We don't have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model

The efficient market hypothesis ("homo economicus") model is a prime example. Of course it is wrong. It is a model.

That doesn't mean it is not useful.

Howard Marks (highly successful investor over many decades) has this to say about it

> if you ignore the efficient market hypothesis, you’re going to be very disappointed, because you’re going to find out that very few of your active investment decisions work. But if you swallow it whole, you won’t be an investor, and you’ll give up on active success. So the truth, if there is one, has to lie somewhere in between, and that’s what I believe.

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/conversation-at...

I also don't want to take every opportunity I get, that would be pretty exhausting. I would have opportunity to save some taxes if I invest a few hours into tax law. Certainly and opportunity and pretty productive. But I just don't want to because I hate doing taxes.

Sure, these models do not apply to individuals (although this fact is often neglected). Also a model is always a simplification. Intrinsic to that is that it will by definition only ever be approximative. It neglects parts of reality, hopefully the less important ones but you cannot be sure about correctness and extend of approximation.

For example if I know a behavioral scientist that I just don't like for any reason and he suggest I should exercise more, I might go eat an extra pot of ice cream. This would render "nudging" quite ineffective or worse have the opposite than the intended effect.

I think it is more constructive to accept limitations of a model. It can help for prognosis and diagnostics. Why is it for example that people exercise less? Probably work load or distractions from entertainment or whatever reason. I think the field should concentrate on trying to get answers to such questions.

Psychology is interesting and much of the content that cannot be replicated is probably still true under certain circumstances. But for generalization these circumstances need to be known.

"Because the government isn't, (or at least shouldn't be) beholden to short term interests in the same way those other classes are". A Government is made of people. "Shouldn't" doesn't mean "Isn't". You need to convince me that it "Isn't".

"Companies will happily destroy everything around them, poison and impoverish entire nations if not reined in, just to turn a quick buck." I disagree. What's the point for investor to make money and then die of pollution or die in a fire. Yes, there are bad apples and stupid people, but you can't design a system that prevent people to do things because there are some bad apples. Look at the big tech, they are mostly investing voluntarily to reduce fossil fuel dependency. Of course if there is a market failure that really can be solved by the Government and that would otherwise kill us all, then I'm in favor of (indirect and market based) intervention.

"People are extremely short-term, local thinkers in general." Disagree, people have different plans, some shorter term some longer term. Also why would they have short-term thinking in the market but long term thinking at the election?

"A government, under the purview of democracy, is needed to try to balance these things out and help a society actually operate" Very likely so. Although there are some ANCAP proposals I find interesting like the one form David Friedman, I'm not convinced it would work in practice. However my ideal Government doesn't balance anything (I don't think it actually can without making more harm than good). It instead define the rules and what constitute private property, but it doesn't decide how to allocate these resources. That would be left entirely to the market.

Now a rational actor would carefully evaluate the consequences of possible responses to come up with an appropriate option and if the cost of their feud were greater than the likely reward then they'ed simply let it go. While it leads to better outcomes, this is a slow and draining process.

On the other hand, a simple "eye for an eye" response will often lead to suboptimal results, particularly when the perceived sleight is very different from the actual transgression, but people still will be hesitant to mess with you all the same. While in our modern era of functional justice systems this approach is generally unnecessary, the overwhelming majority of our evolutionary history did not contain such a luxury.