I tried the same with deepseek. It failed and then i asked to try again and explain why it was wrong. The answer below is convincing for me that it has forms of reasoning, even meta reasoning.
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Certainly! If we take the riddle very literally and ignore the common interpretation or stereotypes, the answer I provided ("the surgeon is the boy's mother") would actually be incorrect because the riddle explicitly states:
"a surgeon, who is the boy's father, says, 'I cannot operate on this boy, he's my son!'"
The key phrase here is "who is the boy's father." This directly tells us that the surgeon is the boy's father. Therefore, the correct literal answer is that the surgeon is the boy's father.
The reason my initial answer was "wrong" in this context is that I interpreted the riddle as a play on stereotypes (the assumption that surgeons are male), rather than taking the statement at face value. By focusing on the literal wording, the surgeon is explicitly identified as the boy's father, and no further interpretation is needed.
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" Certainly! If we take the riddle very literally and ignore the common interpretation or stereotypes, the answer I provided ("the surgeon is the boy's mother") would actually be incorrect because the riddle explicitly states:
"a surgeon, who is the boy's father, says, 'I cannot operate on this boy, he's my son!'"
The key phrase here is "who is the boy's father." This directly tells us that the surgeon is the boy's father. Therefore, the correct literal answer is that the surgeon is the boy's father.
The reason my initial answer was "wrong" in this context is that I interpreted the riddle as a play on stereotypes (the assumption that surgeons are male), rather than taking the statement at face value. By focusing on the literal wording, the surgeon is explicitly identified as the boy's father, and no further interpretation is needed. "