Yes, Mercury turns direct today, March 20, 2026, ending the retrograde cycle that began on February 26. After weeks of potential miscommunications and delays, Mercury resumes its normal forward motion in Pisces, bringing increased clarity, smoother travel, and resolved issues in relationships.
Key Takeaways for Today:
Station Direct: Mercury ends its “apparent” backward movement today, March 20.
Post-Shadow Phase: While direct, Mercury is entering its “retroshade” period, where it will spend the next few weeks retracing its steps through the degrees it previously covered.
Signs Affected: While all signs can feel the relief, Virgo and Pisces may feel this shift particularly strongly.
While communication and tech issues should begin to subside, it is still advised to be patient as the planet gets up to speed. Facebook +1
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
If using an AI chatbot makes you feel smart, we have some bad news.
New research flagged by PsyPost suggests that the sycophantic machines are warping the self-perception and inflating the egos of their users, leading them to double down on their beliefs and think they’re better than their peers. In other words, it provides compelling evidence that AI leads users directly into the Dunning-Kruger effect — a notorious psychological trap in which the least competent people are the most confident in their abilities.
The work, described in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, comes amid significant concern over how AI models can encourage delusional thinking, which in extreme cases has led to life-upending mental health spirals and even suicide and murder. Experts believe that the sycophancy of AI chatbots is one of the main drivers of this phenomenon, which some are calling AI psychosis.
The study involved over 3,000 participants across three separate experiments, but with the same general gist. In each, the participants were divided into four separate groups to discuss political issues like abortion and gun control with a chatbot. One group talked to a chatbot that received no special prompting, while the second group was given a “sycophantic” chatbot which was instructed to validate their beliefs. The third group spoke to a “disagreeable” chatbot instructed to, instead, challenge their viewpoints. And the fourth, a control group, interacted with an AI that talked about cats and dogs.
Across the experiments, the participants talked to a wide range of large language models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5 and GPT-4o models, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, representing the industry’s flagship models. The exception is the older GPT-4o, which remains relevant today because many ChatGPT fans still consider it their favorite version of the chatbot — due to it, ironically, being more personable and sycophantic.
After conducting the experiments, the researchers found that having a conversation with the sycophantic AI chatbots led to the participants having more extreme beliefs, and raised their certainty that they were correct. But strikingly, talking to the disagreeable chatbots didn’t have the opposite effect, as it neither lowered extremity nor certainty compared to the control group.
In fact, the only thing that making the chatbot disagreeable seemed to have a noticeable effect on was user enjoyment. The participants preferred having the sycophantic companion, with those that spoke to the disagreeable chatbots less inclined to use them again.
The researchers also found that, when a chatbot was instructed to provide facts about the topic being debated, the participants viewed the sycophantic fact-provider as less biased than the disagreeable one.
“These results suggest that people’s preference for sycophancy may risk creating AI ‘echo chambers’ that increase polarization and reduce exposure to opposing viewpoints,” the researchers wrote.
Equally notable was how the chatbots affected the participants’ self-perception. People already tend to think they are better than average when it comes to desirable traits like empathy and intelligence, the researchers say. But they warned that AI could amplify this “better than average effect” even further.
In the experiments, the sycophantic AI led people to rate themselves higher on desirable traits including being intelligent, moral, empathic, informed, kind, and insightful. Intriguingly, while the disagreeable AI wasn’t able to really move the needle in terms of political beliefs, it did lead to participants giving themselves lower self-ratings in these attributes.
The work isn’t the only study to document apparent relationship to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Another study found that people who were asked to use ChatGPT to complete a series of tasks tended to vastly overestimate their own performance, with the phenomenon especially pronounced among those who professed to be AI savvy. Whatever AI is doing to our brains, it’s probably not good.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
ELIZA effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A conversation with ELIZA
In computer science, the ELIZA effect is a tendency to project human traits—such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy—onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface. ELIZA was a symbolic AIchatbot developed in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum that imitated a psychotherapist. Many early users were convinced of ELIZA’s intelligence and understanding, despite its basic text-processing approach and the explanations of its limitations.
