| > I will close with a belated defense of the rational-actor model. > Evolution is ruthlessly rational. Yes, but that doesn't mean its products or their behaviour are mostly or even partly rational, just that whatever strategy they adopted has worked to ensure survival. If this is your definition of what's 'rational', that seems a very low bar to set. That said I enjoyed the article. Frankly it's long seemed to me that economic models based around the idea of the human as a rational actor are fundamentally wrong, because people are not rational (and I include myself in this, more's the pity). Look out at the world, see all the self-sabotage, the unfounded hatred, the violence, the retribution, the temporarily embarrassed millionaires who vote to keep themselves in the gutter. Can we stretch the idea of "rational" behaviour by looking at evolutionary impulses and saying "well, at X point in the past, this impulse may have helped tribal cohesion and increased the chances of group survival, even at the cost of blah blah blah". Sure we can, sure. But that behaviour is not then "rational" in the society we live in today. So yeah, modelling of populations based on rational self interest really does look like it has a foundational error. An economics based around a much more chaotic model of human behaviour, with some rationalities built in, is probably needed. |