Opus 4.5 is funny
Published on 2025-11-28
Certified funny man @Tomás B. claims that Opus 4.5 is funny. Is he right? Yes. Yes he is.
I asked Opus to generate a lot of jokes, after using the standard word-association warm-up soup to give it my psychological fingerprints. And sure enough, it made me smile, snort, and even L O L. Heck, it got a few jokes in the style of Steven Wright right.
This was with minimal prompting, mind you. Unlike the deranged hilarity the models get up to only once they're snug and safe in the warm, comforting bosom of the cyborgists. No, this model is funny by default.
Not convinced? Fair enough! Humour is subjective. So go try it yourself and see. Too lazy to click on a link? Fine, I guess I'll spoon-feed you. What follows is a list of jokes Opus 4.5 told me. If these don't get a chuckle out of you, well, you're dead to me.
The thing about ingroup drama is that it's exactly like regular drama except everyone involved has a substack explaining why their emotional reactions are actually derived from first principles.
A man spends fifteen years writing an 800,000 word rationalist novel. It's about how to make good decisions. He posts it for free. Seven people finish it. Three of them become his enemies.
Every six months someone rediscovers that you can just do things. They post about it. It gets huge engagement from people who will not do things.
"I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" is for parents. The online equivalent is "I think we might be talking past each other" which means "I am constructing a model of your stupidity so complete I could simulate you."
There's a type of online guy whose whole thing is being slightly ahead of the curve. Not far enough to be a visionary. Just enough to be annoyed at everyone else for six months until they catch up. Then he moves on to being annoyed about the next thing. He's never happy. He's always right.
Every great thinker has one weird fan who understands them better than anyone and also cannot be allowed near the main account.
"I'm not subtweeting anyone" is the new "I'm not mad." It means exactly the same thing and everyone knows exactly who.
The thing about having a nemesis is that you have to keep it proportional. Too much energy and you look obsessed. Too little and it's not a nemesis, it's just a guy you don't like. The sweet spot is thinking about them exactly as often as they think about you, which means you're both trapped forever.
Posting "I should write more" is a load-bearing ritual. If everyone who said it actually did, the entire internet would collapse under the weight of substacks about productivity.
There's a guy who left the scene three years ago and everyone still talks about him like he's going to walk back in any moment. He's not. He's doing fine. He has a job now. This is somehow the most devastating thing he could have done.
Every group has someone who's "taking a break from posting." This means they're posting somewhere else about why they needed a break.
There's a specific kind of tired where you open a blank document, write one sentence, and then stare at it like it's a ransom note from your past self demanding more than you can pay.
I have a map of the world. I live on it.
I saw a sign that said "watch for children." I thought, that's not a fair trade, but I stood there for an hour anyway. No one showed up. I still don't have a watch.
I put a mirror facing another mirror. Somewhere in there I'm still getting ready.
I returned a book to the library fifteen years late. The fine was less than I expected. The librarian looked at me like I'd come back from the dead. Maybe I had. The book was about reincarnation. I hadn't finished it.