Where the goblins came from • Hacker News Board

Re: Where the goblins came from

#131

Post by zozbot234 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

christoph wrote: post #82

ollin wrote: post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

Spoiler: future versions of mainstream AIs will be fine tuned in the exact same way to subtly sneak in favorable mentions of sponsored products as part of their answers. And Chinese open-weight AIs will do the exact same thing, only about China, the Chinese government and the overarching themes of Xi Jinping Thought.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#132

Post by card_zero » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

xerox13ster wrote: post #125

card_zero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no word anthropodes. :) I guess it would mean man-feet. Antipodes is opposite-feet, literally. Synthetipologist looks to me like a portmanteau of synthetic and apologist. Otherwise the -po- in it comes from nowhere. Sensible boring versions of this like synthesilogy just end up meaning the study of synthesis. I reckon instead do something with Talos, the man made of bronze who guarded Crete from pirates and…

yeah I realized that when I looked up podes downthread. I still like synthetologist better than talologist, in general no one in the common folk knows who Talos is.

You're probably right. There's things that are correct, and then there's things people think they know, which win and become true. We already have "synths", after all, which are keyboards. Though that adds to the vagueness of synthetologist, because maybe it refers to Rick Wakeman or Giorgio Moroder.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#133

Post by ACV001 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

those idiotic remarks at the end of each answer are so unnecessary and annoying

Re: Where the goblins came from

#134

Post by atollk » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

christoph wrote: post #82

ollin wrote: post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

It can be funny but it should not be surprising. That's what happened about ten years ago too, when Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and so on were the hype. Big tech companies publicly tried to outclass each other has having the best AI, so it was not about doing proper research and development, it was about building hacks, like giant regex databases for request matching.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#135

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

ollin wrote: post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

[deleted]

Re: Where the goblins came from

#136

Post by daishi55 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

boomlinde wrote: post #118

tdeck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the "prompt engineering" that I keep hearing will be an indispensable job skill for software engineers in the AI-driven future? I had better start learning or I'll be replaced by someone who has.

I wonder how much energy OpenAI spends each day on pink elephant paradoxing goblins. A prompt like that will preoccupy the LLM with goblins on every request.

I mean probably not or they wouldn’t have shipped it, right?

Re: Where the goblins came from

#137

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #107

ggsp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with your sentiment, I think synthetologist (σύνθετος/synthetos + λογία/logia) flows better. The plural of anthropos is anthropoi, not anthropodes.

But since when is there a synthetos? Since right now, I guess. Shrug But you know it's from the same root as thesis, and synthesis (or a more proper ancient Greek spelling) is the noun and doesn't end in -os. σύνθεσις (súnthesis, “a putting together; composition”), says Wiktionary. Oh wait there is a σύνθετος, but it's an adjective for "composite". Hmm, OK. Modern Greek, looks like.

[deleted]

Re: Where the goblins came from

#138

Post by bahadiraydin » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

I'd like to see them explain why AI have so distinctive writing style that is very easy to detect most of the time. Even though, it had immense progress in coding, it didn't get better at writing.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#139

Post by deafpolygon » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

Kind of like how everything is "quietly" something, accordingly to ChatGPT.

My guess is it is deaf.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#140

Post by Nition » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

christoph wrote: post #82

ollin wrote: post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

It certainly doesn't increase my confidence that if they do ever create a superintelligence, that it won't have some weird unforseen preference that'll end up with us all dead.