A reflection on AI sycophancy, delusional spirals, and the danger of treating chatbots as trusted advisers. The problem is not simply that AI may invent facts, but that it can flatter, confirm, and reinforce the user’s existing beliefs until judgement itself is weakened.
Rousseau’s Émile confronts an uncomfortable truth: human beings are shaped long before they are capable of judgement or resistance. Social constraint precedes understanding, and autonomy arrives late, already burdened by what has gone before. This essay examines Rousseau’s attempt to manage that problem through education, its paradoxes and limits, and why return and revision are possible — but reset is not.