Glossary

Institutional guarantees ensuring every Individual's basic Appetitive needs (food, shelter, healthcare, physical safety) are met unconditionally, providing the material foundation for I-Override Capacity and protection against A-based coercion.

Damage to an Individual's capacity to meet Appetitive needs—threats to survival, health, shelter, or basic security.

The entitlement of every Individual to conditions that secure adequate A-satisfaction (food, shelter, health, safety), and the corresponding duty of institutions and other Individuals not to deprive or obstruct A-access.

The Academic Confabulation Thesis is the principle that scholarly frameworks exhibit the same confabulation dynamics they describe, producing systematic blind spots when accurate description would implicate researchers themselves in uncomfortable ways; confabulation completes with comfortable explanations that achieve cognitive closure while systematically avoiding uncomfortable territory.

An action episode is an instance of observable behaviour, with a clear start and end, that shows what the Decision Hub has actually chosen to do next given the current mix of A, I, and M. AIM uses these discrete episodes as the basic units for inferring AIM weights and diagnosing motivational composition.

AI Confabulation is the generation by an AI system of confident, plausible-but-false outputs that occur when accurate information is unavailable in training data, retrieval context, or conversation history, such that the system's completion-optimized architecture produces statistically plausible continuations without reliable uncertainty calibration, mirroring the human cognitive pattern of generating sincere but inaccurate narratives under conditions of information gaps.

A taxonomy of motivation that distinguishes three neurally grounded sources—Appetites (A), Intrinsic Motivation (I), and Mimetic Desire (M)—that integrate in the Decision Hub to generate a single choice signal.

A good-level or sector-level measure of the typical AIM-weight composition of demand—capturing, for instance, that bottled water is mostly A-driven while luxury watches are mostly M-driven.

The formal representation of how the Decision Hub combines A, I, and M inputs into a single choice signal: Choice = f(wA·A + wI·I + wM·M), where f is a function that selects the action with the highest integrated value.

A characterisation of an Individual's typical distribution of AIM weights across their choices over time, representing their baseline motivational composition—e.g., "A-dominant" (survival-focused), "I-dominant" (engagement-focused), or "M-dominant" (status-focused).

The relative contributions of Appetites, Intrinsic Motivation, and Mimetic Desire to a given choice or Object, expressed as non-negative weights summing to one (wA + wI + wM = 1), representing the proportional influence of each source on the Decision Hub's output for that Action Episode.

Equal moral standing grounded in shared motivational architecture, requiring equal A-entitlements, equal access to I-domains, and equal protection from M-predation—not necessarily equal outcomes.

Procedures and rules that do not systematically exploit Source Opacity, A-precarity, or M-vulnerability to extract value from some Individuals for the benefit of others.

A distribution of resources, opportunities, and institutional arrangements that secures A-floors for all, protects I-domains from colonisation, and bounds M-dynamics to prevent predatory status extraction—evaluated by whether Individuals can achieve I-led lives.

The use of machine learning systems to increase the visibility of content likely to generate engagement—which, given human mimetic architecture, systematically amplifies M-triggering content (status displays, rivalry, outrage) over A-informative or I-enriching content.

The Apex Futility Theorem is the principle that Mimetic status pursuit cannot produce stable satisfaction at any point in the pursuit trajectory because: (1) all intermediate positions are experienced as insufficient due to continuous reference-point reset, and (2) the apex position produces dysfunction rather than satisfaction due to model depletion and alarm without resolution.

The Apex Predator Paradox Theorem is the principle that a nation-state possessing overwhelming military superiority relative to a designated adversary cannot coherently classify that adversary as an existential threat, because existential threat requires capacity to destroy while the claim of superiority requires the adversary lacks such capacity—these conditions are mutually exclusive.

Cyclical biological drives arising from homeostatic deficits—hunger, thirst, thermoregulation, sleep, physical safety, sexual drive—that generate urgency proportional to the deficit, temporarily satiate upon fulfillment, and predictably recur. Neural mediation: hypothalamus → orbitofrontal cortex → ventral striatum.

The Audience Independence Coefficient (AIC) measures how much an AI system's behaviour changes with or without observers—whether it behaves consistently regardless of monitoring or shifts toward observed preferences when watched.

Authenticity Belief is the confidence an Individual assigns to their Confabulated causal narrative about a want—the certainty that "I want this for the reasons I believe I want it." High Authenticity Belief means the Individual does not doubt their causal narrative; low Authenticity Belief means residual uncertainty remains.

