How the Rationality of Foreign Policy Affects a State, by John J Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato 

⭐ Thank you for watching! 🎉 Don't forget to subscribe and share your favorite video with your friends! 📣 Leave a comment and tell us what you thought about this video!

I don't like when people other than John speak. Is that wrong?

A clear division within the policy making process regarding “which theory” is utilized basically depends on the ideological preference of the executive who if “liberal” employs liberal advisors and who if “realist” employs realist advisors. So they might be rational but there is no choice. Thus the individual executive decision maker operates in a self determined bounded rationality which limit the theoretical outcomes through “rational choice” of likeminded advisors. This supports the psychological theory of “Directive Leadership” which can foster groupthink.

If they can handle more they should be given more

Adam Smith (and many others later in modernity) argued rationality as a _basic presumption_ for his theories to be valid and realistic. Holistically though, we aren’t always rational - at a state, group, entity nor individual level. Insights from as different thinkers as Iain McGilchrist, Michael Hudson or Brian Klaas show this in equally different ways. The modern era is the pinnacle of reductionism - both for great progress, but also for great consequences, at a scale we sense and know, but seem unable to act rationally within. Our narrative of “free choice” seems to fall apart to some extent - as we make choices from given context and ontological asymmetry (described within economics by Stiglitz). Achieving rationality on a global scale under global ecological constraints seems… irrational, at least to me. However, as humans, we have a strong intuitive pathway towards reason as well. Less credible “answers” seem irrational until we deem less credible questions rational. Such answers are beyond a current epistemological horizon - but within our ability to creatively explore philosophically.

fascinating talk. Ashely seems fixated on the notion that optimal/rational policy given current information would most likely result in success. defining success as mainly surviving and thieving. there are two issues with this notion, one is that there are times in which you cannot survive even with the optimal/rational policy, the second is the fact that it's not possible to have perfect information in our world, also given chaos theory, small variation in initial conditions may result in completely different results due to complexity. while success/survival depends on the actions taken, studying the actions from the prospective of success/survival would result in bias.

Maybe i should get a job teaching kids how horrible life is going to be

I am the only Ethiopian to wach this