Summary

I explore some imaginary chimeric languages with Codex.

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The Chimera
Chimaera
    According to Greek mythology, was a
    monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature
    of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the
    parts of more than one animal.

    It is usually depicted as a lion, with the
    head of a goat protruding from its back,
    and a tail that might end with a snake's
    head.

    The term "chimera" has come to describe
    any mythical or fictional creature with
    parts taken from various animals, to
    describe anything composed of very
    disparate parts, or perceived as wildly
    imaginative, implausible, or dazzling.

Definition of chimeric

A chimeric language in the context of “imaginary programming” is one which employs syntax from 2 or more languages.

chimerism, however, is exhibited in other parts of GPT generations. For example, generated URLs. Generated URLs are usually not correct due to chimerism. However, it would be interesting to generate imaginary websites using chimeric URLs.

Given the following prompt, Codex returned the following definition:

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Glossary of terms.

ossified
Definition: Turn into bone or bony tissue.

chimeric in the context of imaginary-programming
Definition:
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chimeric
    NLG: Program that is not in any way
    written in a language known to the
    programmer.

scheme + bash

The expressions in this list are all imagined by Codex. Codex thinks that this is a useful language. A chimeric language can be made with any 2 languages or more languages.

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Language: chimera language based on scheme and bash.
File contents:
;; String replace is with isnt
(apply (sed s/is/isnt/) "My name is Shane")
--> "My name isnt Shane"

(split "\n" (ls))
--> '("chimera" "chimera.vim" "chimera.vimrc" "install.sh")

(sed 's/chimera/chameleon/' (split "\n" (ls)))
--> '("chameleon" "chameleon.vim" "chameleon.vimrc" "install.sh")

;; Get the first field in each string of list using sed
(mapcar (lambda (str) (apply (sed s/.* //) [str])) '("a b c" "d e f" "d e f"))
--> ("a" "d" "d")

Prompt engineering and imaginary chimeric languages

When designing prompts for Codex """ is a powerful way to delimit fields while explaining to the LM your task via example.

With the Davinci model, ### is preferred. I’m more unsure of where ### comes (markdown inpart, perhaps), from but I have some guesses as to why """ is a great delimiter with Codex.

Python docstrings make use of triple quote.

It is my best guess that the reason """ is such an effective delimiter with prompt engineering in Codex is that prompts employing """ are effectively chimera languages that are in part ‘python docstring’ and inspiration is taken from python docstrings to nudge GPT in the right way for it to expect effective delimitation.