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The Story · A chapter of the life

Birth of a Hare-Brain

Communes, an ashram, a cyclotron magnet, and a reading habit that never stopped — the incubator of the drive.

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In his words

The chapter, in brief

The name came later — Wyc Grousbeck coined “Hare-Brain” at Stanford — but what it named was built here: summers on a Marxist-Leninist commune where a strawberry paid for an hour of voluntary work, the ashram, and the Berkeley campus, which I had the run of from the age of five. Jim Michael taught me to punch cards at Evans Hall while I wondered where the computers from 2001 were.

At eight I found a 65-ton electromagnet salvaged from the original Cyclotron — a piece of my own grandfather's world — climbed inside, and stayed until sundown reading nuclear physics. The capacity for long solitary thought dates from there. So does the contradiction that runs through everything: a militarist on a commune, building a fallout shelter with a shovel while the adults sang Back in the U.S.S.R. — and beneath it a pacifist. The architecture is my attempt to resolve that contradiction structurally.

The rooms are all here: the magnet, the reading room, the communes as they actually were, and why I tell all of it in public.

One graph, four projections

Birth of a Hare-Brain: the same thread, in every pillar

One graph, four projections — the story where this was learned, the invention that delivers it, the vision claim it serves, and what it becomes in the Era of Abundance.

Lived, then learned

The story of Birth of a Hare-Brain

Birth of a Hare-Brain · Heritage

It is acceptable to be human — and why a coordination layer cannot…

A coordination layer for this species cannot depend on its participants being good, because they are demonstrably not reliably good and no system of…

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Birth of a Hare-Brain

The roof we built for the stars: astral projection, von Däniken, and…

A father with no money and no rockets built a transparent roof and taught his sons to travel inward — guided visualization under the open stars…

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Birth of a Hare-Brain

The burning bush was a microphone: my father's two religions, and the…

Told that his returning-believer father now read the things he kept noticing on the drives home from his infidelities — a teaching skeleton, a car…

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Heritage · Birth of a Hare-Brain

From Terman's lab to The Cats: the Hare line, the Adventist…

The paternal line runs through the founding circuitry of Silicon Valley — the Radio Research Lab, Terman's Stanford — and through the founding…

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Birth of a Hare-Brain

The probation badge: Visalia, Three Rivers, and drug tests before…

The record's most grounded chapter of Milton Hare's working life: probation officer for drug convictions in Tulare County, badge and handcuffs — a…

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Birth of a Hare-Brain

Leaving Synanon: the hatchery, the rattlesnake era, and Cassie's…

The family's Synanon chapter ends on a refusal: when the cult mandated that children be separated into a communal hatchery, Milton Hare and Sandy…

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The room

Who carries Birth of a Hare-Brain

Person

Milton W. Hare

Selma, 1965 — and the promise

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Person

Milton Dixon Hare

Radar, chaff, and the Stanford lab at the center of Silicon Valley

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Person

Jonathan Paul Hare

Consilient Architect — the node this graph was seeded from

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Person

Cassidy Arkin

Producer — and the reason Hare was in those rooms at all

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Concept

Why capturing this network destroys the only thing…

Why capturing the network destroys what you captured

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Concept

Somebody has to author the genome. Here is why it…

Somebody has to author the genome

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Person

Doug Merritt

Met at the PC Forum lunch table

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Organization

Blyth Software

Omnis — the only client-server tool that worked across everything

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Person

Fred Terman

The father of Silicon Valley — and Hare's grandfather's mentor

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Organization

Raised on a clothing-optional commune, where a…

A clothing-discouraged commune, and an education in what people do when nobody makes them

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Concept

Indian zero, Arabic algebra, Greek proof, Roman law…

Everyone's mathematics, everyone's law — and no culture's alone

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Organization

My ancestors owned the shipyard, and recorded it to…

Wire-drawing, water-wheel factories, and a shipyard boast

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Organization

One of four white children in a class of thirty, then…

Fourth and fifth grade on Ashby Avenue — four white children in a class of thirty

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Concept

My father named me after King David's lover, and told…

What his father meant by the name, and what the church declined to comment on

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Concept

Human morality has never been enough to make people…

Human morality has never been sufficient. That is a design finding, not a complaint.

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Person

Tullan Holmqvist

Her mother read tarot and believed in everything; she loved Hare for accepting her family exactly as they were; she hugged him…

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Event

the Smith River cabin

Two stories, one room deep, finished by the boys who arrived to live in it; the classroom of the inward turn

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Person

Erich von Däniken

Chariots of the Gods, the Olmec heads, and the gorgeous audacity that a father later folded into his theology

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All 32 in Explore →

In his own words

The verbatim layer beneath Birth of a Hare-Brain

Every episode above distills from these. Where a page and its source differ, the source governs.

In his own words · S-035 · 2026-08-14

The three lines, the two schools, and the argument about shame

“The Ireland connection was recent oral tradition — it got confusing for us kids, because we were hearing three family…”

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In his own words · S-034 · 2026-08-14

The three books, the reading, and what everybody inherited

“Describe how we all have inherited a shared history of math and science and law and politics. Indicate that I inherited…”

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In his own words · S-158 · 2026-08-31

Vignette N: The QPN Immune System, Proto DNA, and David Brady

“[RAW USER SOURCE: Direct Narrative] Before I get, a related point is this is one of the key immune systems of the…”

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In his own words · S-159 · 2026-08-31

Vignette O: Herd Immunity, The Game-Theoretic Trap, and Radical Empathy

“[RAW USER SOURCE: Direct Narrative] I'll finish David Brady's in one moment to finish off that game theoretic trap.…”

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In his own words · S-085 · 2026-08-19

The burning bush was a microphone: six installments on the cabin, the…

“(immutable; five installments as received) ### Installment 1 > When I was... when we were boys, uh, my father moved up…”

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In his own words · S-094 · 2026-08-20

The vignette package: Heidelberg, The Cats, Synanon, Sonsini, and the Il…

“[Document 1, verbatim — the vignettes as supplied, preserved in the archive at full length; published as the six…”

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In his own words · S-109 · 2026-08-25

Cassidy, Sandy, Ed Arkin and Zander — the Synanon family chapter, with its…

“Cassidy Arkin is my step-sister, the biological daughter of my step mother Sandy Rodgers Hare. As described in another…”

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Entangled

Where Birth of a Hare-Brain touches the other projections

The same nodes exist simultaneously in other projections of the one graph. Touching this hub surfaces its correlated partners — follow any of them and the graph re-collapses around it.

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