The myth of interpretability and explicability of models

This article was initially written in French and published in November 2021. Rubinstein (2012) claimed that “in economic theory, like Harry Potter, the Emperor’s New Clothes, or King Solomon’s Tales, we play in imaginary worlds. Economic theory invents tales and calls them models. An economic model is also somewhere between fantasy and reality (…) The word ‘model’ sounds more scientific than the word ‘fable’ or ‘tale’, but I think we are talking about the same thing“. Today, very often, learning models will build a … <a …