>Much of economics is built on models that were designed to provide a formal, logical basis for understanding the economic world, which is often quite unintuitive.

I disagree. It's purposefully unintuitive.

>(For example, many intelligent people uneducated in economics exhibit intuitions opposite of basic economic ideas like opportunity cost or comparative advantage.)

Most people don't believe in comparative advantage. They believe in something that economists can explain away as comparative advantage.

All unconsumed fixed size investments will result in something that is mathematically the same as comparative advantage. This is the intuitive view that people have. You go to university and get a 5 year degree. Now your cost basis for work that suits your expertise is much lower than for work that is out of expertise. A worker buys an expensive machine, now the cost basis for hiring the guy with the machine is lower than buying your own machine.

This also explains why specialization emerges: All specialization is basically a form of an investment that has some residual left over results that can be monetized in the future. If there was no residual it would be as if you forgot your education and at that point the investment is fully consumed and you turn back into a non-specialized worker.

All of this is incredibly intuitive, but economists instead insist on an invisible "factor" [0] to drive efficient production.

[0] The "factor" concept implies comparative advantage exists first rather than emerges as a result of past decisions.