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April 10, 2025
Essay by Keith Rankin. ‘Rational Expectations’ is a problematic theory in economics. Here I want to focus more away from economics; and more on the meanings of ‘rationality’ in decision-making, than on the problematic ambiguity of the word ‘expect’ (and its derivatives such as ‘expectations’). ‘Expectation’ here means what we believe ‘will’ happen, not ‘should’ ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Rational Expectations, Intelligence, and War" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/04/10/keith-rankin-essay-rational-expectations-intelligence-and-war/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Rational Expectations, Intelligence, and War">Read more</a>
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December 6, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Science, in the not-so-recent-past, has often had a bad press. It’s been personified, particularly by the political left, as Frankenstein, as agents of capitalism, classical liberalism, colonialism, sexism (yang over yin), eugenics, and god-like pretension. More recently though, in the zeitgeists of climate change awareness and covid, it’s had an unusually ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Science, Scientists, and Scientism" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/12/06/keith-rankin-analysis-science-scientists-and-scientism/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Science, Scientists, and Scientism">Read more</a>
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November 23, 2021
Keith Rankin - What is required is democratic capitalism, with due respect for democratic and capitalist property rights. Translated into the 'real world', all adults – ie minors excluded – hold, as a matter of legal principle, a democratic franchise.
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August 13, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. In our age of unnuanced media reporting, cynicism, and political correctness, words and meanings are subject – perhaps increasingly – to an effective process of cancellation. It’s not a new process, in the past certain words might be replaced by others – eg ‘race’ replaced by ‘ethnicity’, ‘illegitimate’ replaced by ‘ex-nuptial’, ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Loss of Language, and the Future of Science" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/13/keith-rankin-essay-loss-of-language-and-the-future-of-science/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Loss of Language, and the Future of Science">Read more</a>
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October 14, 2020
Analysis by Keith Rankin. This 21st century epoch is coming to be one of ‘existential crises’, meaning that various large-scale dangers are increasingly coming to be seen to threaten ‘our’ existence, where ‘our’ most commonly relates to people, but may also relate to multicellular life on Earth. An existential catastrophe might fall short of human ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Existential Concerns" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2020/10/14/keith-rankin-analysis-existential-concerns/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Existential Concerns">Read more</a>