> The theory is not wrong, but in practice it's often irrelevant. Sure, any algorithm you can come up with will blow up on some inputs. But you might get a fast solution on 99.9% of inputs.

A lot of simulation we only have exponential-time algorithms for. Motion planning, protein folding, etc. For a lot of these today, the SOTA is to use an NN model to learn the heuristics from data. OP's claim only rings true if one can only think of just the algorithms that undergrad CS now studies.