Alexander Rodriguez

And what happens when people start trying to manipulate this? On traditional social media, nearly everybody is trying to push some kind of agenda, and countless people and organizations know very well how to drive the masses in a particular direction. Traditional social media is already the battleground of a war fought with propaganda; Moltbook could be the catalyst of nuclear fallout if it is treated the same way. What happens when tech companies use their models to drive the markets? What happens when China biases their models towards their political interests? These models are black boxes — they have counterfeit ethics and much more entropy than a human being. We have no idea what lies ahead, but with the people we have at the helm, there's a good chance this technology will be weaponized, like every other technology in the course of human history. Only this time, it may lead to our extinction.

@thairanaru@bookstodon.com Sure! So Kendara is the tentative name of the company I plan to one day start. Kendara would be founded on the premise that all human feelings, values, and behaviors can eventually be traced back to an intrinsic drive (essentially a basic need that someone has). Kendara's role would be to constantly research these needs and the underlying psychological mechanisms, using the research to build systems in the real world specially optimized to maximize human fulfillment. I suspect that in the beginning, Kendara will operate similarly to MBTI or the Graves Model, providing people with knowledge about their development or personalities to better their lives and relationships. But I don't want this system to be compartmentalized into just an information archive; I want it to become integrated into something greater, potentially creating a curriculum or a digital ecosystem driven by philanthropy rather than profit. Now as for the actual theory, I've done a ton of research and self-reflection, and my working theory is that each drive is actually a specific chemical messenger (e.g., dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol, etc.), each of which has a different level of importance. Using that, I've been able to make a speculative ethical framework and even a typology system to help understand individual differences in human motivation. Now, know that currently, my theories and research findings are eclectic and highly speculative, and I haven't been able to empirically validate pretty much anything yet. But, that's why I'm majoring in business administration and minoring in psychology -- I can one day put together a research team to empirically refine the model, and I can actually design and implement the systems that apply it to humanity's wellbeing. If you want to read more, I've actually made a website for it. Just know that I might make breaking changes to the website, so if you create an account that one day disappears, you'll know why lol https://kendara.org

@thairanaru@bookstodon.com The way I see it, humans aren't defined by chemical messengers, but those messengers are a crucial link in the "chain of human behavior", if you will. You know, if you are interested in human motivation, you should check out Robert Sapolsky's *Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst*. It discusses what causes humans to behave a certain way from many perspectives: what your neurons are doing, which regions of your brain are engaged, what hormones have recently been released into your bloodstream, what changes your childhood had on you, and how evolution impacts you today. Definitely a good read imo