The book’s vocabulary

Institutional sycophancy

Warnings that fail to reach the people approving the decision.

From The World That Agrees With You3 sections of the book2 related posts

Agreement organized into the workflow of an organization: reports softened to fit what leaders welcome, warnings that fail to reach the people approving the decision.

The Challenger comparison supplies the shape: professional judgment yielded to the preferred outcome, and serious objections did not carry forward to everyone responsible. It works without compliments — by accommodating the decision and leaving the objection out. An AI assessment can fail in the same two ways.

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

  • Useful disagreement
  • The wrong test
  • AI slop