[magicalist]

> Statistical models doesn't mean that there is no predictive power

Sure, but that's not what I said.

The orbit of a single planet in isolation is extremely simple. Take the orbit and self-interaction of a protoplanetary disk around a star instead and you'll find that while our models can make some predictions, they will be able to tell you virtually nothing about the configuration of planets that will eventually form from them. We have weather models, which are actually better characterized than our models of planetary formation, but they will tell you nothing about where hurricanes will make landfall next hurricane season.

We can't make predictions about these things, but we don't call the models we do have "not really very predictive" because we recognize the extreme uncertainty in what we're asking in those cases. That was what I was responding to.

The idea that evolutionary theory is "squishy" because we can't figure out "how an organism will evolve" with all the monumental complexity hidden in that simple question is as silly as calling astrophysics "squishy" because it can't answer the above.