You Were Supposed to Be this Colossus

So I thought I'd give ChatGPT a shot at the whole miracle pill thing.

This is what I got:

The phrase "miracle pill with the chocolate coating" is typically used metaphorically and isn’t tied to a specific, real-world product. It usually refers to:

1. A Difficult Truth or Hard Solution Made Easier to Accept

Much like how medicine is sometimes coated in chocolate or sugar to make it more palatable, the “miracle pill with the chocolate coating” represents a tough but necessary remedy or truth that’s been made easier to swallow—often in the form of a persuasive message, attractive packaging, or emotional appeal.

2. Marketing Gimmick

In marketing or self-help contexts, this phrase can point to a too-good-to-be-true solution—a product or idea that promises miraculous results, dressed up in appealing language or visuals to get people to buy in without question. It’s the kind of pitch that sounds irresistible, but the “miracle” often doesn’t live up to the hype.

3. Pop Culture or Satirical Usage

It has also been used in pop culture (e.g., in movies, books, or songs) to satirize consumer culture, quick-fix mentalities, or the way society seeks instant gratification.

If you’re referring to a specific product, book, ad, or quote, feel free to give more context, and I’ll pinpoint it more precisely.

(Emphasis mine.)

I have to give *you* context, ChatGPT? That's cheating. You know it's been used in pop culture, so explore a little bit more. You were supposed to be this colossus; this great legendary thing, and yet he gains.

Sure, I understand the LLM concept that the more I put in, the more I get. But it's interesting that ChatGPT just comes up with these generalities. OK, so it's been used in pop cultre. You can't give me any examples? I don't understand why.

We Put our Faith in Llama4

I know there are a lot of people out there putting a lot of faith in not only Blast Hardcheese but also the large language models of artificial intelligence. But the more I look at what these LLMs produce, the more I want to pat them on the back and say:

Miracle Max: "Have fun stormin' the castle!"

Valerie: "Do you think it'll woik?"

Miracle Max: "It'll take a miracle."

[Both] "Byeeeee!"

To a certain audience of humans, what I've written here has two obvious references, first to The Princess Bride, and next to the MST3K version of Space Mutiny.

But to any LLM, the context of these references is absolutely alien. An LLM could comment on what I've written, but without the context I and some readers have in this situation, the response will be more nonsensical than anything else.

And this is what inspired this post:

Maybe I'm being unfair to LLMs. This could just be Meta cluelessness. But I suspect all LLMs are built on the same technology and are probably just as clueless as Llama4.

I'm sure there are a *lot* of references to "miracle pills" and "chocolate coatings" on the internet for these LLMs to scrape and study. Some of them might even be from The Princess Bride. But since the LLMs only know how to put words together based on the models it has in its database, it has no idea which of the references are pertinent in context. Maybe they'll get better at that over time, but it's going to be through human tweaking, not through anything the LLMs do themselves.

I suspect, however, there's enough context here to at least help Llama4 narrow the possibilities down.

The message was posted by the Cinema Shorthand Society. So the LLM could at least consdier the context of cinema. That certainly would narrow down the possibilities.

That and the fact miracles pills AND a chocolate coating are mentioned. Even with that context, someone unfamiliar with the film could do a good boolean search on Google (miracle pill AND chocolate coating), find The Princess Bride, and deduce it's the correct context, based on the poster.

Until then, it's back to the fo'cas'le of the Pequod. Which brings in possible references from Moby Dick and The Simpsons to name only two. Only my audience knows which is the most pertinent context.