However, if you do happen to have political opinions (that you think are well-reasoned), then you are engaging in this form of 'misguided analysis' that economists also engage in (albeit unknowingly). As for the 'economists' who claim to 'know the optimal answer', I guess I've just been fortunate to have never encountered one. More precisely, I've never run in to one in the various federal economic public policy organisations where I've spent the majority of my career. Where do they hang out?
And good luck designing experiments around, say, national healthcare policy that 'fail safely'. I think you'll find that an alarming number of them end up 'failing deadly'.
I don't agree with the idea that people, and society,
are completely impermeable to analysis.
This is just like medicine: You can theorize all you want, but in the end only a clinical trial shows you if your plans actually work. The subject is too complex. All you can do with your models is use them as input into the trials. If you skip trials you will get disaster and failure on an unsafe scale.
And good luck designing experiments around, say,
national healthcare policy
Oh and use "muddling through" more openly, because that's what life is about no matter how much data you collect. So don't pretend that there even IS an "optimal" answer, and/or that you know it and/or even that anyone can find it. Let's admit that we are all just trying things and that failure IS an option. So create systems that a) actually encourage and allow experimenting, and b) let those fail safely.