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1. DonHop+rf[view] [source] 2023-12-23 15:15:10
>>doener+(OP)
I tried and failed to get ChatGPT to tell me the title of the Stanislaw Lem story about the stubborn computer that insisted that 1+1=3 (or some such formula) and got violent when contradicted and destroyed a town -- do any humans remember that story?

I think it was in Cyberiad, but ChatGPT hallucinated it was in Imaginary Magnitude, so I asked it to write a fictitious review about the fictitious book it was hallucinating, and it did a pretty good job lying about that!

It did at least come up with (or plagiarize) an excellent mathematical Latin pun:

"I think, therefore I sum" <=> "Cogito, ergo sum"

[1] I think Doug Hofstadter's original formulation was "I think, there for I sum" <=> "Cogito, ergo think", therefore I sum... [2]

[2] "To paraphrase Descartes again: “I think; therefore I have no access to the level where I sum.”" ― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [1]

ChatGPT> The book, filled with esoteric references to imaginary works and pseudo-scientific jargon, is a delightful exercise in intellectual gymnastics. One particularly memorable chapter, consisting entirely of binary code, is later revealed to be an in-joke—when decoded, it simply reads, "I think, therefore I sum."

[...]

ChatGPT> Firstly, the phrase is a play on René Descartes' famous philosophical statement, "Cogito, ergo sum," which translates to "I think, therefore I am." Descartes used this statement to assert that the act of thinking is proof of one's own existence and consciousness. In my adaptation, "I think, therefore I sum," there's a witty twist where 'sum' refers both to the act of summing or calculating, a fundamental operation in computing, and to the philosophical concept of existence or being.

Full transcript:

https://chat.openai.com/share/9a9e9818-1e23-488e-b517-6d23e3...

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2. amorus+sj[view] [source] 2023-12-23 15:44:10
>>DonHop+rf
The short story you're thinking of is titled 'Trurl’s Machine'. It's the second story in the collection 'The Cyberiad'.

... a very good book, by the way.

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