To be fair to the sycophancy tendencies, this was an open conjecture that held for 85 years, and not for lack of trying. So, maybe a bit warranted here? :)

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tptacek a day ago | parent | next [-]

I told GPT5.6 I came up with this walking down the street. "Jesus Christ" was its response.

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SubiculumCode a day ago | parent | next [-]

Lol, you must have some custom instructions on that beast, lol

	▲	tptacek 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		4.8 is much funnier: you have to convince it the counterexample is real, it keeps coming up with goofy excuses. As you talk it down, it keeps talking about its "discomfort" and "flinching".

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s1artibartfast a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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sosodev a day ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s the worst thing about sycophancy. You can never tell when it’s warranted or not. I imagine that many AI chats have had real gold in them and yet we’ll never know.

The same was obviously true historically. People have had many revolutionary thoughts or even writings that nobody noticed. I think in this case it just feels worse because the AI could be the perfect tool for discerning the diamonds in the rough.