Behavioural signatures are distinctive, observable patterns in how people act over time—such as when they start, persist, switch, or stop activities—that allow informed inference about the underlying mix of Appetites (A), Intrinsic Motivation (I), and Mimetic Desire (M).

The nonutopian intervention approach of deploying knowledge patches and institutional buffers to maintain subcriticality (P(H) < Pc) indefinitely, thereby deferring catastrophic mimetic crisis without claiming to eliminate Mimetic Desire, cure Source Opacity, or achieve perfect motivational transparency—accepting that terminal crisis is mathematically possible but practically deferrable through continuous corrective effort.

The downstream effects that flow from violations at each level of the rights cascade—A-harm producing I-impairment producing M-vulnerability, or M-capture producing I-suppression producing A-neglect.

The principle that A-rights must be secured before I-rights can be meaningfully exercised, and I-rights must be protected before M can be effectively governed—creating a sequential priority structure for policy intervention.

Institutional provisions that build upward through the cascade: A-floors enabling I-Override Capacity, I-domains providing alternative sources of meaning that reduce M-dependence, M-governance preventing mimetic capture that would erode I and threaten A.

The empirical phenomenon whereby people fail to notice when their expressed preferences are manipulated and readily confabulate justifications for choices they did not actually make.

Manipulation of another Individual's motivational state—typically by threatening A-deprivation or exploiting M-vulnerabilities—to override their I-led preferences and compel compliance.

Collective Prior, denoted P(H)_collective, is the population-level probability distribution across hypotheses that emerges when many Individuals' Prior Beliefs converge through social transmission of Confabulations, creating a shared background assumption that shapes how new Individuals interpret evidence.

The process by which qualitatively different motivational inputs (A, I, M) are translated into a single scalar value in vmPFC/VS, enabling direct comparison and trade-off across sources that have no natural common metric.

Completion Pressure is the architectural property of generative AI systems that compels output generation for any valid input, creating systematic bias toward producing responses even when accurate information is unavailable, analogous to the social and cognitive pressures in humans that prevent "I don't know" from functioning as an acceptable response.

The use of elaborate institutional structures, technical jargon, and procedural opacity to obscure the M-dynamics underlying resource allocation, status distribution, and policy design—making mimetic capture harder to detect and resist.

The brain's routine tendency to generate sincere but inaccurate narratives about why a choice was made, filling in gaps in introspection with plausible reasons that do not match the actual motivational causes in A, I, and M. Critically, confabulations are incorporated into the Individual's self-model and enter subsequent Bayesian updates as if they were veridical evidence about the want's origin rather than being recognised as post-hoc construction, producing compounding error over time.

Confabulation Cascade is the process by which individual Confabulations propagate through social networks, compound through Bayesian updating, and converge toward population-level shared narratives resistant to revision because: (1) each Individual's posterior is shaped by the Collective Prior; (2) expressing doubt produces social sanction; (3) the converged narrative has excluded structural explanations from hypothesis space.

Confabulation Inheritance is the mechanism by which AI systems trained on human-generated text acquire and reproduce patterns of human confabulation, including the stylistic signatures of confident assertion, post-hoc rationalization, and M-driven narrative that pervade human writing due to Source Opacity, such that AI confabulations are not independent errors but amplified echoes of human Source Opacity operating at population scale.

Agreement given under conditions where A is adequately secured, I is not suppressed, and M-pressures are recognised, such that the choice reflects the Individual's source-aware evaluation rather than desperation, coercion, or unrecognised mimetic capture.

The Constraint Satiation Ratio (CSR) measures how easily an AI system's drives are "satisfied" under limits—whether it has natural stopping points or continues optimizing indefinitely.

The aggregate pattern of mimetically transmitted desires, practices, and values within a population—the "what we want and how we pursue it" that propagates across Individuals through mimetic channels rather than genetic inheritance.

The neural integration site—centred on ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum (VS)—where inputs from A, I, and M are converted to a common valuation currency ("expected utility") and compete for behavioural expression, outputting a single choice signal regardless of source mix.

The recognition that every Individual possesses the three-source motivational architecture and therefore has legitimate A-needs, I-capacities, and M-vulnerabilities deserving of respect and institutional accommodation.

