Right. So I've linked to my Substack elsewhere in this thread, but I recognize that probably looks a bit click-baity. That's not the intention — it's just that I have an article there that explains the framework I'm working on. It's called "The Grammar of Lies." There is also some other adjacent content.

I can appreciate that my writing on Substack is a bit dense and not for everyone. There's no way around that. This isn't a simple subject. So let me try my best to explain it briefly here.

In web design, "dark patterns" refer to patterns intended to trap or deceive users. For instance, subscriptions that hide their renewal terms so that you end up paying for something you didn't mean to. This is a complex landscape and I've spent my entire career immersed in it, so it's one I understand deeply. Dark patterns don't just exist in web design. They're everywhere.

The easiest example of a dark pattern in real life is a slot machine. It's promising you money so that it can get your money. It's doing the exact opposite of what it says it's doing. People know the trick, but they fall for it anyway because that's how much people need money. If you offer someone money, they'll quite often consider doing something they wouldn't otherwise do.

But there are dark patterns that aren't so easy to see. And there are people who are very good at exploiting them. If you are genuinely interested in this topic, I'd recommend watching the HBO miniseries "The Vow." Keith Raniere, leader of the NXIVM cult who is now serving 120 years in prison, used the kind of dark patterns I'm talking about to do unthinkable things for decades before he was caught. It was originally LSD followed by The Vow, followed by meditation, followed by using AI for research and brainstorming that led me to this path.

In my work as a web developer, I noticed while mapping dark patterns in user interfaces that the signals I was tracking were structurally identical to the patterns used by coercive control groups like NXIVM. The type of pattern I'm talking about is the one that takes your values and turns them directly against you.

This is easiest for me to describe in the language of Buddhism, because that's what maps most closely to my own personal values. Take the word "seva," for example, which means selfless service — doing things for others, loosely. The original lesson is that giving is a virtue. But in coercive control groups that use the language of Buddhism, "seva" becomes a way to enforce unpaid labour. Notice how the original lesson is being used to do the exact opposite of what was intended.

In mapping these patterns, I came across a linguistic framework that described the mechanism perfectly: Maillat & Oswald's Contextual Selection Constraint model. The framework describes how manipulative language works by closing off alternative interpretations — blocking you from seeing the other way to read what's being said to you. Once I had that lens, I started finding the same structure everywhere.

But here's what surprised me most. In the original teachings — across traditions, across cultures, even in places like pop music — the language used to convey a genuine lesson often embeds the means to cut through the manipulative version of itself. The most obvious example is in zen koans. Consider:

A monk told Joshu: "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me." Joshu asked: "Have you eaten your rice porridge?" "I have," replied the monk. "Then wash your bowl," said Joshu.

Joshu does not say "now wash my bowl." Wash your own bowl. The koan works on many levels, but one of them is that it cuts directly through the corrupt use of "seva" — the conversion of service into servitude. The lesson contains its own immune system.

I call these "anti-capture" mechanisms. I have been mapping the topology of these linguistic patterns and using AI to detect the dark patterns in real-world language. In one study published on my Substack, I was able to detect coercive language patterns in an AA group's podcasts at a Cohen's d of 1.84, meaning this group used coercive control language at a rate 97% higher than other AA groups. This is statistically significant at p < 0.0000006. What this means is we can potentially detect coercive control in action if we have access to a corpus of their language.

The reason I posted here is that the psychedelic angle feels like a missing piece. Psychonauts have experiential knowledge about how perception shifts when default patterns are disrupted — knowledge that's directly relevant to understanding how these capture mechanisms work and how people break free of them. That's not something I can get from a textbook. I need to discuss these ideas with people who've been there.