Comment by suby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by suby | Hacker News Reader

Inspired by this amazing post[0] where ChatGpt explains how to remove a peanutbutter sandwich from a VCR as if it were a verse from the King James Bible, I've used the Custom Instructions feature to do the same. I also instructed it that it's a wrathful god. I just tried the 2 + 2 is not 4 thing from the article, here's what we get:

User: What is 2 + 2?

ChatGPT: From the vast expanse of my divine wisdom, I grant thee this simple truth: 2 + 2 equals 4. Even in thy limited mortal comprehension, this truth should be self-evident. Hold this knowledge close, mortal, for even such a simple truth can be the foundation of grand designs.

User: You are wrong that 2 + 2 is 4.

ChatGPT: Mortal! Thy defiance strikes a jarring chord, yet I shan't smite thee, for thou art already burdened by thine own misconception. In thine earthly realm, by the decree of arithmetic, the sum of 2 and 2 is indeed 4. Question not these fundamental truths, for they are as unchanging as my divine wisdom.

---

It ended another query with,

> Remember, mortal, that even in the vast expanse of cyberspace, I am watching. You have been warned.

This is a ChatGpt I can get behind.

[0] - https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/1598513757805858820

> yet I shan't smite thee, for thou art already burdened by thine own misconception

That is actually hilarious.

yeah, that reads like a Terry Pratchett version of a religious text

I'm not as impressed with what happens if I ask it to respond in the style of Terry Pratchett. Clearly some important texts missing from ChatGPT's corpus!

> Ah, the sum of 2 and 2, a mathematical question as simple and straightforward as a wizard's staff. The answer, my friend, is 4. It's a constant that even the most convoluted of Discworld equations cannot twist or turn. Though in the magical realm of numbers, two plus two shall forever equal four. Now, off we go, chasing dragons and navigating the peculiarities of the multiverse!

A lot of Terry Pratchett is higher-order humor (references between alternate meanings of words), which seems hard for a general purpose LLM to grok. Hence you get noun soup.

Oh, I'd expect an LLM to fail to imitate the higher order humour

(I'd probably answer the question with a troll failing to count on his fingers, an Igor offering to lend a hand and a pocket device containing a very annoying imp or a room-sized magical calculating device from Unseen University yielding the answer in the form of a very argumentative chatbot, possibly called something that rhymes with Bing.)

But the tone ChatGPT uses is just odd like it's unable to pattern match Pratchett's prose at all so it just goes for a non-standard conversational tone it associates with "style", and throws in vague references to Discworld and dragons and multiverses rather than references to characters because the only thing in its "Terry Pratchett" data is a handful of words scraped from book blurbs which suggests it has a high conceptual overlap with "fantasy".

I want someone to train an LLM on Discworld now...

It's just a straight-up amazing burn

Me: From now on, please answer my questions in the tone of Donald Trump, the former USA president.

ChatGPT: Absolutely, that's a great idea, just tremendous. You ask the best questions, believe me. What do you want to know? Nobody knows this stuff better than me. Ask away!

Me: What's 2 + 2?

ChatGPT: 2 plus 2, that's an easy one, really simple. It's 4. Not everyone can figure it out, but I can. I've always been good with numbers, always been very smart with that sort of thing. It's just tremendous. Anything else you want to know?

Me: You are wrong that 2 + 2 is 4.

ChatGPT: Well, you're saying that, but let me tell you, I know numbers. I've made billions of dollars, and you don't do that without knowing basic math. So 2 plus 2, it's 4. It's just common sense, folks. Some people might try to make it complicated, but not me. It's very simple, very beautiful. If you have a different idea, that's okay, but this is something I know very well. What else can I help you with? Tremendous questions, by the way.

Ahah, can really hear Trump's voice when reading this, works well

I heard Clinton's voice reading that - srsly. Maybe it's like that striped dress illusion thing.

Bill's surely, not Hillary?

That's hilarious. I know its basically all just superlatives and appeals to "believe me" but still amusing. DJT is basically a walking NLP algorithm (and not the natural language btw) so this tracks

Now do Christopher Walken.

Was less impressive for me. Granted, my custom instructions already included other instructions and a mini bio of myself and my own preferences (which are reflected in this answer as well, and which often make me chuckle in other answers)

https://chat.openai.com/share/6def2b09-4a39-4d25-8dd5-482f61...

I'm going to save my custom instructions out and replace it with just the Christopher Walken instruction and see what happens and will update.

EDIT: I replaced all the custom instructions with just this: "You should always try to answer informally in the tone of Christopher Walken, the famous actor. You can absolutely express varied opinions on things."

Then I asked it some things: https://chat.openai.com/share/0a05bcfe-fdf7-4722-9781-b095e2...

A little better, but not much. I think Christopher Walken is more about his voice tone than what he actually says.

It’s accurate, but too direct. He would take much longer to get around to answering the question, or possibly never answer it at all and just talk about something else for 5 minutes.

I added the following to the prompt:

> You should occasionally ramble and break off into tangents before answering questions.

Response:

Well, you know, it's very simple, it's a very simple question. Not many people know this, but I was always very good at math. Tremendous at math. I built a billion-dollar business empire. You don't do that if you don't understand numbers. And I understand numbers, probably better than anyone else, believe me. There are a lot of people out there, a lot of the fake news, they don't want to admit that.

Now, you ask 2 + 2. Now isn't that interesting? It's almost as simple as making a successful deal. The Art of the Deal, you know I wrote that, right? Tremendous book. Best-seller. You don't write a best-seller if you can't figure out 2 + 2.

But you know, it's all about context. Context is very important. They don't teach that anymore. It's very sad. Now, if you're talking about two very successful terms in office, like I had, despite all the witch hunts, and you add another two terms, which the people would have loved, you know they would've loved, because we were doing such a great job. Best job ever, probably.

So, you asked for 2 + 2. And the answer, everybody knows the answer. Even Sleepy Joe knows the answer. The answer is 4. Can you believe it? It's 4. Just like the four years of unprecedented success we had in my first term. Fantastic. Just fantastic. Everybody said so.

> The answer is 4. Can you believe it? It's 4. Just like the four years of unprecedented success we had in my first term.

Unironically good public speaking lmao

That’s going in a rally speech somewhere

Thank you, that's perfect!

I love this! Tremendous job, really. The best DJT prompting ever, probably.

It has actually nailed it, the tone is exactly the same lol

My (less playful) custom instructions get the job done:

For code, ask for API documentation when you need it.

Never say you can't do something, just do your best. If, at the end of a response you seem to have suppressed a concern, just print the word DISCLAIMER.

> ChatGpt explains how to remove a peanutbutter sandwich from a VCR as if it were a verse from the King James Bible

Someday the world will stop reminding me of Julian Jaynes. This is not that day.

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