Ali Wolf的动态

?? Dive into the latest research roundup! ??Expect this roundup once or twice a month, packed with intriguing finds. For now, let's call it the research roundup until inspiration strikes for a snappier name! Kicking things off with a gem from Russell Clark. https://bit.ly/3PJveuY . . #stappfinancial #thomasstappcfp #ResearchRoundup #Insights

The Wiener process serves as the foundation for mathematical models in various domains, including physics, economics, and finance. In finance, for example, it underpins the Black-Scholes model for option pricing, where it is used to model the unpredictable movements of stock prices over continuous time. #quantitativefinance #quant

?? Explore the concept of a universal basic dividend (UBD) with Earth4All's latest deep-dive papers! The deep-dives were led by Ken W., visiting professor at Cranfield University (UK) and #Earth4All contributor. 1?? Learn about the ethical and moral foundations of a UBD in "On the macroeconomics of transition and the search for clarity": https://ow.ly/CmM650QwGgB 2?? Discover how a UBD could contribute to Earth4All’s five extraordinary turnarounds in "Unconditional cash transfers and the five turnarounds": https://ow.ly/reKI50QwGmz

Dune, both the book and movie, provides a fascinating look into the complex relationship between human empires and commodities. From grain to coal to oil and beyond, human societies have dedicated immense effort and violence to securing energy resources. Dune highlights the intricacies involved in this process, making it an important work to consider for anyone interested in the intersection of politics, economics, security and energy.

"Costco-ing the grid" is an alternate title for this deep dive into public goods, common pool resources, and club goods with Lynne Kiesling, Conleigh Byers, Farhad Billimoria, Ahlmahz Negash, and Paul Dockery. The experts discuss the classification system used in economics to distinguish public goods from private goods and what classifying some services as common pool resources means for grid planning and market design. https://lnkd.in/g77N4-wz

Brownian Motion/Wiener Process Brownian motion, named after the Scottish botanist who initially observed the erratic movements of pollen grains suspended in water, finds its mathematical underpinnings formalized by Bachelier within the realm of option pricing. This stochastic process serves as a foundational concept in financial modeling. Mathematically, Brownian motion is characterized as a continuous, stationary process with normally distributed, independent increments. Brownian motion stands as a profoundly versatile process, highly valuable for modeling numerous random phenomena, particularly in finance. For deeper insights, one can delve into Paul Wilmott's book on Quantitative Finance. Key properties of Brownian motion are given below #quant #stochastic #brownianmotion #wienerprocess

In 2023, the Land Trust Alliance partnered with Earth Economics to develop the Ecosystem Services Valuation Tool (ESVT), an accessible tool that can be used by land trusts to provide high-level estimates of the value of co-benefits generated by the lands they steward. The core of the ESVT is a meta-analysis of 1,467 ecosystem services values from 181 studies drawn from Earth Economics’ SERVES database, one of the world’s largest repositories of ecosystem services research. The tool values eleven services across nine ecosystem categories, including wetlands, forests, grasslands, shrublands, rivers, and lakes. #landtrustalliance https://ow.ly/t8PZ50Sh9sm

Transform everything in mercantile terms: that's the worldview that drives this agenda. It is a worldview that place us at the top of the world - and apart from it - and turns the rest of the planet into our larder. Instead of changing this worldview, this proposal acquiesces to it and sells nature for a price. https://lnkd.in/gVsx87e5

If you have 30mns on your hands and care about the world’s future (ok that’s a pretty poor clickbait tactic) read ??The Real Cost of Plundering the Planet’s Resources?? by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. It’s the kind of short, crisp, eye-opening and angering piece that may actually do the world some good. I’ve been wanting to find a piece like this for years. It’s based on 2 recent aptly-titled books that I’ll add to my very long must-read reading list—including for an upcoming class on ??Technology and Global Challenges?? I will teach in 2025: “Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization” by Ed Conway, and “So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything”. I have never liked material things very much; nor money, or I’ll have made very different career decisions. I’m convinced money corrupts and destroys about everything; and money comes from the corruption and destruction of about everything (I mean large amounts of money). I don’t understand nor care about watches, cars, diamond rings, fancy lamps, clothes. With digital we’ve become more remote from the natural world than ever; we increasingly fail to grasp that *all* comes from the earth—everything. I grew up with the quote “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" attributed to Lavoisier. Everything created even a haircut or a Zoom call comes from extracting something from the earth. The more expensive, the more money, the more stuff has had to be extracted *at some point*. It’s basic physics and economics. I do own way too much stuff as most of us do; but the only valuable stuff I own is my (large) spearfishing gear, a discipline I have practiced since I was a kid. I love it because of the environment —the ocean, the silence, no Teams meetings, no ??serial entrepreneurs?? or ??thought leaders?? around— because it teaches you humility, patience, and the value of work and improving, but above all because you see and feel and eat what you kill, experience the whole process of extraction, including its necessary cruelty and difficulty. The point is this; even as everything seems increasingly de-materialized, tertiary, service-based, ??[s]tatistics like these can produce the sense that matter doesn’t matter all that much anymore. Conway thinks that this is an illusion, and a dangerous one. Contemporary society continues to rely on raw materials, like Spruce Pine’s quartz, taken from the earth. Indeed, extraction rates, far from slowing, keep accelerating. These days, Conway reckons, humanity mines, drains, and blasts more stuff out of the ground each year than it did in total during the roughly three hundred millennia between the birth of the species and the start of the Korean War. This comes with immense consequences, both ecological and social, even if we don’t attend to them.?? https://lnkd.in/dBX9kVEt

Most history I've read paints a fairly straightforward account of the Chesapeake Bay, which ramps up from a European standpoint in the 1500s. To me, the above and below water topography suggests at least the possibility of a very different historical picture (both regarding 'time periods' and 'scale'), relative to what appears to be a complex web of dams, re-directed groundwater, enclosures and now submerged island platforms in a region that coincidentally or otherwise contains shapes that when rotated 90 degrees clockwise look remarkably like those depicted on in some cases very old maps made regarding completely different places. One interesting point in my mind is that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is connected to many of what are accepted to be the most ridiculous maps made during in particular the 17th century. Simultaneously, the VOC's trade network helped it become history's most successful enterprise; valued in modern money at what I've read to be just under 8 Trillion US Dollars. What I still wonder is whether the VOC truly got so rich using maps that were subpar even for the era? Like a good magician, might the VOC instead have simply designed maps to lead otherwise potential 'pirates' to look in places for 'trade' where it wasn't occurring? I'm not saying this is what happened, just that to me it makes at least as much sense as starting from the position that the VOC acquired its fortunate 'despite' (not 'because of') the maps it relied upon. For now, I thought I would simply share some images that highlight underwater shapes that to me raise questions. No answers, but questions I think are fair regarding whether the numerous apparent 'mill' and 'island' shapes are truly just random happenstance. Focus is near mouth of York River ('Orange' and 'Dark Blue' shapes).