Rationality isn’t an option because it’s wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists.
You don’t need to read people’s minds to predict their behavior at sufficient granularity to be useful. Economics is blessed with plenty of opportunities to collect high quality real world data without needing to conduct arbitrary experiments.
How much gas will this specific gas station sell on date X. Build whatever models you want at whatever scale is relevant and they face the brutal truth of a knowable answer to judge them. That’s how science progresses not arbitrary assumptions to make modeling easier.
"Newtonian mechanics isn't an option because it is wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists."
Do you see the issue here when I frame it this way? The core microeconomic assumption of people having preferences which are complete, reflexive and transitive (these are formal mathematical definitions! They don't require a whole lot to hold!) has been incredibly useful in the 20th and 21st centuries much like understanding Newtonian mechanics was in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Besides this, you are still not engaging with the philosophy of science point that I am making. Because of the fact that humans have this pesky thing called free will, unless we impose some assumptions on their thinking nothing we study about causality in the behavior of humans is falsifiable. Maybe you eat because you feel hungry. Maybe you eat because you worship bread as a god. I fundamentally can't say either way without making assumptions that you likely find unobjectionable.
> Do you see the issue here when I frame it this way?
Honestly no.
Newton mechanics can be accurate to 20 decimal places, that’s currently indistinguishable from reality in relevant and well understood contexts. Making Newtonian Mechanics actually useful.
The core microeconomic assumption is never anywhere close to that accurate. It works except XYZ which doesn’t apply is acceptable, it never works isn’t.
You don’t need to read people’s minds to predict their behavior at sufficient granularity to be useful. Economics is blessed with plenty of opportunities to collect high quality real world data without needing to conduct arbitrary experiments.
How much gas will this specific gas station sell on date X. Build whatever models you want at whatever scale is relevant and they face the brutal truth of a knowable answer to judge them. That’s how science progresses not arbitrary assumptions to make modeling easier.