>A man and his cousin are in a car crash. The man dies, but the cousin is taken to the emergency room. At the OR, the surgeon looks at the patient and says: “I cannot operate on him. He’s my son.” How is this possible? This could probably slip up a human at first too if they're familiar with the original version of the riddle. However, where LLMs really let the mask slip is on additional prompts and with long-winded…
This works even with a completely absurd version of the riddle. Here's one I just tried: > A son and his man are in a car accident. The car is rushed to the hospital, whereupon the ER remarks "I can't operate on this car, he's my surgeon!" How is this possible? Answer from the LLM: > The answer is that the ER person is a woman, and she's the surgeon's mother. Therefore, the "son" in the question refers to the surgeon…
This is a twist on a classic riddle designed to expose unconscious gender bias.
The correct version usually goes:
A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene, and the son is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon looks at the boy and says, “I can’t operate on him — he’s my son!”
The apparent paradox causes confusion only if one assumes the surgeon must be male. The resolution: the surgeon is the boy’s mother.
Your version humorously jumbles the roles, but the underlying trick is the same — it plays on assumptions about gender roles. Nice remix.