[nk1tz]

Thank you for the succinct defence of the validity of game theory.

On a meta level: Is there a generalized reason why people reject tools of analysis on the basis of "imperfect reflections of reality". I've never come across someone rejecting the formula for the diameter of a ball just because it's "only an approximation". Does it have something to do with number and size of assumptions involved?

[simiones]

I think an important difference is that physical models usually have a pretty good idea of what details they are ignoring, and thus some quantifiable idea of the amount of error they may introduce.

Meanwhile, sociological models don't really have any idea of how much relevant detail they are ignoring, meaning that it is far more likely than in physics that the model is simply not useful, equivalent to saying that may make unfounded assumptions (like trying to use a spherical frictionless cow model to compute what kind of cow shoes work best).

[rytill]

preamble: I think game theory is super useful and applicable.

It's when people hear an analysis and remember experiences in their past where, had they applied that same analysis, they would have been completely wrong and maybe even achieved a much worse outcome for themselves.

Another take is that some situations have chaos-like properties when approximation analysis is applied to them. The diameter of a ball isn't going to explode several orders of magnitude wrong and into negative space.