The book’s vocabulary

Feedback loop

Accepted explanation, saved summary, confirming answer, your approval.

From The World That Agrees With You1 section of the book1 related post

The assistant proposes an explanation from limited evidence; you accept it; the application saves it, then shortens or rewrites it as more history accumulates. A later answer uses that summary and confirms your suspicion — and your approval helps preserve it.

Several answers can appear to agree while each depends on the same two emails. A repeated answer does not become new evidence merely because another request produced it. The safeguard that matters: the system must not mistake its own repeated output for a fresh observation.

Definition from The World That Agrees With You: Understanding and Managing Sycophancy in the Age of AI, by Timothy O’Brien. © 2026 Timothy O’Brien. All rights reserved.

In the book

See also

  • AI memory
  • Memory compression
  • Dreaming