"thought experiments may not translate well to the real world"

"...Rawls devised one of the most powerful of all thought experiments: the idea of the "veil of ignorance," behind which we must imagine the society we would want to live in without knowing which role in that society's hierarchy we would occupy. Simple as it is, it has ever-arresting force, making it clear that, behind this veil, rational and self-interested people would never design a society like that of, say, the slave states of the American South, given that, dropped into it at random, they could very well be enslaved. It also suggests that Norway might be a fairly just place, because a person would almost certainly land in a comfortable and secure middle-class life, however boringly Norwegian.

Still, thought experiments may not translate well to the real world. Einstein's similarly epoch-altering account of what it would be like to travel on a beam of light, and how it would affect the hands on one's watch, is profound for what it reveals about the nature of time. Yet it isn't much of a guide to setting the timer on the coffeemaker in the kitchen so that the pot will fill in time for breakfast. Actual politics is much more like setting the timer on the coffeemaker than like riding on a beam of light. Breakfast is part of the cosmos, but studying the cosmos won't cook breakfast..."

Adam Gopnik

Why Liberals Struggle to Defend Liberalism | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/why-liberals-struggle-to-defend-liberalism