Interesting. It took me quite a bit of time to realise (with the help of GPT) that we humans have a pretty strong inductive bias here, is that all the events form a single chain:
Q: The red ball hit the green ball. The blue ball hit the red ball. The green ball fell into the hole. Does the order of sentences coincide with the time ordering of the events in this case, and why?
A: Yes, the order of the sentences does coincide with the time ordering of the events. This is because the events are listed in chronological order, so the first event listed (the red ball hitting the green ball) happened first, followed by the second event listed (the blue ball hitting the red ball), and finally the third event listed (the green ball falling into the hole).
Indeed, this now looks even more likely that the red ball has been hit by the blue ball after it has hit the green ball. Because if the three events make up a single chain, it’s very unnatural to switch around sentences like this.
I succeeded in convincing GPT that the blue ball has started the chain like this:
Q: The red ball hit the green ball. The blue ball hit the red ball, and it started moving. The green ball fell into the hole. Which ball has started the chain? A: The blue ball started the chain by hitting the red ball.
Oddly, I couldn’t elicit from it even with this phrasing that the order of events doesn’t coincide with the order of sentences, GPT insists that it does, and even when I ask it to explain it, it spits out nonsense:
Q: The red ball hit the green ball. The blue ball hit the red ball, and it started moving. The green ball fell into the hole. Why doesn’t the order of events coincide with the order of sentences in this case? A: The order of events does not coincide with the order of sentences in this case because the sentences are in the past tense.
Interesting. It took me quite a bit of time to realise (with the help of GPT) that we humans have a pretty strong inductive bias here, is that all the events form a single chain:
Indeed, this now looks even more likely that the red ball has been hit by the blue ball after it has hit the green ball. Because if the three events make up a single chain, it’s very unnatural to switch around sentences like this.
I succeeded in convincing GPT that the blue ball has started the chain like this:
Oddly, I couldn’t elicit from it even with this phrasing that the order of events doesn’t coincide with the order of sentences, GPT insists that it does, and even when I ask it to explain it, it spits out nonsense:
Yeah, the phrasing might not be as precise as we intended it to be.