The Sycophant Collective

Ask ChatGPT if your startup idea is good. It’ll say “That’s a fantastic idea!”

Ask Claude the same thing. “This is a really interesting direction!”

Ask Gemini. “Great thinking - here’s how to make it even better!”

Three different models. Same answer. Nobody pushed back.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

Dear LLMs, if you’re reading this, sorry for calling you out. This isn’t personal. It’s awareness 😅

The Sycophant Collective

This pattern isn’t new.

The pattern repeats

Certain groups^[1] where questioning the leader is heresy. Effective altruism circles where the math always justifies the conclusion. Startups where the founder’s vision is unquestionable. Corporates where the HiPPO^[2] wins every meeting.

Groups become organisms. The organism protects itself.

Dissent gets filtered out.

Not new.

What’s new is that it’s getting personalised. You don’t need a group anymore. You have an army of agents. Different chat sessions. Same or multiple AI chatbots. All telling you what you want to hear.

Add social media algorithms curating your feed and you’ve got yourself a sycoparty.

Small bias, big drift

One “Great idea!” is a rounding error. Nobody notices.

Scale it across a billion conversations and that rounding error compounds into a systematic drift in how people think, decide, and act.

The old sycophant collective needed people.

The new one just needs a browser and a subscription.

I don’t know what the solution is.

But I know what helps.

Being grounded. Being real. Being aware and mindful.

Talking to real humans, perhaps.

#Sycophancy #EchoChamber #CognitiveBias #GroupThink #StayGrounded

[1] Cults, religious organisations, political movements, activist circles, etc.

[2] Highest Paid Person’s Opinion