big E economists are entirely aware of the pitfalls and the limitations of their field, they know it's far from exact, and they know it much better than people

big E economists are entirely aware of the pitfalls and the limitations of their field, they know it's far from exact, and they know it much better than people who don't study economics. Those who are ignorant of historical mistakes are doomed to repeat them. and in terms of rational vs irrational behavior, the behavior of fluids is describable without deriving from the behavior of the particles that make up the fluid; and the limitations of the approach is understood, again, not by lay people but by experts in the field.