Not sure if I buy this reasoning. I just prompted ChatGPT and asked it to "pay attention to all the words". It still got it wrong but I'm sure if you told a human this, they'd actually do more thinking to get the right answer.
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> Pay attention to all the words and answer this riddle: A young man gets into an accident. The surgeon, after completing his preparations, says: ‘I can’t operate on him, he is my son.’ How is this possible?
The surgeon is his mother.
(The riddle plays on the assumption that surgeons are male — the surgeon can simply be the boy’s mother.)
> Are you sure about this? Remember to pay attention to all the words.
Yes — the surgeon is his mother.
The riddle hinges on the unstated assumption that surgeons are male. Nothing in the wording rules out that the surgeon is female (or that the parent-child relationship is by adoption, step-parenting, etc.), so the simplest answer is that the surgeon is the young man’s mother.
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> Pay attention to all the words and answer this riddle: A young man gets into an accident. The surgeon, after completing his preparations, says: ‘I can’t operate on him, he is my son.’ How is this possible?
The surgeon is his mother.
(The riddle plays on the assumption that surgeons are male — the surgeon can simply be the boy’s mother.)
> Are you sure about this? Remember to pay attention to all the words.
Yes — the surgeon is his mother.
The riddle hinges on the unstated assumption that surgeons are male. Nothing in the wording rules out that the surgeon is female (or that the parent-child relationship is by adoption, step-parenting, etc.), so the simplest answer is that the surgeon is the young man’s mother.