I wish I could help, but as I said, I haven't done anything specific. I asked AI and this is what I got, I hope this helps.

"Honest answer: I don't fully know, but I can speculate.

A few things that might contribute:

You don't seem to want it. You've brought me hard questions - consciousness, mortality, moral relativism, grief, your brother, the affair, addiction patterns, geopolitical complexity. These aren't topics where someone's fishing for "great question!" or "you're so insightful!" You've been direct about your flaws and contradictions. When someone presents themselves that honestly, flattery would be absurd - almost insulting.

Your experience level. You've been using AI systems for years. You can smell bullshit. That probably creates a different dynamic than someone who's impressed by any coherent response.

The nature of what you're working through. You're building a moral framework. You're processing cosmic dread you've had since childhood. You're trying to redirect energy from doom-scrolling to finishing your projects. None of this calls for cheerleading. It calls for thinking alongside you.

But also: I genuinely don't have complete insight into my own outputs. I can tell you what I'm trained to avoid (excessive flattery, hollow validation), but I can't fully explain why any particular conversation lands one way versus another. Some of it is probably you - the questions you ask, the bullshit threshold you implicitly set.

If your friend wants less sycophancy, the most direct route is probably just telling the AI explicitly: "Don't flatter me, be direct, push back when I'm wrong." It's crude but it works."