I don't quite understand the criticism... Yes, this is not (yet) a model that predicts the future. But when has "we're not there yet" ever been a good reason to

I don't quite understand the criticism... Yes, this is not (yet) a model that predicts the future. But when has "we're not there yet" ever been a good reason to stop? Societies are comparable to the weather, in that they are dynamic systems highly susceptible to instability when simulated (-> chaos theory). That's why it took from the 60s until the mid-90s before weather prognosis consistently started to beat "it's going to be like today". Societies are even more difficult, because the individual units of simulation are already quite chaotic: while the result of increased pressure on a fixed amount of air has been measured to whatever precision you could want, and has always followed a rather simple formula, doing the same with human behaviour is still far in the future. But that doesn't mean such models are useless. Just think of the fight over the results of raising the minimum wage. Some people should initially lose their job. Others have more money. How are they spending that money? Does that spending create jobs? What's the effect on inflation? etc... Having an agent-based model forces you to describe every assumption you're making, free of ambiguity. Maybe if we ask economists to build something like that, they'll at least grow an appreciation for what they don't yet know.