Preface: We need a plan. This is mine.

Let me be as clear as I can:

This is an unprecedented emergency, for the country, the world, and the planet.

There are an overwhelming number of things that need to happen immediately, lawsuits, protests, organizing, boycotts, and demanding that Democrats show a leadership that matches the moment. However, personally, the sheer vastness of the cataclysm pushes me to think deep, instead of fast. Yes, support the purged federal workers – like me. Support the ones who are still holding together the American system, too! Yes, cancel all of your subscriptions to companies that support the new regime.

But also, compare those actions - even the lawsuits - to the size of the problem. The United States government is in the process being rapidly and mercilessly dismantled, by a man who sicced a violent mob on Congress itself. This same man, who again tried to literally kill the members of the American Congress, now has control of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. He is promising to radically expand fossil fuel production, as we are passing a threshold that has been described as "a point of no return" for the basic stability of the natural world. And half the country is cheering. Something is, and has been, deeply wrong. It will not be solved without a similarly deep solution.

So –

What I'm trying to do

I am making a plan to radically improve the lives of every person on the planet.

Please let me explain what I mean.

Why I'm trying to do it

In the process of improving our lives, we will be forced to fix, replace, or reinvent the systems that are being destroyed in front of us. We will be forced to create a radically effective political strategy, we will have to rebuild our economy, our organizing ecosystem, culture, and funding, yes, yes, and far more.

But in this maelstrom of terror, confusion, and need, I believe to the core of my being that we need a single, unambiguous anchor. At every juncture we will have to make hard choices, and so we need a logic that leads us to the better one. We need a guiding goal that can transcend bad rationales, and lazy cowardice, and simple familiar inertia. We need to be able to make decisions, not because we've always done it this way, or because it's safe, or because it's easy – but because it makes life better.

Because that is – that must be – our one, true, goal.

Without having total, crystalline clarity about the place we are going, then we will never be able to agree to strategies, or tactics, or candidates, or priorities, or anything else – because, behind it all, we will fundamentally be pointing in different directions.

And that is what got us to where we are now.

This fundamental, foundational need for a common goal is why I do not start with describing the polling data, or social psychology, or macroeconomics, or atmospheric chemistry – even though they are all irreplaceable parts of the plan I have, to radically improve the lives of every person on the planet. Instead, I start with the North Star. The one thing that every person can agree on: a better life. And I invite you to come with me as I explain both why that needs to be our North Star, and how we get there – working backwards, and following the evidence.

Who am I, to be making a plan like this

I am the guy who overturned the decade old, world standard, internationally funded, globally distributed, and textbook published research on what makes our lives good. Which, trust me, I'll get into in much more detail.

As you'll see, this is just one piece of the puzzle. And with the speed research moves, someone else's results may soon be more accurate than mine. But if you are looking for a plan, and looking for a person whose plan you can trust, I have already taken on the best understanding that humanity had, about what makes our lives worth living – and mine was better. Measurably, statistically, quantitatively better.

And I was able to do that, because I am also a guy who's spent the last twenty five years thinking about how to radically improve the lives of everyone on the planet.

I am not the important part of this story, but I hope that it will be easier to trust me if you know the broad strokes. I spent those twenty five years (and the ones before them) learning about those lives, and this planet, in four languages, on four continents. I studied biochemistry and computer science at Stanford, then received a Master's in Machine Learning and PhD in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon. These are the places where I was trained in many of the tools I will be using here: policy, statistics, organizational behavior, causal inference – as well as physics, glacier thermodynamics, neuropharmacology – and no small amount of the history of people who have succeeded in making the world a better place.

I have marched and I have yelled and I have worked in the halls of Congress – though mostly answering phones. I have taught middle school. I have led teams, and lost friends, and been threatened with machetes on dark dirt roads. I have been awarded for Excellence as a civil servant by the United States Government, for my work on developing goals for us as a nation, and how to reach them. Like I am doing again, now.

But the really important part is this.

The real reason I think you should listen to my plan is that: I have one. And I don't see anybody else making one in a way that I trust, or believe in, or believe at all – even when everywhere I look, and in everyone I talk to, I see a desperate searching for a way out of where we are. In conversations with federal workers, and scientists, and political activists, and venture capitalists, and people I overhear on the street, I hear the same thing over and over: "My god – how did this happen? And what are we going to do? Does anybody even have a plan?"

I do.

What you can expect

With this publication, I'll be sharing this plan – both the parts I've already figured out, and the ones I'm still working on. My goal in sharing is to find supporters, to find collaborators, and to create something that is vastly better than anything I could ever create on my own. Then of course ultimately, the goal is not just to write this plan down, but to use it. Which will require much more collaboration.

I'll share my own research, as well as other's research, arguments, data, interviews, conversations, and more, two to three times a week. The planned schedule is:

Monday: Five pages of the plan, wrapped in a story so it all makes sense. I want this to be fun, to be memorable, to be welcoming and accessible to every person who is onboard already, and many more who are not yet. I will dive deep, and I will include some very technical arguments, but I will still insist on presenting this plan in the shape of a story. This is the long, slow, deep approach.

Wednesday: One recorded interview or conversation (if I can)

Saturday: A post about the ongoing progress and adventures of a smaller, plan-related project I'm currently working on, such as a collaboration with climatologists on a single-page graphical summary of global warming, or a summary of some research that I think is especially critical. Or maybe just the story of what happens when I try to present this plan to a bunch of neo-Nazis.

I want this plan to be freely accessible to anyone who is curious. However I also want to be able to do this work full-time - because it is job that requires that, and more. I would be enormously grateful if you could subscribe, at whatever level you can (including Free, if that's where you are!) and spread the word.

And if you come with me -

and we work hard -

and we are honest, thoughtful, courageous, and lucky -

then we will, in true, physical, lived human reality -

radically improve the lives of every person on this planet.

Because when I die, by god, that is what I want to have done.

I hope you'll come with me.