 Economists and others who interpret game theory in terms of RPT should not think of game theory as in any way an empirical account of the motivations of some flesh-and-blood actors (such as actual people). Rather, they should regard game theory as part of the body of mathematics that is used to model those entities (which might or might not literally exist) who consistently select elements from mutually exclusive action sets, resulting in patterns of choices, which, allowing for some stochasticity and noise, can be statistically modeled as maximization of utility functions. On this interpretation, game theory could not be refuted by any empirical observations, since it is not an empirical theory in the first place. Of course, observation and experience could lead someone favoring this interpretation to conclude that game theory is of little help in describing actual human behavior.