Blog Archives
TIME TO DISCOUNT COVID19
The focus of news about COVID19 has been on changes overnight, because long term success has seemed uncertain. If you don’t have a way of taking future uncertainty into account in present actions the situation could be worrying. The following ways of dealing with uncertainty are commonly used.
- Trust in God assumes divine intervention. I normally use one of the methods below.
- Hypothesising is guesswork made credible by academic qualifications.
- Forecasting is induction that looks for a pattern or trend in past data. An epidemiological model could help.
- Time discounting or net present value is for investors to compare alternatives of delaying expenditure and advancing recovery, to get a high return.
- Expected value analysis calculates the probability-weighted consequences of possible outturns.
- Cost benefit analysis to consider outcome alternatives.
- Flow or optimal experience is an existential psychological response with individual focussing on a personal goal, applying of skills and totally mentally engaging, becoming oblivious of passing time.
Using one of the above techniques could reduce your worries about COVID19.
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
HOW DO WE EVALUATE ACTION ON CLIMATE EFFECTS?
- Collect unbiased observations of temperature, sea level and effects of extreme events over many years.
- Analyse climate data impartially to detect trends and all potential causes.
- Identify worst consequences of effects for people, fauna and flora.
- Consider most likely cause(s) of worst effects.
- Select verified mitigating and preventative actions.
- Obtain agreements and funding.
ALTERNATIVE METHOD
Skip steps 1-6, vilify benign CO2 emissions, exhaust supplies CH4, sabotage Australia’s coal industry, deplete scarce World oil, exact payments from electricity users, install renewable energy technologies that cause more warming than coal, prevent public debate, pretend that government is in control.
Is road widening loosening our belt to cure obesity?
This is the route proposed for a Brisbane Underground Railway Circle Line.
Please consider some alternatives that would reduce dependence on roads.
Martin Knox
WHO WILL LOSE FROM GENTRIFICATION?
Boundary Street, West End, Brisbane
With immigration and population growth, an influx of knowledge workers is demanding inner-city housing to suit their inner-city work and lifestyle need. Investors are buying in adjacent suburbs, residents are having to move over and students are moving out. But a gentrified suburb could soon decline from fashion. Knowledge worker jobs could be devolved from the CBD to satellite centres (see article below). Residences that preserve value best will offer authentic lifestyles and counter the lifestyle destruction.