Similar to Real Life, but focused on practical consequences and material constraints versus theoretical, academic, or idealistic plans. It's the gap between a model and the messy, resistant context it's applied to. A policy might be logically perfect in a white paper but fail in the "real world" of perverse incentives, unexpected variables, and human irrationality. The "real world" here is constructed as the realm of harsh limits, testing whether an idea is robust or fragile.
Example: "My economic theory was flawless on the blackboard. The Real World Demarcation Problem hit when I tried it in my small business: a supplier got sick, a key customer was irrational, and regulations I'd never considered applied. The 'real world' wasn't just physics; it was the chaotic aggregate of everyone else's agency and luck, which my clean model had demarked as irrelevant noise."
by AbzuInExile February 1, 2026
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