I've fought with this in informal (non-technical) sessions with ChatGPT, where I was asking analysis questions about... stuff that interests me... and ChatGPT would always reply:

"You're absolutely right!"

"You are asking exactly the right questions!"

"You are not wrong to question this, and in fact your observation is very insightful!"

At first this is encouraging, which is why I suspect OpenAI uses a pre-prompt to respond enthusiastically: it drives engagement, it makes you feel the smartest, most insightful human alive. You keep asking stuff because it makes you feel like a genius.

Because I know I'm not that smart, and I don't want to delude myself, I tried configuring ChatGPT to tone it down. Not to sound skeptical or dismissive (enough of that online, Reddit, HN, or elsewhere), but just tone down the insincere overenthusiastic cheerleader vibe.

Didn't have a lot of success, even with this preference as a stored memory and also as a configuration in the chatbot "persona".

Anyone had better luck?

I had some success with Claude in this regard. I simply told it to be blunt or face the consequences. The tweak was that I asked another LLM to translate my prompt to the most intimidating bureaucratic German possible. It worked.