[nrclark]

Game theory is a model that's sometimes accurate. Game theorists often forget that humans are bags of thinking meat, and that our thinking is accomplished by goopy electrochemical processes

Brains can and do make straight-up mistakes all the time. Like "there was a transmission error"-type mistakes. They can't be modeled or predicted, and so humans can never truly be rational actors.

Humans also make irrational decisions all the time based on gut feeling and instinct. Sometimes with reasons that a brain backfills, sometimes not.

People can and do act against the own self interest all the time, and not for "oh, but they actually thought X" reasons. Brains make unexplainable mistakes. Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten what you went in there to do? That state isn't modelable with game theory, and it generalizes to every aspect of human behavior.