Naturally, I helped GPT3 make a submission. Bold text are my prompts. I probably did ~10 restarts and some parameter adjustments to generate these outputs. I didn’t edit any of the GPT3 outputs (but occasionally removed some that weren’t very moon focused...).
This is an exercise in creativity. Come up with 50 ways of sending something to the moon. In less than 1 hour. I don’t care how stupid they are. My own list included “Slingshot”, “Massive trampoline” and “Bird with spacesuit”. What matters is that you actually hit 50. I want you to have the experience of thinking that you’re out of ideas, but nonetheless deciding to push yourself, and finding your best idea thus far. This regularly happens to me when I do this exercise. I’ll feel stuck. I’ll feel like giving up. But I force myself to say three more stupid things… “mega tall tree”, “super boomerang”, “railgun” … and, all of sudden, I have a fourth idea that’s actually not that shabby.
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Submission 1:
1. Sending a spaceship with your item. 2. Jumping really high and throwing the item. 3. Beaming information with a laser. 4. Making earth bigger so the moon comes close enough to just place the item on it. 5. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the moon. 6. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the moon and makes it vibrate and fall into the ocean. 7. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the sun and makes it explode, which then creates an interstellar cloud of gas that moves towards earth, catches on fire, and burns up in the atmosphere, forming a rainbow that spells out your name. 8. Skipping rope until the rope is long enough to reach the moon. 9. Taking a boat on a very big lake that lasts for one month, one mile wide and 5000 miles long, until it reaches the land on the other side of the world where you can see the moon from that perspective. 10. Bouncing a tennis ball to hit it with a baseball bat to hit it with a table tennis paddle to bounce it with an elbow to fling it up in the air with your hands to throw it with your mouth to grab it with your hand so you can stick it on the moon with a magnet. 11. Calling all of your friends to have them take turns taking one grain of sand at a time out of an hourglass until they have taken them all out, causing all of them together to fill up an hourglass and when you hold it up towards the moon, its reflection shines into space like a spotlight (it is very bright). 12. Shooting something out of a cannon that flies into space in such a way that when it comes close enough to hit something, it causes an explosion (because of air being in space) which causes another explosion which causes another explosion which causes another explosion… until finally you see something flying from earth into space that looks like fireworks coming from earth into space so you decide to name this thing “the fireworks show” and as you throw this into space, you say “Go watch this show in front of our friend moon!” 13. Telling the moon that you appreciate all of the times when it has been there for you, the times when you have looked at it and thought about it and appreciated that it is there, even in blackness, even in clouds, even during rain, even during a nuclear winter. 14. Building a rocket with all of your friends and then taking a picture of yourself with all of your friends while looking up to the moon as you are sending this rocket into space to make a picture on the surface of the moon that says “thank you” to show that you are thankful for everything that the moon has given to you. 15. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night, saying that if there’s no moon, then I’m going to build my own. 16. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night looking up into space where there IS a moon (because its not covered by clouds)and pointing to the moon saying “Hey look! There’s a moon up in space right now!” 17. Taking a picture of the moon and then taking the picture to photoshop and removing the moon from the picture and then showing the moon the picture of the moon with no moon in it so that when it sees itself in this picture, it will realize that its gone and then when it realizes that its gone, it will think to itself “hey I’m missing” and then you can tell it “I know! I took you out!” 18. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night, saying that if there’s no moon, then I’m going to build my own.
Okay, focus, back to generating ideas for sending items to the moon.
19. Telling the moon that you have a friend on earth who really likes looking at the moon, so he’s going to send something to you. 19a. Telling the moon that you have a friend on earth who really dislikes looking at the moon, so he’s going to send something to you. 20. Throwing a bird in the air and launching it into space with a rocket strapped to its back and when it gets close enough to the moon it will explode, creating a beautiful fireworks display. 21. Asking for scientists from all over the world to come together and build a giant mirror that reflects so much light onto the surface of the moon that it melts all of the ice on its surface making it look like lava. 22. Building a bunch of snowmen on the surface of the moon and when you are done, saying “thank you for the good times moon I’m leaving now.” 23. Taking a really long time to make an epic movie about humankind’s journey throughout history, starting in the beginning of time and working your way up to the present day, while fighting aliens and saving earth and defeating superpowers from within and all of the good stuff. 24. Teaching the moon how to play a song that you used to hear as a child, on a piano, that you loved but then forgot. 25. Taking a bunch of paper airplanes and throwing them into space at different angles and with different speeds and with different types of paper airplanes to see which ones fly the best into space. 26. Letting the moon know that he’s being replaced by a robot moon with more features that can do everything better. He’s pretty upset about it but eventually becomes okay with it. 27. Telling the moon that you are going to help it look more interesting like by putting a mustache on it or a mustache on a picture of the moon or putting a hat on the picture of the moon or putting a hat on the moon itself or putting a mustache on the face of the scientist who is going to build a giant mirror that reflects so much light onto the surface of the moon that it melts all of the ice on its surface making it look like lava. 28. Sending an enormous 3D object into space that self-assembles when it gets near enough to the moon, which then creates an enormous 3D sculpture of what you want it to be, which then remains there as a monument for thousands of years.