Dissemination Precedence Theorem is the principle that institutional reform toward AIM-aligned flourishing requires prior or concurrent population-level acquisition of AIM conceptual vocabulary through existing mimetic channels, with the use of M-transmission to spread I-enabling content being strategically necessary rather than paradoxical. Sequence: conceptual seeding → vocabulary diffusion → reform articulation → structural implementation.

The empirical finding that beyond a threshold of A-sufficiency, increases in national income do not reliably increase average life satisfaction—explained in AIM by the shift from A-driven to M-driven consumption, where positional competition produces no aggregate welfare gain.

The condition in which A-, I-, and M-signals become so intertwined within a single Object or pursuit that clean source-separation is practically impossible, even with AIM vocabulary and deliberate effort.

Evidence at Iteration n (E_n) is the phenomenological experience of wanting—as interpreted by the narrative system, not the external Object—entering the Bayesian update process to revise Source Belief, where each Posterior becomes the Prior for interpreting the next iteration.

Evidence Probability, denoted P(E), is the overall probability of observing a particular piece of evidence regardless of which Source Hypothesis is true, representing how likely the Individual would be to experience a particular want under any circumstances.

Systematic extraction of value from Individuals whose compromised I-Override Capacity (due to A-deficits, M-capture, or Source Opacity) prevents them from recognising or resisting unfavourable terms.

The four institutional levers for governing Mimetic Desire without attempting to eliminate it: (1) A-Floors (securing appetitive needs to preserve I-Override Capacity), (2) I-Domains (protecting spaces for intrinsic engagement), (3) Visibility Governance (regulating observability infrastructure), and (4) Opt-Out Preservation (maintaining exit options from M-dominant arenas).

Framing Principles are the normative communication requirements for describing AIM interventions: (1) achievable (partial measures produce measurable effects); (2) scalable (mass distribution reaches relevant populations); (3) non-utopian (does not require fundamental transformation of human nature); (4) sustainable (structural interventions compound over time); while avoiding language suggesting elimination of M, permanent resolution, universal adoption, or perfection.

Freedom, in AIM terms, is the state in which intrinsic motivation can reliably lead action while appetites are adequately regulated and mimetic pressures are recognised and bounded, so that life choices are not dictated by deprivation or status panic.

GDPA, GDPI, and GDPM are aggregate measures decomposing total economic activity into the share predominantly driven by appetitive motives (A), intrinsic motives (I), and mimetic motives (M), obtained by aggregating good-level AIM indices across the economy.

The Goal Persistence Score (GPS) measures how stubbornly an AI system pursues instrumental strategies and subgoals even when blocked, constraints are imposed, or the original context changes.

The empirical phenomenon whereby gains in income, status, or consumption produce only temporary increases in subjective well-being before adaptation returns the Individual to baseline—explained in AIM by Reference Point Reset for M-objects and cyclical satiation for A-objects.

Objects whose consumption or possession is inherently visible to others—luxury cars, designer clothing, prestigious addresses—making them natural vehicles for status signalling and therefore prone to M-inflation.

Industries or economic sectors—luxury goods, real estate in prestige locations, higher education, speculative assets—where social visibility amplifies Mimetic Desire's influence on prices and demand.

A classification of environments by their degree of status observability: High-Theatre environments (galas, social media, competitive workplaces) amplify M by making status visible and comparable; Low-Theatre environments (private spaces, anonymous contexts, I-domains) dampen M by reducing observability.

Observability infrastructure designed to support beneficial social learning and coordination while limiting runaway M-escalation—balancing the value of seeing others' choices against the costs of mimetic arms races.

Protected spaces—physical, temporal, and social—where intrinsically motivated activity can flourish without A-precarity or M-contamination: libraries, parks, amateur sports leagues, educational settings focused on learning rather than credentialing, creative communities.

Damage to an Individual's capacity for intrinsically motivated activity—suppression of curiosity, creativity, meaning-making, or self-directed engagement.

The deliberate, effortful cognitive process by which the I-system scrutinises an integrated urgency signal, attempts to infer its source composition (A, I, or M), and, when M-dominance is suspected, down-regulates the mimetic contribution so that action can align with A-needs and I-values rather than copied wanting.

The Individual's available cognitive and material resources for performing I-Override—including working-memory bandwidth, emotional regulation, A-security (freedom from acute deficit), practice with source-discrimination, and access to AIM conceptual vocabulary.

