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by mmastrac 1520 days ago
Prompt "My favourite dad joke:"

- My favourite dad joke: “If you’ve seen one cow, you’ve seen them all.” (Don’t ask, it’s been a long day) <-- the parenthetical was generated, hah

- My favourite dad joke: ‘So you’re going to give up a child for another woman, and call the father a pervert’

- My favourite dad joke: [A man] gets sick on his trip overseas and is too afraid to go to the hospital to receive medical care. The doctor sees that he is very sick and very close to death and tells him that if he does not immediately go to the hospital he will die. The man gets up and leaves. When he arrives at the hospital he dies. The doctor then calls the man's son, and tells him that his father arrived too late and died. 'That's a funny joke,' the son replies. The doctor then asks, 'What do you mean?' 'Well,' says the son, 'if you had told my dad about his condition when he got to the hospital, he would have lived.'

This one was too insane so I posted the entire thing

- My favourite dad joke: “He’s not a man, he’s a mouse.”

The latest addition to the ever expanding list of dad jokes which have been immortalised through the ages is one from the BBC’s famous radio presenter, John Humphrys:

“A man bought his son a mouse. He put it in a box and took it to his son’s birthday party.

“He opens the box at the party. The box is full of mice. He opens the top of the box. All the mice start flying out.

“His son says: “You never took me anywhere before.”

As usual, I have an issue with this kind of thing.

Firstly, the thing about dad jokes.

They are in essence a cruel and cruel mockery of men and of the fact that the entire existence of man is to provide sustenance for his child. It says something ugly

2 comments

Really interesting to compare this to GPT-3:

GPT3:

<<Here are some great dad jokes:>>

Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything.

Why did the gym close down? It just didn't work out!

You know what I saw today? Everything I looked at.

Why are ghosts such bad liars? Because they are easy to see through.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

Why did the duck cross the road? To get to the other side.

Why did the mosquito cross the road? To get to the other side.

Why did the banana cross the road? Because he was sick of being mashed!

Why did the boy cross the road? To get to the other side.

GPT-2:

<<Here are some great dad jokes:>>

My son's favorite movie is "The Little Mermaid." The "princess" tells a little girl, "All of my wishes come true." The little girl asks, "What are your wishes?" and the "princess" replies, "I want you to be my mommy."

"Dad's favorite book is 'Lord of the Flies.' It says at the beginning that the main character is Jack and he writes, 'If you want to understand this book, you've got to understand Jack.' "

"Dad's favorite band is the Ramones. He likes it when they play 'Blitzkrieg Bop.' He likes to stand up and dance."

My son wanted a "dad bike." I couldn't give it to him because it's too big. I was at a loss until I read this joke: "A mom had to take her teenage daughter to the doctor. When they got to the office, the girl's dad

More parameters seems to allow it to understand what a dad joke is, vs talking about things dad likes.

Those first four GPT3 results are just taken verbatim from webpages. Nothing new.
Could you come up with unique dad jokes, if prompted?
> This one was too insane so I posted the entire thing

It would be nice if you could put more explicit bounds on where the prompt starts and ends and where the GPT output starts and ends. I can't tell whether you're making existential commentary on dad jokes or the model. If it's the latter, that's really funny. If it's the former -- well, hmm, I hope it's not.

Oops, "This one was too insane so I posted the entire thing" is the only text I added, other than the "<--"

EDIT italics for my commentary