So in this context, how does one calculate what's "socially optimal?" The problem I have with much of economic theory is that it tries to tie things back to wh

So in this context, how does one calculate what's "socially optimal?" The problem I have with much of economic theory is that it tries to tie things back to what's beneficial or not to societies and tries to do so through a very thick utilitarian lens. There's often a heavy amount of fairly sophisticated math, statistics, and modeling parading as certainty when the fact is, there's a very high amount of uncertainty in many assumptions and in variety of economic theories that are just hand-waved away. It's not to say the problems economists face are simple, they're actually incredibly challenging and I think it's good economist continue to push for a better understanding of these systems. My gripe arises when economists masquerade or imply current theory with certainty when in many cases, as if it were a mature science. It simply isn't and far too many use the appearance of certainty hidden in complexity of theory as certainty to push a biased personal agenda or perspective. When you overload terms like efficiency, efficiency in what context? Efficient for whom and through what perspective of the world? Very clear definitions need to be made so I don't question the motives of the attempt of quantification and can look at flaws and oversights that may exist in such metrics. Most economic theory lacks real empirical evidence because it's just to difficult to play the experiments and interplay of micro, meso, and macroscale systems at a global scale without actually running the experiment (changing policies).