after editing my argument by deleting the statement that Nobel prize is a beauty contest because there are no objective criteria to decide what constitutes the greates contribution to science.
My reply:
Even a blind squirrel gets an acorn every now and then. Claiming that if the conclusion is true then the premise must also be true is a known fallacy. You need to show the existence of objective criteria that form the basis of Nobel awards to refute.
On the related subject (to maximize the utility of my quota of three postings a day):
Chris Burford hit the nail right on the head pointing out in his contribution to this thread that econ models assume away social connections among individuals - this is a serious flaw that undermines empirical validitity of the model (the "let's assume we have a can opener" thing). Related to it is another questionable assumption: that utlity maximization process has an analog rather than digital character i.e. it is a form averaging all inputs rather than treating them as discrete chunks. i.e. taking some inputs as "full information" while blocking some other inputs entirely.
The "analog" models, represented by complex equations, cannot be solved in everyday decision-making. Oftentimes they cannot be solved at all, because they do nt hava a unique solution. Fortunately, humans have another mechanism of dealing with information complexity that does not require complex equations and super-computers.
That mechanism is cognitive framing, that is, selective processing of inputs based on a priori criteria known as cognitive schemata. Cognitive schemata act as filter that let only certain type of information "in" to be considerded in decision making, while filtering out everything else as "noise." As a result, the choice is made not based on balancing all possible inputs, but on a rather narrow selection of inputs that are apriori deemed relevant.
In plain English: a developer makes a decision to buld a new settlement in the heart of pristine forest not by weighting all social, environmental, and economic pros and cons - as the rat-choice crowd wants us to believe, but by simply ignoring all these social and environmental pros and cons altogether and responding to a rather narrow set of stimuli - cash incentives offered by investors and people who call themselves government.
Cognitive schemata are socially constructed, that is, they constitute a set of expectations what information is valid that are sanctioned in a particular social group. That brings us back to Chris's argument chastising econ models for assuming away social relations. This is not merely ignoring soemthing of importance, but a fundamental distortion of what is being modeled - namely, how people make choices.
For those armed with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For those armed with the "infallible" rat-choice model, every problem looks like a utility maximization function.
wojtek