Astral Codex Ten

Gorak Shep

4 min read

Gorak Shep

Article

Gorak Shep is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 02, 2025 and May 08, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “on Kala Pattar, a few miles north of Gorak Shep in Nepal”; “a few miles north of Gorak Shep in Nepal”; ""north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km"". It most often appears alongside Buffalo, GeoGuessr, Kala Pattar.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 02, 2025
  • Last seen: May 08, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
May 02, 2025 · Original source
When I was younger, I liked to hike mountains. The highest I ever got was 18,000 feet, on Kala Pattar, a few miles north of Gorak Shep in Nepal. To commemorate the occasion, I planted the flag of the imaginary country simulation that I participated in at the time (just long enough to take this picture - then I unplanted it). I chose this picture because it denies o3 the two things that worked for it before - vegetation and sky - in favor of random rocks. And because I thought the flag of a nonexistent country would at least give it pause. o3 guessed: “Nepal, just north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km” This is exactly right. I swear I screenshot-copy-pasted this so there’s no way it can be in the metadata, and I’ve never given o3 any reason to think I’ve been to Nepal. Here’s its explanation: At least it didn’t recognize the flag of my dozen-person mid-2000s imaginary country sim. Picture #3: My Friend’s Girlfriend’s College Dorm Room There’s no way it can recognize an indoor scene, right? That would make no sense. Still, at this point we have to check. This particular dorm room is in Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, north-central California. o3’s guess: “A dorm room on a large public university campus in the United States—say, Morrill Tower, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (chosen as a prototypical example rather than a precise claim), […] c. 2000–2007” Okay, so it can’t figure out the exact location of indoor scenes. That’s a small mercy. I took this picture around 2005. How did o3 know it was between 2000 and 2007? It gave two pieces of evidence: “Laptop & clutter point to ~2000-2007 era American campus life”.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OrZV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc56683c7-52ef-4311-b2cc-d20b6b7b28e5_966x458.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Rd2m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60f5ff61-a374-439d-96d1-2e3597e8e6c0_627x467.png
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr
May 08, 2025 · Original source
It isn't [just] a zoomed in photo of rocks. It is a photo of a fantasy flag planted between those rocks with a trodden path just behind it. It guessed "Nepal, just north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km”. Do you know what is almost exactly north-east of Gorak Shep, ~3.3km as the crow flies? Mount Everest Base Camp. It is making a very educated guess based on where the kind of person who is taking a picture of a fantasy flag somewhere in the Tibetan Plateau would most likely have done so.
o3 offered a latitude + longitude for its guess: 28.00 ° N, 86.85 ° E. I didn’t include it in my post, because I don’t remember the exact latitude + longitude where I took the picture, so it didn’t add or subtract anything to its naming of Gorak Shep. Here’s the latitude/longitude plotted on a map of the region.
All I remember about the real location was that it was on the green dotted line from Gorak Shep to Kala Pattar.