[wrcwill]

ugh still fails my test prompt: https://chatgpt.com/share/689507c7-5394-8009-b836-c6281a246e...

"Assume the earth was just an ocean and you could travel by boat to any location. Your goal is to always stay in the sunlight, perpetually. Find the best strategy to keep your max speed as low as possible"

o3 pro gets it right though..

[syntaxbush]

Mine "thought" for 8 minutes and its conclusion was:

>So the “best possible” plan is: sit still all summer near a pole, slow-roll around the pole through equinox, then sprint westward across the low latitudes toward the other pole — with a peak westward speed up to ~1670 km/h.

Is this to your liking?

[wrcwill]

well no, thats where it gets confused. as soon as you sail across to the other pole you are forced to go up to a speed of 1670kmh.

when models try to be smart/creative they attempt to switch poles like that. in my example it even says that the max speed will be only a few km/h (since their strategy is to chill at the poles and then sail from north to south pole very slowly)

--

GPT-5 pro does get it right though! it even says this:

"Do not try to swap hemispheres to ride both polar summers. You’d have to cross the equator while staying in daylight, which momentarily forces a westward component near the equatorial rotation speed (~1668 km/h)—a much higher peak speed than the 663 km/h plan."

[Davidzheng]

I don't really understand gpt5's reasoning? does its soln not cross the equator ever? b/c if you cross you always have to do it in daylight so it's kind of strange to say that no? or it means you have to cross it on boundary of daylight or something

[Davidzheng]

oh like its solution is to stay in one hemisphere and just go in a circle following the day-night cycle i guess. but I don't see its reasoning as that rigorous that crossing must need this westward speed but probably i'm being dumb

[Davidzheng]

I guess one has to check that if you are spinning around at 23.5-epsilon angle and then do the dash down the 23.5-epsilon angle in one day from the other side you cannot beat your speed of staying in one hemisphere. you could dash straight down in 12-hour timeframe and it'll need like 343 m/s or 1233 km/h which is much too high. and diagonally probably doesn't help too much? But I think it means at some tilt angle it's worth doing this? does GPT5-pro know this angle?

[Davidzheng]

you include the tilt of axis I assume? Is the best solution of yours rigorous out of curiosity?