&gt; More troubling for me, many of the models we use to understand, or attempt to predict, our reality strike me as quite flawed. Economics itself not the least among them.<p>What troubles me more is that there are plenty of useful and &#x27;proven&#x27; models that we don&#x27;t even use in practice. From the way we approach crime and addiction to group dynamics, from the power of advertising&#x2F;propaganda to education, there&#x27;s plenty of stuff we <i>know</i> pretty well, and yet don&#x27;t implement.<p>I&#x27;ve eschewed a career in academia, as well as one in politics, but I wouldn&#x27;t mind dedicating at least part of my life to figuring out how to optimize the process of bringing the more solid discoveries into the &#x27;real world&#x27;. I&#x27;m just not entirely sure where to start.<p>On a smaller level, I notice this disconnect in the personal lives of my friends as well as my own. We know quite a bit about how willpower works, for example, and how important habit formation is, and yet for the most part this knowledge only barely trickles down into our lives. Most changes seem to just sort of happen as I age, if at all, and that usually feels too slow and too late.<p>After a few decades of living and noticing this in myself and others time and time again, I&#x27;ve been trying to address the issue at its roots through mindfulness, habit formation, and some degree of organized group effort. And while it definitely seems to work, it feels a bit too small as a goal.