This is a special post for quick takes by breaker25. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Transformer LLM have no middle ground. Without extensive customization you can expect the full sycophantic "helpful" (engagement/reward-optimized/hacked) response OR You can ask for the 10th man opinion, the devil's advocate, the contrarian view. I have yet to see continual reliable balanced middle ground responses without extensive prompting and context loading. Even then it's extremely hit or miss. Training biases and RLHF make LLM pretty inept in groundbreaking fields. The sycophanty self check "You've been agreeing for several turns now, you're fucking with me aren't you?", can't get exhausting after a while.