to make sense of it. Which it kinda politely did.

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