Jason Smith — What should we expect from an economic theory?

I got into a back and forth with Srinivas T on Twitter after my comment on an Evonomics tweet. As an aside, Noah Smith has a good piece on frequent contributor at Evonomics David Sloan Wilson (my own takes are here, here, here). I'll come back to this later. Anyway, Evonomics put up a tweet quoting an economist saying "we need to behave like scientists" and abandon neoclassical economics.

My comment was that this isn't how scientists actually behave. Newton's laws are wrong, but we don't abandon them. They remain a valid approximation when the system isn't quantum or relativistic. Srinivas took exception, saying surely I don't believe neoclassical economics is wrong in the same way Newton is wrong.

I think this gets at an important issue: what should we expect of an economic theory?….

Information Transfer Economics
What should we expect from an economic theory?
Jason Smith