Of course, you're right about survival. Sometimes the rational strategy is to fight. What I'm contesting is the view that predicting outcomes is useless.
I gave the example of economies and ecosystems together with prisoner's dilemma to illustrate that we do indeed have a models that are accurate in predicting at least first order effects.
First order effects are not everything, of course, but it doesn't seem sensible to throw away our knowledge coming from game theory (or cybernetics? or plain life experience) and settle on not being able to predict which choices are net positive and which are net negative.
As with any estimation, there will be those that can't be evaluated with any certainty, but also clear winners and losers.
I gave the example of economies and ecosystems together with prisoner's dilemma to illustrate that we do indeed have a models that are accurate in predicting at least first order effects.
First order effects are not everything, of course, but it doesn't seem sensible to throw away our knowledge coming from game theory (or cybernetics? or plain life experience) and settle on not being able to predict which choices are net positive and which are net negative.
As with any estimation, there will be those that can't be evaluated with any certainty, but also clear winners and losers.