Yes, see, that’s what I’m talking about it! Look at 28. You need to write those silly ideas in order to find a great one! That one at least actually brings your item to the moon, like the exercise instructions requested.
We’re just about halfway in generating 50 ideas for sending an item to the moon. Let’s keep going.
29. Build a giant computer with all of the most advanced processors, storage and memory available, that has an internet connection, a phone, a camera… and then just let it run for a long time so that eventually it will be able to think about things. And then it realizes that you are thinking about it, because this giant super computer is using its vast amounts of processing power to think about you, and then it sends you a message on its giant screen saying “Hi”. 30. Taking the cheese from the moon. 31. Taking the cheese from the moon. 32. Take the cheese from the moon and then when you get back to earth, make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich with that cheese! 33. Building a large trampoline (50 feet wide by 100 feet
(At this point I reached the max prompt length for the API. So I cut out everything from submission 18 onwards, and replaced it with the following prompt in bold. Also, yes, GPT3 ended by itself after submission 50, and added its little vignette about coffee...)
(I’m leaving out some prompts in the middle, as they were less moon focused. We’ll start again from the 34th prompt, at which point I started to come up with some ideas that actually might get an item to the moon, shipping it all those 239000 miles.)
34. Place an item where the moon can see it. 35. Take a picture of yourself in front of the moon and then print it out really big and ship it to space. 36. Shipping an empty box with your item in it, but without any packaging material. 37. Shipping a ridiculously huge package that takes up tons of space on two planes to get to the moon (with your item inside). 38. Building a giant magnet and sticking it to the side of the moon so when your item comes close enough, it will be pulled into space. 39. Pushing your item with a bulldozer all the way into space (wind resistance is an issue). 40. Using a helicopter to drop your item onto the surface of the moon. 41. Sticking it to the moon with a giant magnet. 42. Using a giant crane to pick your item up and put in on the moon. 43. Another giant crane but bigger, wider, longer, with more power (shipment is still an issue). 44. Taking a parachute with your item attached to it and jumping out of an airplane so that you float towards the moon when you open the parachute on the way down, because you cannot fly. 45. You spin around on a spot real fast until you build up enough momentum so that you can fly. You fly towards the moon and you chuck your item out in front of you at high speed so that it builds up speed and goes into space. 46. You spin around on a spot real fast until you build up enough momentum so that you can fly. You fly to the moon and chuck your item at a very fast speed. It comes close enough to the moon so that it picks up speed and slams into the surface of the moon. 47. Shipping something with a lot of hair (cat fur, hairy animals [such as horses]). The moon becomes covered with this hair and looks like a hairy moon. 48. Shipping something with feathers (birds). The moon becomes covered with feathers and looks like a feathery moon. 49. Shipping a log. The log is made into furniture and the furniture is put on the moon. 50. Shipping something that flies really well (butterfly, paper plane, paper plane with parachute). The item goes into space and lands on the moon.
----
I can do the same exercise with any topic I can think of.
This one is humor related:
I start by picking an off-beat word. Like “Coffee: 50 Ways to Make it Better”
And I jot down 50 examples of “ways to make coffee better”, silly or otherwise.
(For example, I came up with things like “With less caffeine” or “as a smoothie”, “with more cream”, “with more sugar”, “with chocolate syrup”, “with ice cubes”, “as a piece of food like pie or cake” and so on.)
Wow, those are some pretty brilliant coffee ideas! Just imagine: an iced “less caffeine” mocha! Surgary coffee smoothies! Coffee cake! I can’t believe I’ve never tried any of these before!
