The STEMPrime Researchcast
Is A Publicly Accessible Exercise In Research Transparency
This is a transdisciplinary research project which draws from psychology, sociology, economics, thermodynamics, complexity theory, and artificial intelligence / machine learning.
My name is Thomas James Wright. I am the founder and lead AI researcher / software engineer at Phobos Technologies LLC. For some time now, I have been quite troubled with the problem of corporate and political corruption. In college I would often outline ideas for new governmental structures with the aim of removing corruption.
It wasn’t until about ten years ago, in 2011, that I realized that corruption was not so much a structural issue as it was a problem of poorly placed motivational foci within our social framework. In 2018 I began to approach the problem from the perspective of motivation (self-determination theory of motivation).
I ended up with quite a diverse collection of research and an even more diverse collection of questions.
What is it about money that makes it so easily and so regularly abused?
Why do so many of our ills seem to be so tightly associated with the abuse of money?
Is it possible to alter a society’s motivational foci with minimal expenditure?
Would the answer end in destabilization?
Is post-scarcity possible?
Over the years I continued to find more information and I continued to ask even more pertinent questions.
In 2018, I was listening to the All in The Mind episode entitled, ‘Carrots, Sticks … And Other Ways To Motivate. This was my introduction to The Self-Determination Theory of Motivation as expounded on by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci.
While listening to this episode, I experienced what is arguably the most profound epiphany of my life. It was as though I had dumped a one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle on the ground, only to watch every single piece fall perfectly into place. Everything I had been studying, and all the questions I had accumulated; suddenly clicked perfectly into place. The experience was so unexpected and so completely surreal that I found myself laughing uncontrollably; an admittedly embarrassing reaction.
I immediately grabbed a pen and paper to write everything down as quickly as possible; fearing it would fade like a dream after waking. Not long afterward, I founded Phobos Technologies LLC in order to support and fund this research.
I began educating myself on a variety of related topics such as, research methods, research design principles, multivariable calculus, psychology, sociology, and economics to name a few.
This is my first research project of which I have full autonomy. As such, I intend on conducting the research with total transparency, objectivity, and scrutiny. The size and scope of this project demands decades, if not lifetimes, of such rigorous research practices. I assure the reader that I am fully prepared to meed these demands.
–Thomas Wright