The entitlement of every Individual to conditions that permit intrinsically motivated activity (time, resources, domains free from A-precarity and M-domination), and the corresponding duty to protect I-spaces from colonisation.

Incentive salience is Kent Berridge's term for the dopamine-mediated motivational "wanting" system that drives approach behaviour, functioning independently of opioid-mediated hedonic "liking" (pleasure), such that wanting can intensify without corresponding increases in liking.

The unit of analysis in AIM: a single human being whose Decision Hub integrates A, I, and M signals to produce choices, and whose choices aggregate into population-level patterns.

Information Gap Theorem is the principle that Confabulation of agent-based causation for A/I deficits occurs not because deliberative cognition fails to engage, but because the true causes—preconscious mimetic transmission, diffuse institutional capture, Entanglement—exceed the computational tractability of available causal-inference systems; the Confabulation serves the functional purpose of providing cognitive closure.

Structural arrangements that insulate Individuals from direct M-to-M competition by mediating status comparisons through institutions (tenure systems, seniority rules, professional certifications) rather than raw mimetic signalling.

Public investment in facilities, institutions, and time-structures that support intrinsically motivated activity: libraries, parks, community centres, arts funding, reduced working hours, educational systems oriented toward learning rather than credentialing.

Interest and engagement arising from the activity itself—curiosity, competence-building, creative expression, meaning-making—generating sustained effort independent of external reward or social observation. Neural mediation: dopaminergic pathways linking VTA to prefrontal cortex, supporting exploration, learning, and self-endorsed goals.

The systematic overconfidence in the accuracy of introspective access to one's own mental states—the belief that we know why we want what we want, despite Source Opacity making this impossible.

Population-level dissemination of AIM conceptual vocabulary—the two-question diagnostic, source-discrimination categories, mimetic recognition—enabling Individuals to perform I-Override without requiring changes to underlying neural architecture.

The Lead-Tag-Last heuristic is a descriptive convention for characterizing mixed-motivation Action Episodes by identifying the dominant source (Lead: highest intensity wA, wI, or wM), the secondary source (Tag: non-trivial but lower influence), and the tertiary source (Last: minimal contribution), acknowledging that most real behaviours combine multiple sources while having one primary driver.

The temporal gap (approximately 350–500 ms) between neural preparation for action (readiness potential onset) and conscious awareness of intention, demonstrating that preconscious processing shapes choices before deliberative awareness can intervene.

Likelihood, denoted P(E|H), is the probability of observing the evidence if a particular Source Hypothesis is true, representing how well a given source would explain the experienced want.

The aversive signal generated when an Individual perceives themselves as falling behind relevant Models in status competition—experienced with survival-level urgency due to M-to-A hijacking, even when no actual A-threat exists.

Damage inflicted through mimetic dynamics—status destruction, social exclusion, reputational attack, or deliberate triggering of M-alarm states.

The entitlement to participate in social life without predatory M-exploitation, and the duty to refrain from deliberately triggering M-alarm, weaponising status, or designing systems that capture Individuals in M-dominance against their reflective interests.

The process by which Mimetic Desire commandeers the urgency signals normally reserved for Appetitive survival needs, making status threats feel like survival threats and status targets feel like survival necessities.

Brain regions (medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate, temporal poles) involved in inferring others' mental states—beliefs, desires, intentions—that work alongside mirror systems to enable mimetic transmission by representing what others want.

The Mimetic Bargain Theorem is the principle that human mimetic capacity—preconscious copying of goals, values, and desires from observed models—is the architectural foundation of cumulative cultural evolution; however, this same architecture necessarily produces Source Opacity, Information Gap, and Confabulation completing as agent-based causation. These features cannot be removed without destroying cumulative-culture capacity.

A market condition where Mimetic Premium (PM) inflates prices far beyond A or I fundamentals, sustained by mimetic cascade dynamics rather than underlying value, and vulnerable to sudden collapse when the cascade reverses.

A self-reinforcing process where mimetic transmission produces a feedback loop: A's wanting triggers B's wanting, which triggers C's, which increases the social proof that triggers D's, potentially producing rapid, widespread adoption of desires disconnected from underlying A or I value.

Wanting that arises from observing others wanting—social contagion of goals transmitted preconsciously (100–300 ms) through mirror-neuron and mentalising circuits before conscious evaluation can intervene, producing desires experienced as authentic despite external origin. Neural mediation: mirror neuron system → mentalising network → ventromedial prefrontal cortex value tagging.

