Imagination, boldness, and modeling human choice

Israel Kirzner on entrepreneurial discovery:

For neoclassical theory the only way human choice can be rendered analytically tractable, is for it to be modeled as if it were not made in open-ended fashion, as if there was no scope for qualities such as imagination and boldness. Even though standard neoclassical theory certainly deals extensively with decision-making under (Knightian) risk, this is entirely consistent with absence of scope for the qualities of imagination and boldness, because such decision-making is seen as being made in the context of known probability function. In the neoclassical world, decision-makers know what they are ignorant about. One is never surprised. For Austrians, however, to abstract from these qualities of imagination, boldness, and surprise is to denature human choice entirely.

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