Is the Macro Data Refinement how they repair their own mind-control/chip code?

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Honestly, I would put down the question "what exactly are they refining?" as the number one mystery of the show lol

I could see your theory being true, but we have so little information at this point, I hesitate to speculate beyond what we've seen in the Lexington Letter.

It is a theory that enjoys some popularity amongst fans, so you’re not alone here. I’ll say, though: I’ve never found it compelling. My main reason for this is that it feels remarkably underwhelming and undercuts the gravity placed onto it by the show’s own characters. Allow me to explain…

• So this is what Petey died for?

Peter Kimball took the extraordinary step of reintegrating, a decision that cost him his family, his sanity and, ultimately, his life. And he took this step because he believed that what they might have been doing was as grave as potentially killing people for 8 hours a day. Now, you can rightly point out that he was probably being hyperbolic when he said that. You wouldn’t be wrong. But the fact remains that he was so convinced that figuring out what they are up to is serious enough that that he took measures that resulted in his death.

That’s a very serious matter.

It’s not as if Petey is some random auxiliary character. Petey is the person who sets our protagonist on his path, basically serves as this show’s Morpheus offering Neo/Mark his red pill. It’s even in a red envelope and says that he can opt to just continue doing what he’s doing and he won’t push Mark. If Petey doesn’t approach Mark, Mark doesn’t meet him at the greenhouse, if he doesn’t meet him at the greenhouse, he never invites him into his home, if he never stay with Mark, Mark won’t have his phone, without Petey’s phone, he doesn’t go meet Reghabi, if he never meets with Reghabi, he won’t get Graner’s card. Without Graner’s card, the innies don’t have a way to enter the office and commandeer the OTC. And if they can’t hijack the OTC, we don’t get the finale.

Petey is important. Even if he’s wrong about what they do, he is a character that the story itself must treat with respect due to how vital he is. If what they do is just refine their chips, the Petey died a moron.

No, seriously. He does. Because the joke is on him: It’s no big deal, Petey, just tweaking the code. Why all the fuss, Bro? Too bad you weren’t such a paranoid ninny who jumps to conclusions. Otherwise you’d still be alive. That’s harsh. What they do has to match the sacrifice Petey made, otherwise his death feels cheap.

• People sure are convinced that what they do has affects out in the world…

This can’t be handwaved away: every person in the show who proposes an explanation of what they do, believe it has real world effects and is not related to them. Irving thinks it’s removing profanity from media, Dylan believes it killing ”eels & shit” out in the ocean. One is mundane, the other a little more involved but both affect society and are not so focused on self.

In The Lexington Letter, Margaret Kincaid also thinks she has figured out what they do and she believes it also has dire real world effects in society. She could very well be wrong in her conclusion but her conclusion drives her to make decisions with some very serious consequences. She’s actually a rather Petey-like individual in her own way.

Could all these people be wrong? Yes, they could. In fact, I believe it’s practically assured that the truth of what they do will be different than what any of them think they’re doing. Shows throw out red herrings all the time; this show is feasting on them. But that does not mean that the rug pull on what they do will be the big ”Go fuck urself! LOLZ!” that chip-repair would be. Again, that makes it all feel very very cheap.

• Things need to be treated as important by a story

Let’s look at different IP as an example. At the end of The Force Awakens —I won’t apologize for being a Star Wars geek— Rey finds Luke to give him his lightsaber. By the end of that film, we’re all wondering where Luke is. We’ve seen the gravity of the First Order’s threat, we know Snoke is out there, Kylo Ren is cosplaying as Darth Vader with his little ragesaber and the Jedi are all gone. Luke has a lot to answer for. So when Rey holds that lightsaber out to him, she does it with both hope and pain, hoping that he can save them but feeling like it’s all bigger than one man now that she’s facing him, one man who was hiding. Luke looks back with pain, regret, exhaustion and more. It’s a terrific moment moment where this character in whom the Force has awoken is offering this larger than life figure the symbol of his responsibility and you feel like he really believes that he’s no longer up for it. It’s powerful.

AAaaaaaand in the next film, he just takes the lightsaber and tosses it over his shoulder for some cheap yucks.

It completely undercut the gravity of the end of TFA. It was terrible. Moments that are that serious, that emotional and that important need to be treated with the respect they deserve in the story. And so it is with the life and death of Peter Kimball/Petey K. We don’t know what it is that. They do and we can be sure it’s not what any of them have proposed but it needs to at least match the severity of the actions characters take in how they see it. Otherwise it will feel really fucking cheap.

I’m not even convinced it does anything at all. I think it’s entirely possible they are simply being experimented on and observed and that the process is a Rorschach test of sorts.

My theory after beginning another rewatch is that they are connecting to each other’s minds. Their desks are connected. Petey’s least scenes coincide with Mark seeing the map, removing Petey’s photo, riding up in the elevator, and dying when Mark reaches his location. There is something very haunting in that sequence of events.

My theory is they sort of work as human captcha and are training an AI. The numbers are meant to be people's individuals personalities codified into code. So they put tge numbers where the belonse based on feeling. Then an ai learns to associate that with tgstof the 4 tempers. Their goal is to equalize a personality to build persons completely leveled. Then an AI will do that eventually. Creating a perfectly balanced person, with no issues, who would be the perfect worker.

I cover it a bit here https://kirknoggins.blogspot.com/2023/04/my-severance-theories.html

I think MDR's job is to "tame the tempers", whatever that ends up meaning.

"Should you tame the tempers as I did mine, then the world shall become but your appendage. It is this great and consecrated power that I hope to pass on to all of you, my children."

Perhaps Kier's method of taming the tempers is difficult, or time consuming, or whatever, and so Jame Eagan comes in with a tech upgrade, which he calls Severance, that accomplishes the same ends only faster and easier. This would explain why Jame wants everyone in the world to be severed, i.e., it somehow tames their tempers which is what Kier supposedly wanted.

So maybe MDR is taming their own tempers via the numbers game and for some reason it's to Lumon's benefit for MDR to be unaware of doing this. Or maybe MDR is taming the tempers of another person or people and must be kept unaware because whatever this process is ends up being harmful in some way, i.e., they would refuse to work if they knew what they were doing.

That the numbers are sorted into boxes with the four tempers in them is almost too on-the-nose. If MDR isn't taming tempers they still appear to be doing something with them.

I still don't really know what taming the tempers could mean, but I do think it's the crux to understanding what the heck is happening in the show. My guess is that they could be categories of emotions and "taming them" simply means being able to think freely without being affected by your emotions. This would be very similar to Stoicism (and as an aside, Outtie Irving is seen reading a book at the park by Marcus Arelieus, who is famously known as a Stoic).

I think they are coding new chips.

I had thought that they could be producing some unique code that goes on each brain chip. Kind of like a serial no., or a raw piece of a human life transmuted into numbers while still retaining its essence. Necessary to create that anchor of an entire other self within the brain's chronological memory.