Well, predictions that I'll go to work and things will be as usual aren't as uncertain as Bitcoin pricing or as certain as planetary motion.

However, the aim of math in these situations is often to give explanations for intuitive impressions like "predicting the future is hard". The concept of NP-completeness gives one (very partial) explanation why certain computing problems are "hard", for example. So that theory doesn't "boil down to saying programming is hard". Unfortunately, I don't think the text really gives strong explanation in this case.