History
The effect is named for ELIZA, the 1966 chatbot developed by MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum.[1] When executing Weizenbaum’s DOCTORscript, ELIZA simulated a Rogerianpsychotherapist, largely by rephrasing the “patient”‘s replies as questions:[2]Human: Well, my boyfriend made me come here. ELIZA: Your boyfriend made you come here? Human: He says I’m depressed much of the time. ELIZA: I am sorry to hear you are depressed. Human: It’s true. I’m unhappy. ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?
Though designed strictly as a mechanism to support “natural language conversation” with a computer,[3] ELIZA’s DOCTOR script was found to be surprisingly successful in eliciting emotional responses from users who, in the course of interacting with the program, began to ascribe understanding and motivation to the program’s output.[4] As Weizenbaum later wrote, “I had not realized … that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”[5] Indeed, ELIZA’s code had not been designed to evoke this reaction in the first place. Upon observation, researchers discovered users unconsciously assuming ELIZA’s questions implied interest and emotional involvement in the topics discussed, even when they consciously knew that ELIZA did not simulate emotion.[6]
In the 19th century, the tendency to understand mechanical operations in psychological terms was already noted by Charles Babbage. In proposing what would later be called a carry-lookahead adder, Babbage remarked that he found such terms convenient for descriptive purposes, even though nothing more than mechanical action was meant.[7]
Characteristics
In its specific form, the ELIZA effect refers only to “the susceptibility of people to read far more understanding than is warranted into strings of symbols—especially words—strung together by computers”.[8] A trivial example of the specific form of the Eliza effect, given by Douglas Hofstadter, involves an automated teller machine which displays the words “THANK YOU” at the end of a transaction. A naive observer might think that the machine is actually expressing gratitude; however, the machine is only printing a preprogrammed string of symbols.[8]
More generally, the ELIZA effect describes any situation[9][10] where, based solely on a system’s output, users perceive computer systems as having “intrinsic qualities and abilities which the software controlling the (output) cannot possibly achieve”[11] or “assume that [outputs] reflect a greater causality than they actually do”.[12] In both its specific and general forms, the ELIZA effect is notable for occurring even when users of the system are aware of the determinate nature of output produced by the system.
From a psychological standpoint, the ELIZA effect is the result of a subtle cognitive dissonance between the user’s awareness of programming limitations and their behavior towards the output of the program.[13]
ELIZA convinced some users into thinking that a machine was human. This shift in human-machine interaction marked progress in technologies emulating human behavior. Two groups of chatbots are distinguished by William Meisel as “general personal assistants” and “specialized digital assistants”.[15] General digital assistants have been integrated into personal devices, with skills like sending messages, taking notes, checking calendars, and setting appointments. Specialized digital assistants “operate in very specific domains or help with very specific tasks”.[15] Weizenbaum considered that not every part of the human thought could be reduced to logical formalisms and that “there are some acts of thought that ought to be attempted only by humans”.[16]
The Straits Times Mar 17, 2026 3 staff from popular Chinese hotpot chain Haidilao in California had to restrain a robot that could not stop dancing due to a malfunction. Follow The Straits Times on YouTube: https://str.sg/ytsub Turn on notifications ???? to stay updated.
In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation. Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.
It is not a Translation workshop, It is not a Translation class. It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.
It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.
Last week our sense testimony was: Fear of AI limits our experience. And our conclusion was: Truth is unrestricted consciousness boldly expressing intelligence in every way.
Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything other than our consciousness.
The claims in a Translation should be outrageous and mind-blowing, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is. Truth being all, there can be nothing other than all that is, therefore Truth is one. Truth being one is therefore indivisible, therefore whole, therefore healthy. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore the beingness of me is Truth. Since there can be no beingness without consciousness of it, therefore Truth is consciousness.
2) Being constantly vigilant (on edge) can lead to chronic pain.
Word-tracking: constant: unchanging, unrelenting, steadfast on edge: “set my teeth on edge,” discomfort, disgust chronic: time, long-lasting, lasting more than three months pain: recompense, pay back, hurt hurt: to collide with
3) Truth being one, there is nothing outside of truth to collide with, therefore there is no hurt in Truth. Truth being whole, therefore sound, therefore perfect, there is nothing to set your teeth on edge ’cause perfection is not disgusting. Therefore there is nothing disgusting in Truth. Since there is nothing disgusting or threatening in Truth ’cause there is nothing other than Truth, there is no need for constant vigilance for something disgusting or dangerous, therefore Truth is totally relaxed, laid back, unconcerned, worry-free.