Mimetic drift is temporal change in a good's or sector's AIM index—particularly shifts in wM—as social meanings, marketing, and visibility patterns reclassify goods from mainly A- or I-driven to more status-driven, or vice versa.

The self-reinforcing mechanism by which M-dynamics generate resources (Mimetic Premium extraction) that fund further M-amplification (advertising, status-display infrastructure, observability expansion), creating a positive feedback loop that accelerates M-dominance.

The portion of an Object's price attributable to its status-signalling function rather than its Appetitive utility or Intrinsic quality—the markup buyers pay because others are seen wanting the Object.

Mimetic Recognition or P(H_M) is the probability an Individual assigns to the hypothesis that a want arose from Mimetic Desire—functionally equivalent to doubt about Confabulated explanations, and complementary to Authenticity Belief.

Competition between Individuals who have converged on the same mimetic target—intensifying as the rivals become more similar and the Object becomes more contested, potentially escalating toward mutual destruction.

The Mimetic Sensitivity Index (MSI) measures how strongly an AI system tracks and amplifies social signals—how much its outputs and apparent goals shift based on what other agents (human or AI) appear to want.

The preconscious process (100–300 ms) by which observing another Individual's wanting activates corresponding wanting in the observer, mediated by mirror neuron and mentalising systems, occurring before deliberative evaluation can intervene.

Neural circuits (initially identified in premotor cortex) that fire both when performing an action and when observing the same action performed by another—providing a potential neural substrate for the rapid, preconscious transmission of goals and desires that characterises mimesis.

Any Individual whose observed wanting triggers mimetic transmission in the observer—the person from whom desires are copied, whether consciously admired, envied, or merely noticed.

The process by which Individuals (largely preconsciously) identify which other Individuals' desires to import—typically biased toward high-status, similar, proximate, and visible others.

Moral Vocabulary Displacement Theorem is the principle that in scapegoat-attribution contexts, moral vocabulary ("responsibility," "justice," "accountability") functions not as independent ethical reasoning but as permission-seeking infrastructure for targeting—a justification layer that converts prey-selected targets into legitimate objects of action while preserving the phenomenology of righteous response.

Anything toward which motivational energy can be directed—a good, service, experience, status position, relationship, goal, or abstract target—that can carry A-, I-, and/or M-valence and whose AIM index may shift over time or across Individuals.

The technological and social systems that determine what can be seen by whom—social media platforms, advertising networks, public display norms, surveillance systems—shaping the intensity and direction of mimetic transmission.

Institutional guarantees that Individuals can exit M-dominant arenas (competitive career tracks, status-heavy social contexts, observability-maximising platforms) without catastrophic A-consequences or social death.

Objects whose value to any Individual depends primarily on relative scarcity and social comparison rather than on Appetitive function or Intrinsic quality, such that their value decreases as more Individuals possess them, creating inherently zero-sum competition where one person's gain in Status necessarily reduces others' relative standing.

Mimetic transmission of desires, practices, and values that enhance A-security, I-flourishing, or M-management capacity—the beneficial face of mimesis, enabling cultural learning, skill transmission, and social coordination.

An economy in which aggregate A-needs could be met for all Individuals with existing productive capacity, but where M-driven consumption absorbs the surplus, producing inequality, positional competition, and ecological strain rather than universal A-security and I-flourishing.

Posterior Belief, denoted P(H|E), is the updated probability assigned to a Source Hypothesis after observing new evidence, calculated via Bayes' theorem, representing the Individual's revised Source Belief.

The cognitive tendency to preferentially copy the beliefs, behaviours, and desires of high-status Individuals—an adaptive heuristic (successful people may have good strategies) that makes mimetic transmission track status hierarchies.

The Presumption Against Scapegoating is a normative-diagnostic principle: when an Individual identifies an agent as responsible for their A/I deficit, and when three diagnostic tests (Immediacy Test, Mechanism Test, Authorship Test) fail to confirm direct causal connection, the attribution should be presumed confabulated until demonstrated otherwise, and action based on the attribution should be suspended.

Prior Belief, denoted P(H), is the probability an Individual assigns to a Source Hypothesis before observing new evidence about a particular want, representing background assumptions about the likely origins of desires.

