Why “Dare to Know”?
Dare to Know is for people who want to help figure out how to persuade others out of political traps. I’ve re-discovered the first step: getting people to think for themselves. But even that is shockingly difficult — so your help is needed. Let me show you.
My one-time boss, Frank Oppenheimer, brother of Robert, was also a brilliant physicist and a wonderful person. That was true even back when he and his wife Jackie were members of the Communist Party USA. Then Frank’s political work was helping to integrate a public swimming pool, and he might not have known the CPUSA was controlled by Stalin. But when Stalin signed a pact with Hitler, and the CPUSA immediately switched its position on Hitler, everything was made perfectly clear.
But Frank did not drop out. It took a year and a half for him to develop the courage to part company with the devil himself! And Frank was one of the most courageous people I’ve known. But it wasn’t just Frank. A hundred thousand of the most morally concerned, progressive activists were right there with him, and most took years longer before having courage to admit they’d been deceived. DSA is just a re-run. So who understood this 150 years earlier?
Immanuel Kant, in his essay, What is the Enlightenment, “‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’ — that is the motto of enlightenment.” He distilled that to a more famous watchword: “Dare to Know!” His purpose was to sell the key ideas of the Enlightenment — that individuals should think for themselves and the authorities should allow free speech. The year was 1784, the year “His Britannic Majesty” acknowledged the independence of “said United States.”
The Enlightenment project is still unfinished. That’s why we’re here.
Why this is free
Paid publications chase subscribers, which means chasing novelty — a parade of exciting new untested frameworks. This Substack strives for one framework comprising complementary parts, and a small set of key facts selected according to what active participants find effective.
Keeping it free should provide a broad reach due to zero-cost entry and proof that I’m not after people’s money. You can recommend this to friends knowing they won’t be hit with sales pitches and teasing newsletters that end just before the “good part.”
About Me
In 7th grade I chose UC Berkeley so I could join the protesters. In 1965 I was there, marching against the Vietnam War while blitzing through physics and math. I was a radical dedicated to MLK’s nonviolence — but I supported the Black Panthers and was duped by a Communist, then spent 50 years figuring out how the far left captures well-meaning people. That inquiry became the book I’m serializing as I begin this Substack.
I left Berkeley for a year of graduate astronomy, then taught middle school science for a year before working for Frank Oppenheimer, mentioned earlier. After the feds admitted drafting me into alternative service illegally, I toured Europe in a VW van for ten months, then earned my PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley. Taught at BU, then consulted, eventually for the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, where I recruited their Chief Scientist, David MacKay, to co-edit Global Climate Cooperation — which included three Nobel economists and was published by MIT Press.
After MacKay’s death I spent ten years researching the history I’d lived through. Working out how to battle the forces that side-tracked me has been my passion, and I’m committed to continuing that. I’ve also recently connected with Carl Rasmussen, MacKay’s closest collaborator on AI algorithms, who has picked up where our MIT book left off — and I’m excited to be working on climate cooperation once again. All of it — the history, the science, the half-century of figuring out how good people get captured by bad ideas — feeds into Dare to Know.