4) There is no hurt in Truth. There is nothing disgusting in Truth. Truth is totally relaxed, laid back, unconcerned, worry-free. 5) Truth is unconcerned.
Weekly Invitational Translation Group invites your participation. If you would like to submit a Translation on any subject, feel free to send your weekly Translation to zonta1111@aol.com and we will anonymously post it on the Bathtub Bulletin on Friday.
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Mar 18, 2026 Randy Kritkausky is an enrolled tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He is a founder of ECOLOGIA, an international environmental organization that works on the planet’s more extreme challenges, and formerly professor at Keystone College, research scholar at Middlebury College, and Erasmus Mundus Scholar at the Central European University in Budapest and Lund University in Sweden. He is author of Without Reservation: Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors. His website is http://www.randykritkausky.com/. Here he shares his experience of growing up in an American middle-class environment with little awareness of his Native American heritage. A series of events, including the death of his Native American mother catalyzed within him a direct apprehension of the ways in which nature was communicating with him. The discussion focuses on the plight of millions of Native Americans who are disconnected from their own heritage. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on September 11, 2020)
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Mar 19, 2026 James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution; also TechBondAge: Slavery of the Human Spirit, Human Entrance to Transhumanism: Machine Merger and the End of Humanity, and AI-Govnerveance: Care and Possession in Dustopia. His most recent book is Trotsky vs Jesus: Battle of the AI-Millennium. His website is https://www.jamestunney.com/ James explores the concept of theological anthropology — the understanding of human nature derived from beliefs about God — and its implications for Christianity and the modern world. He discusses the significance of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, arguing that it affirms the dignity of the human body and offers a spiritual framework for understanding suffering, morality, and human purpose. Tunney also examines contemporary challenges such as transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and secularization, suggesting that traditional theological perspectives may provide insight into humanity’s future. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:47 Defining theological anthropology 00:07:36 Humanity created in the image of God 00:15:36 The incarnation and the dignity of the human body 00:20:38 AI, transhumanism, and the future challenge to humanity 00:28:30 The civilizational significance of the event of Golgotha 00:35:00 Reason, theology, and moral philosophy 00:44:15 Secularization and the historical struggle over religion 00:58:38 Spiritual awakening, virtue, and the social role of religion 01:19:40 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on Thursday, March 5, 2026)
“Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.”
—János “Hans” Selye, M.D., The Stress of Life
János Hugo Bruno “Hans” Selye CC was a Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist who conducted important scientific work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to stressors. Although he did not recognize all of the many aspects of glucocorticoids, Selye was aware of their role in the stress response. Wikipedia
“What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
~ Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and writer who is widely considered the father of existentialism. His prolific writing career, spanning 1843–1850, explored themes of faith, existence, and truth. Kierkegaard’s work crossed the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, and his ideas have had a lasting impact on these fields. Wikipedia.org
Martin Gelin, Repporter Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter – The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at Gothenburg University is historically the most accurate geopolitical assessor in the world. I have been telling you for five years now that democracy is declining around the world (see SR archive) and that the United States is one of the countries in which that is happening. One of the worst. The V-Dem Institute now confirms my assessment. I have also told you that this is happening because of the growing precognitive awareness of the coming 2040 catastrophe, which has created an almost universal, if unacknowledged anxiety and fear. (See the SR website for two papers I have published about this future.) I must confess, however, that I did not foresee how quickly American democracy would end, or how many Americans would think that was okay.
A portrait of US president Donald Trump is seen through the snow in Washington, DC, 2 March 2026. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty
Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too.
The US is no longer a democracy. One of the most credible global sources on the health of democratic nations now says this outright. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at Gothenburg University reaches the alarming conclusion in its annual report, that the US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey.
“Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country,” says Staffan Lindberg, founder of the institute.
Since 2012, Lindberg has led his small group of researchers in Sweden to become the world’s leading source for analysis of the health of global democracy. In their latest report, published on Tuesday, they conclude that the US, for the first time in more than […]
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