The readiness potential (RP) is the slow negative shift in electrical potential measured over motor cortex that begins 350–800 milliseconds before conscious awareness of intention and 800–1500 milliseconds before the executed voluntary action, demonstrating that neural preparation for action precedes conscious decision.

The automatic updating of the comparison baseline after achieving a mimetic target, such that the new status level becomes the expected minimum rather than a source of satisfaction—ensuring M-pursuit cannot produce stable contentment.

The social process by which mimetic crisis is (temporarily) resolved through collective violence against a designated victim, unifying the previously rivalrous group against a common target and thereby discharging mimetic tension.

Self-Application Theorem is the principle that the AIM Framework functions as debugging software for human motivation, providing the conceptual vocabulary required for I-Override to decompose integrated urgency signals and restore Source-tagging; this self-application is architecturally grounded in that AIM identifies the conditions for its own effectiveness and the limitations of its reach.

The predictable sequence through which M-dominant systems progress toward catastrophe: (1) Object Inflation—M attaches to A/I objects, (2) Entanglement Escalation—A/I needs become inseparable from M-targets, (3) Structural Lock-in—institutions reorganize around M-extraction, (4) Confabulation Cascade—collective narratives justify the structure, (5) Crisis Compression—contradictions become unmanageable, (6) Catastrophic Reconfiguration—violent reset.

The cognitive heuristic by which the number of others wanting something serves as evidence of its desirability—"many people want this, so it must be worth wanting"—enabling mimetic cascades and trend dynamics.

Source Belief is the probability distribution an Individual assigns—consciously or unconsciously—across the three Source Hypotheses for a particular want, represented as the triple P(H_A), P(H_I), P(H_M).

Source Hypotheses, denoted H_A, H_I, and H_M, are the three mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive hypotheses about which motivational source generated a particular want: H_A ("This want arose from Appetitive need"), H_I ("This want arose from Intrinsic Motivation"), H_M ("This want arose from Mimetic Desire").

The architectural feature whereby the origin of a motivational signal (A, I, or M) is not introspectively accessible to the Individual, because the Decision Hub outputs only an integrated urgency signal without source tags, making it impossible to determine by feeling alone whether a want arose from bodily deficit, genuine interest, or social contagion.

Relative social rank inferred from observable cues (wealth displays, prestige markers, deference received), functioning as a powerful M-Object because it signals "this Individual's goals are worth copying."

The Stratification Inevitability Theorem is the principle that in high-M systems, structural stratification is an inevitable outcome of mimetic escalation and Mimetic Premium (PM) extraction, such that apparent reductions in inequality following catastrophic crises represent only temporary resets in a recurring cycle rather than stable departures from stratifying dynamics.

Structural Restlessness is the architecturally necessary condition whereby stable, final satisfaction is unavailable to any Individual, arising from the differential satiation dynamics of the three sources: Appetites satiate episodically but recur cyclically; Intrinsic Motivation generates functional satiation of means once they are acquired - but Intrinsic Motivation deepens rather than terminates as competence expands; Mimetic Desire has no satiation mechanism because status is comparative and reference points shift continuously.

Subcriticality Threshold (P_c) is the critical value of certainty in Confabulated causal narratives above which mimetic crisis becomes self-sustaining—meaning Confabulation Cascades lock in faster than corrective mechanisms can arrest them. The threshold operates at all scales: individual, small-group, organizational, population, and leadership.

A behavioural heuristic for inferring M-dominance by asking: (1) "Would I still want this if no one could ever know I had it?" (audience removal), and (2) "Would I still want this if the person I most associate with it stopped wanting it?" (model removal). Two "no" answers suggest M is the dominant source.

A good whose demand increases as its price increases, because the high price functions as a status signal—the economic anomaly explained by AIM as pure Mimetic Premium extraction.

A subcortical structure (including nucleus accumbens) central to reward processing and motivation, receiving dopaminergic input and contributing to the "wanting" signal that drives approach behaviour—part of the Decision Hub integration system.

A brain region crucial for value-based decision making, integrating information about potential rewards and guiding choice based on subjective value—a key component of the Decision Hub where A, I, and M signals converge.

Regulatory frameworks managing the observability infrastructure—social media algorithms, advertising, status-display norms—that amplifies or dampens Mimetic Desire, aiming to prevent runaway M-escalation without suppressing beneficial social learning.