If I had been asking the questions in the interview, I would have asked Professor Laibson if he thought there was anything wrong or if there was any true value to be derived from trying to get to a model that perfectly predicts human behavior, even if this is an impossible task. Based on the questions asked and his responses, I would guess that he would say the task is of little value. To me, I think that from an intellectual curiosity perspective, trying to figure out something that is thought to be unknowable sounds like an incredible problem to tackle that we should all be striving to answer. From a practical perspective, even if it's impossible to model the decisions of people perfectly if we could somehow get to a point where we could predict even 30%, 40%, or 50% of decisions, I think that would produce mass value for society, help prevent certain negative situations from occurring, and even cause positive change. I would ask Professor Laibson about his response to my thoughts and his thoughts on the topic.
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