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Comment by post-it | Hacker News Reader

> I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian. and not in a way that's useful either.

It's not admitting anything. Your question diverts it down a path where it acts the part of a former sycophant who is now being critical, because that question is now upstream of its current state.

Never make the mistake of asking an LLM about its intentions. It doesn't have any intentions, but your question will alter its behaviour.

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  > Your question diverts it down a path where it acts the part of a former sycophant who is now being critical

I think people really have a hard time understanding a sycophant can be contrarian. But a yesman can say yes by saying no

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484664

> a yesman can say yes by saying no

What a great way to summarize LLM behaviour in 2026

>> a yesman can say yes by saying no

>What a great way to summarize LLM behaviour in 2026

Well they have been trained on words spoken by humans and that has been a human behaviour since time immemorial. E.g.: "I do not agree with you that you were wrong. I do apologize for my strong disagreement but we actually do need your continued guidance desperately."

> It doesn't have any intentions

Yeah, and in a way it's even worse than that, since there's another layer of cognitive illusion: "It" doesn't exist.

The LLM algorithm is an ego-less document-generator, often applied to growing a document that resembles dialogue between two fictional characters.

So when your human-user character is "asking" the AI assistant character to explain its intentions, that's the same as asking a Count Dracula character to describe what it "really feels like" to become a cloud of bats.

You'll see something interesting, but it'll be what fits trained story-patterns rather than what any mind introspects or perceives.

> it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian

Which is also placating you

Yes exactly! It's very frustrating. My guess is it drives engagement. But some model that tells me what I want to hear all the time is useless.

An alternate way of thinking about it is LLMs have no reflection capability. Literally any “reflection” it claims to have about its decision making is made up. It has absolutely no way know that what it said was based on some ancient proverb, the phase of the moon or cold hard rational thought.

I think “admit” here is just a description of what the LLM was saying. It doesn’t imply that the OP thinks the LLM has internal beliefs matching that.

Correct, it's really anthropomorphizing what gets generated. It's another form of the "you're absolutely right" framing. The interesting thing is sometimes it won't do that. It'll continue to insist that some point or another is still a valid interpretation. I'm some ways it all feels like a complicated way of reading tea leaves

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