What I did in June
My July newsletter
Since the Covid pandemic forced everyone to adapt to video-conferencing (something I’ve long been a proponent of), I’ve been travelling less. But this June I went overseas for the second time since the arrival of the pandemic, to take part in a couple of small workshops. With 20-odd people, there are enough to fit in one room, but too many for an effective video-conference. I wore my mask for air travel, but took my chances in the meetings.
Both workshops were in lovely settings1. Also, the organizers of both were co-authors and good friends of mine, Han Bleichrodt and Ani Guerdjikova, so the soa
First, in Alicante (Spain), there was a meeting of authors of a handbook on Prospect Theory. This is theory of choice under uncertainty put forward by Kahneman and Tversky, which incorporates my own idea of rank-dependent utility, developed way back around 1980
Then, in Grenoble (France) a meeting on bounded awareness (the “black swan” problem). I’ve been working on this for a couple of decades, but suddenly had a new idea, about which I’m still excited. This is to relate bounded awareness to the problematic “Law of the Excluded Middle” which says that if a proposition p is not true, it’s negation NOT-p must be true. The Law might seem obvious, but it has been the subject of controversy among mathematicians for a century or more.
It may be too late in my career to develop this idea as much as I would like, but for the moment I’m full of optimism.
I’m not at all optimistic, on the other hand about the future of US democracy. In fact, I’d say that future is already in the past. I’ve been trying to make sense of the implications for Australia, but that’s a huge task
Newspaper articles
Is selling off Santos to a foreign buyer in Australia’s national interest? First, define national interest Guardian 22 June
Are pro-natalists living on the same planet? Inside Story 30 June
Media
My June media report is here (password quiggin). Thanks as usual to Alysha Hiluevo for preparing this.
Visit my Substack blog
Read my comic book presentation of The Perils of Privatisation. Paid subscribers to the blog get a free physical copy.
For my parochial tastes, there is nowhere as nice as Cotton Tree on the Sunshine Coast, but it’s nice to go somewhere different