Just to quibble a little bit, but the entire effort of string theory (et al) was to find a testable theory. It's not that they weren't interested in useful predictions, but just that they didn't find any. It wasn't that they weren't making the effort, but that the effort has so far failed.
But the day is young, as they say. It took humanity 1000 years to figure out how to solve quadratic equations. Physics theory has had a lot of quick successes, but you still never know when the next one will arrive. We might figure it out in a year, or a decade, or a century, or we might never figure it out.
But the day is young, as they say. It took humanity 1000 years to figure out how to solve quadratic equations. Physics theory has had a lot of quick successes, but you still never know when the next one will arrive. We might figure it out in a year, or a decade, or a century, or we might never figure it out.