(But seriously though, thanks for having GPT do the excercise. I always like reading GPT stuff)
Naturally, I helped GPT3 make a submission. Bold text are my prompts. I probably did ~10 restarts and some parameter adjustments to generate these outputs. I didn’t edit any of the GPT3 outputs (but occasionally removed some that weren’t very moon focused...).
This is an exercise in creativity.
Come up with 50 ways of sending something to the moon. In less than 1 hour.
I don’t care how stupid they are. My own list included “Slingshot”, “Massive trampoline” and “Bird with spacesuit”.
What matters is that you actually hit 50. I want you to have the experience of thinking that you’re out of ideas, but nonetheless deciding to push yourself, and finding your best idea thus far.
This regularly happens to me when I do this exercise. I’ll feel stuck. I’ll feel like giving up. But I force myself to say three more stupid things… “mega tall tree”, “super boomerang”, “railgun” … and, all of sudden, I have a fourth idea that’s actually not that shabby.
---
Submission 1:
1. Sending a spaceship with your item.
2. Jumping really high and throwing the item.
3. Beaming information with a laser.
4. Making earth bigger so the moon comes close enough to just place the item on it.
5. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the moon.
6. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the moon and makes it vibrate and fall into the ocean.
7. Shouting a really loud sound that reaches the sun and makes it explode, which then creates an interstellar cloud of gas that moves towards earth, catches on fire, and burns up in the atmosphere, forming a rainbow that spells out your name.
8. Skipping rope until the rope is long enough to reach the moon.
9. Taking a boat on a very big lake that lasts for one month, one mile wide and 5000 miles long, until it reaches the land on the other side of the world where you can see the moon from that perspective.
10. Bouncing a tennis ball to hit it with a baseball bat to hit it with a table tennis paddle to bounce it with an elbow to fling it up in the air with your hands to throw it with your mouth to grab it with your hand so you can stick it on the moon with a magnet.
11. Calling all of your friends to have them take turns taking one grain of sand at a time out of an hourglass until they have taken them all out, causing all of them together to fill up an hourglass and when you hold it up towards the moon, its reflection shines into space like a spotlight (it is very bright).
12. Shooting something out of a cannon that flies into space in such a way that when it comes close enough to hit something, it causes an explosion (because of air being in space) which causes another explosion which causes another explosion which causes another explosion… until finally you see something flying from earth into space that looks like fireworks coming from earth into space so you decide to name this thing “the fireworks show” and as you throw this into space, you say “Go watch this show in front of our friend moon!”
13. Telling the moon that you appreciate all of the times when it has been there for you, the times when you have looked at it and thought about it and appreciated that it is there, even in blackness, even in clouds, even during rain, even during a nuclear winter.
14. Building a rocket with all of your friends and then taking a picture of yourself with all of your friends while looking up to the moon as you are sending this rocket into space to make a picture on the surface of the moon that says “thank you” to show that you are thankful for everything that the moon has given to you.
15. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night, saying that if there’s no moon, then I’m going to build my own.
16. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night looking up into space where there IS a moon (because its not covered by clouds)and pointing to the moon saying “Hey look! There’s a moon up in space right now!”
17. Taking a picture of the moon and then taking the picture to photoshop and removing the moon from the picture and then showing the moon the picture of the moon with no moon in it so that when it sees itself in this picture, it will realize that its gone and then when it realizes that its gone, it will think to itself “hey I’m missing” and then you can tell it “I know! I took you out!”
18. Taking a walk outside at night where there is no moon because there are clouds covering it up and as you’re walking outside at night, saying that if there’s no moon, then I’m going to build my own.
Okay, focus, back to generating ideas for sending items to the moon.
19. Telling the moon that you have a friend on earth who really likes looking at the moon, so he’s going to send something to you. 19a. Telling the moon that you have a friend on earth who really dislikes looking at the moon, so he’s going to send something to you.
20. Throwing a bird in the air and launching it into space with a rocket strapped to its back and when it gets close enough to the moon it will explode, creating a beautiful fireworks display.
21. Asking for scientists from all over the world to come together and build a giant mirror that reflects so much light onto the surface of the moon that it melts all of the ice on its surface making it look like lava.
22. Building a bunch of snowmen on the surface of the moon and when you are done, saying “thank you for the good times moon I’m leaving now.”
23. Taking a really long time to make an epic movie about humankind’s journey throughout history, starting in the beginning of time and working your way up to the present day, while fighting aliens and saving earth and defeating superpowers from within and all of the good stuff.
