Blog

Communicative Decision Making Under Uncertainty as Fault Trees

decision making
communicative rationality
fault trees
deep uncertainty

In memory of Jürgen Habermas

Mar 23, 2026
Jason Hawkins

Stating the revealed preferences of choice.

Economics
Surveys
I am developing an article on the foundations of revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) methods. This article is motivated by the common assumption in choice…
Dec 21, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Spirit of the City

ontology

On the ontologies of the city

Nov 15, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Civilization Complexity and Collapse

History
Complexity
Joseph Tainter defines collapse as “a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity”. This definition relies on a society maintaining a level…
Oct 20, 2025
Jason Hawkins

The Roles of the University

Education
Funding
The university has faced criticism in recent years as a liberal institution (in the modern sense of social progressivism rather than the classical liberal sense of…
Oct 18, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Are we producers or are we consumers?

Economics
Production
Consumption
According to Schumacher, “economics operates legitimately and usefully within a given framework which lies altogether outside the economic calculus”. Economics is therefore…
Oct 17, 2025
Jason Hawkins

On Education

Pedagogy
AI
In this new state, with a simple and solitary life, very limited needs, and the implements they had invented to provide for them, since men enjoyed very great leisure, they…
Jun 23, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Values and Axioms

Economics
Value
Axioms
The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick for all knowledge and belief. We should…
Jun 17, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Spatial Location Choice

Econometrics
Choice models
Location
Spatial choice is an important topic in my research. I have studied both home and establishment location choice based on the work of William Alonso, John Douglas Hunt (MSc…
Jun 11, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Deep Ecology

Ecology
Philosophy
Image credit: https://sites.middlebury.edu/rethinking/about-this-site/deep-ecology/
Jun 2, 2025
Jason Hawkins

The Metabolic Rift

Marx
Capitalism
When one thinks of Karl Marx, environmentalist is unlikely to be the first word that comes to mind. Yet, sociologist John Bellamy Foster makes the case for an environmental…
May 28, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Private Space. Private Land

architecture
land use planning
Books, podcasts, movies, and other media are a rich source of insights in my life. However, often the insights gained are due to a tangential comment rather than the main…
May 14, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Nature as organism. Nature as machine.

environmental philosophy
Let us begin with a framing curtesy of the Deep Ecology philosopher Geoge Sessions, who argues that Western perspectives on nature have long been influenced by the Christian…
May 13, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Ecosystem Service Measurement

ecological economics

On thermometers and thermostats

Apr 29, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Our Grand Omaha to Calgary Trip

travel
infrastructure
In 2024, I received an offer to return to Canada and join the faculty at the Univerity of Calgary. My partner and I both did our degrees at the University of Calgary and…
Jan 16, 2025
Jason Hawkins

Technology and Development

development economics

On intermediate technology

Oct 29, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Travel Behaviour as Scientific Art

philosophy of science
metascience
roads in woods

Reflections on Kuhn

Jul 30, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Computing The Climate

climate modeling

and travel

Jul 1, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Emergy and States

emergy
state-state economics
constraints on growth

Energy, entropy, enthalpy, emergy, others?

Jun 24, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Schumacher On Scale

society
scale
buddhist economics
“In the current vocabulary of condemnation there are few words as final and conclusive as the word ‘uneconomic’” (SIB, p. 44). Thus states Schumacher in his work “Small is…
Jun 10, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Socialist Calculation Debate

socialist economics
value theory

On value theory

Jun 6, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Schumacher On Prediction

prediction
estimation
semantics
Best known for his work on small-scale economics, in the same work (Small is Beautiful), E.F. Schumacher provides one of the best discussions on prediction that I have seen…
May 28, 2024
Jason Hawkins

Jevons Paradox

environmental economics
system dynamics

In a non-stationary economy

Apr 26, 2024
Jason Hawkins

The Four Horsemen of the Production Apocalypse

transportation planning
production theory

Or why headlines are clickbait

Apr 21, 2024
Jason Hawkins

William Vickrey and Transportation Economics

economics
Canadians
William Vickrey made major contributions to a wide range of fields within the economics discipline and was recognized for his work with 1996 Nobel Prize in Economic Science.…
May 4, 2018
Jason Hawkins

Our Trip to Toronto Through the USA

travel
infrastructure
Written after we crossed the country for my Ph.D. in 2017. I haven’t returned to Duluth, MN yet…
Sep 11, 2017
Jason Hawkins

AV Deployment, Urban DNA, and Equity

technology
autonomous vehicles
equity
Written before starting my Ph.D. in 2017 (July 03, 2017)…
Jul 3, 2017
Jason Hawkins
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