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Topic
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Realism
A theory in international relations focusing on power and security as primary state interests.
3
episodes
3
thinkers
6h
of conversation
8
books & papers
8
terms defined
The neighbourhood: realism and the ideas it travels with. Drag to roam, click a star for the episode, click a neighbour to travel.
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The lexicon
Every term the guests lean on, in plain language. Read one in full, or filter to find it.
What the corpus says
The throughline across every conversation that touches this idea.
Mearsheimer claims NATO expansion is the principal cause of the Ukraine war, threatening Russian security interests.
John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mearsheimer argues that Israel's shift to the right and the power of the Israel lobby make a two-state solution unlikely.
John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He asserts that economic interdependence won't prevent war if survival is at stake, countering liberal peace theories.
John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Mearsheimer believes the U.S. must deter China over Taiwan to maintain its alliances in East Asia.
John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
He argues that the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism stifles open discourse about Israel.
John Mearsheimer · John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3
Lee Smolin argues that there is no single scientific method, challenging traditional views on scientific practice.
Smolin's concept of cosmological natural selection suggests that the laws of physics could evolve similarly to biological evolution.
Einstein's unfinished revolution involves unifying general relativity and quantum theory, which currently describe different scales of phenomena.
Experiments have shown that Einstein's definition of locality is false, with significant deviations observed.
The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics does not address the fundamental questions about probability and reality.
Vladimir Vapnik argues that deep learning is a fantasy and lacks mathematical grounding, favoring shallow networks for optimal solutions.
Vladimir Vapnik · Vladimir Vapnik: Statistical Learning
Vapnik highlights that every example in machine learning carries no more than one bit of information, challenging the efficiency of current data-heavy methods.
Vladimir Vapnik · Vladimir Vapnik: Statistical Learning
Voices on realism
12 standout quotes from across the corpus.
Go read
8 books and papers cited across these episodes.
For the specialist
What experts find new
8 expert-level takeaways for a specialist reader.
At the frontier
Still unresolved
4 open questions flagged across these conversations.
The thinkers
Who takes this idea on, by how often they return to it.