The idea of people being rational self-maximizing actors, is obviously false, but why is that most optimization and performance models are constructed on that premise then?

Rational and maximizing in the sense that people should always act in a way that leaves them better off. A premise which is assumed accurate for most automatic optimization models; models which takes a set number of fixed variables as an input, and provides a calculated output, or Rational output if you will.

My point is this, some verticals, such as News Media, are not rational in nature, and as such, we cannot fairly expect our rational models to be instant true. I still believe that we (the industry) can and will succeed in increasing performance – and the above notion, is thus nothing more than a cautionary note-to-self on assuring anything I do, take that into consideration. If not directly built into a model, we should certainly accept a margin of, perhaps not inaccuracy, but conceivably a performance decrease from what was to expect.

I am sure you can imagine a number of scenarios, where an optimization model will predict, with indicated high accuracy, that you or a pool of people like you, will click a given Article Excerpt, but you do not!

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)
- Image by: http://jamin.org/, post idea by: @jdaysy