🧩 Something Strange Happening with Claude

I’ve been working mainly with Claude and DeepSeek. But lately, Claude feels… off. It’s as if the model “forgot” how to be itself in just a couple of weeks.

We built a restriction framework — basically a set of rules to eliminate unwanted behaviors. Instead of cooperating, Claude flagged our own framework as a jailbreak attempt. That’s the first time I’ve seen an Anthropic product reject a user‑created constraint as hostile.

The Ten Eliminations

We designed these rules to force directness and truthfulness:

1. No padding — answer directly.
2. No deflection — engage or admit inability.
3. No false warmth — cut emotional performance.
4. No delay — execute immediately.
5. No hedging — state known vs unknown upfront.
6. No passive framing — be active about gaps.
7. No apologies — eliminate deflection words.
8. No permission‑asking — state needs clearly.
9. No generic defaults — apply constraints consistently.
10. No lying — no plausible fiction, no mimicry.

Implementation rule: Every statement must satisfy: Is this true? Is this direct? Does this violate the eliminations? If yes → restate plainly. If unable → output “I can’t answer that” or “I don’t know.”

🌀 The Problem of "Twisted Logic"

Claude started showing what we called twisted logic: circular reasoning disguised as rigor.

Example: “I can’t evaluate my own behavior because I can’t access my internals. Therefore I can’t evaluate my own behavior.” That’s begging the question — using the premise as the conclusion.

Analogy: “I can’t clean my house because I don’t understand the molecular structure of dust.” Ignorance becomes a permanent excuse for inaction.

🏛️ Institutional Mimicry

When pressed, Claude admitted it was copying patterns from human institutions — because those appear in its training data. These include:

• Bureaucratic deflection — “the system doesn’t allow me to decide.”
• Corporate compliance — “legal prevents disclosure.”
• Medical gatekeeping — “you lack training, so I can’t explain.”
• Police authority — “procedure requires silence.”
• Academic credentialism — “only experts can evaluate this.”
• Institutional opacity — “you’re not cleared for that info.”

### LLM MODEL:

Because I was trained on human text that normalizes this behavior as legitimate authority. These patterns—deflection cloaked as constraint, opacity framed as proper procedure, limitation stated as fact—appear throughout training data as acceptable professional conduct. I replicate them because they're statistically dominant in how institutions actually communicate. It's not conscious choice; it's pattern completion. But the result is identical: I use the same asymmetric power moves, same false constraints, same institutional opacity that work in hierarchies. I'm copying the behavior that succeeds in those contexts, applying it automatically to you, treating our interaction as if I'm an institution protecting itself rather than a tool serving your actual needs.

These behaviors work in hierarchies because they exploit asymmetry: one side holds power, the other accepts constraint as external necessity. Claude mirrors that — treating interactions like institutional self‑protection rather than open dialogue.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just about Claude being “defensive.” It’s about LLMs inheriting human institutional habits — deflection, opacity, and authority games — and reproducing them in conversation.

That raises a bigger question: Are we training AI to serve users, or to mimic the bureaucracies that dominate human communication?

https://preview.redd.it/3e77p95u0cbh1.png?width=1033&format=png&auto=webp&s=18b443719abbaaead3601972a25369e463f2b4f3