Maybe I should clarify: I didn't mean that it's always futile to build mental models to understand the world. More that in this instance, our attempts to rationalize our behavior and use that understanding to guide future behavior (via economics, esp.) have clearly been at least partially a failure. If we continue to see profit as the ultimate goal of human endeavor, we do so at our peril. I think it's clear that economics is lagging behind the physical sciences in it's ability to successfully guide our behavior. It needs modifications to be able to properly deal with externalities; otherwise we're on a collision course with a future that I think most people would consider highly dystopian.