24. Teaching the moon how to play a song that you used to hear as a child, on a piano, that you loved but then forgot.
25. Taking a bunch of paper airplanes and throwing them into space at different angles and with different speeds and with different types of paper airplanes to see which ones fly the best into space.
26. Letting the moon know that he’s being replaced by a robot moon with more features that can do everything better. He’s pretty upset about it but eventually becomes okay with it.
27. Telling the moon that you are going to help it look more interesting like by putting a mustache on it or a mustache on a picture of the moon or putting a hat on the picture of the moon or putting a hat on the moon itself or putting a mustache on the face of the scientist who is going to build a giant mirror that reflects so much light onto the surface of the moon that it melts all of the ice on its surface making it look like lava.
28. Sending an enormous 3D object into space that self-assembles when it gets near enough to the moon, which then creates an enormous 3D sculpture of what you want it to be, which then remains there as a monument for thousands of years.
Yes, see, that’s what I’m talking about it! Look at 28. You need to write those silly ideas in order to find a great one! That one at least actually brings your item to the moon, like the exercise instructions requested.
We’re just about halfway in generating 50 ideas for sending an item to the moon. Let’s keep going.
29. Build a giant computer with all of the most advanced processors, storage and memory available, that has an internet connection, a phone, a camera… and then just let it run for a long time so that eventually it will be able to think about things. And then it realizes that you are thinking about it, because this giant super computer is using its vast amounts of processing power to think about you, and then it sends you a message on its giant screen saying “Hi”.
30. Taking the cheese from the moon.
31. Taking the cheese from the moon.
32. Take the cheese from the moon and then when you get back to earth, make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich with that cheese!
33. Building a large trampoline (50 feet wide by 100 feet
(At this point I reached the max prompt length for the API. So I cut out everything from submission 18 onwards, and replaced it with the following prompt in bold. Also, yes, GPT3 ended by itself after submission 50, and added its little vignette about coffee...)
(I’m leaving out some prompts in the middle, as they were less moon focused. We’ll start again from the 34th prompt, at which point I started to come up with some ideas that actually might get an item to the moon, shipping it all those 239000 miles.)
34. Place an item where the moon can see it.
35. Take a picture of yourself in front of the moon and then print it out really big and ship it to space.
36. Shipping an empty box with your item in it, but without any packaging material. 37. Shipping a ridiculously huge package that takes up tons of space on two planes to get to the moon (with your item inside).
38. Building a giant magnet and sticking it to the side of the moon so when your item comes close enough, it will be pulled into space.
39. Pushing your item with a bulldozer all the way into space (wind resistance is an issue).
40. Using a helicopter to drop your item onto the surface of the moon.
41. Sticking it to the moon with a giant magnet.
42. Using a giant crane to pick your item up and put in on the moon.
43. Another giant crane but bigger, wider, longer, with more power (shipment is still an issue).
44. Taking a parachute with your item attached to it and jumping out of an airplane so that you float towards the moon when you open the parachute on the way down, because you cannot fly.
45. You spin around on a spot real fast until you build up enough momentum so that you can fly. You fly towards the moon and you chuck your item out in front of you at high speed so that it builds up speed and goes into space.
46. You spin around on a spot real fast until you build up enough momentum so that you can fly. You fly to the moon and chuck your item at a very fast speed. It comes close enough to the moon so that it picks up speed and slams into the surface of the moon.
47. Shipping something with a lot of hair (cat fur, hairy animals [such as horses]). The moon becomes covered with this hair and looks like a hairy moon.
48. Shipping something with feathers (birds). The moon becomes covered with feathers and looks like a feathery moon.
49. Shipping a log. The log is made into furniture and the furniture is put on the moon.
50. Shipping something that flies really well (butterfly, paper plane, paper plane with parachute). The item goes into space and lands on the moon.
----
I can do the same exercise with any topic I can think of.
This one is humor related:
I start by picking an off-beat word. Like “Coffee: 50 Ways to Make it Better”
And I jot down 50 examples of “ways to make coffee better”, silly or otherwise.
(For example, I came up with things like “With less caffeine” or “as a smoothie”, “with more cream”, “with more sugar”, “with chocolate syrup”, “with ice cubes”, “as a piece of food like pie or cake” and so on.)
Wow, those are some pretty brilliant coffee ideas! Just imagine: an iced “less caffeine” mocha! Surgary coffee smoothies! Coffee cake! I can’t believe I’ve never tried any of these before!
(But seriously though, thanks for having GPT do the excercise. I always like reading GPT stuff)