[friendzis]

> You can test hypotheses and learn things even about chaotic or emergent systems.

Ah yes, the famous "Cut GDP in half, abolish public schooling and use that as a control" experiment. Majority of economic "models" are entirely correlational without any mechanistic explanation whatsoever or an explanation so superficial that it contradicts either itself or observed reality.

If you look deeper and read explanatory notes of economic laws, the model may refer some publications, but then the actual figures plugged in the model are explained as "these values have been observed to lead to the desired outcomes, therefore are set without any modeling or validation, hope for the best, lesssgoooo".