Academic papers like this always crack me up. Physics has been so successful using mathematical models that all other disciplines seek legitimacy by trying to ground their work in mathemtical models and then proving consequences, making assumptions, etc. But as you say it all usually comes down to some unrealistic assumptions, questional initialization values, and in the end these things are worth fuck all. But if you trump up your work with enough mathematical sophistication you will get published no matter what, so it is what researchers optimize for instead of worrying about if the models actually match reality.
Academic papers like this always crack me up. Physics has been so successful using mathematical models that all other disciplines seek legitimacy by trying to ground their work in mathemtical models and then proving consequences, making assumptions, etc. But as you say it all usually comes down to some unrealistic assumptions, questional initialization values, and in the end these things are worth fuck all. But if you trump up your work with enough mathematical sophistication you will get published no matter what, so it is what researchers optimize for instead of worrying about if the models actually match reality.
Also here's the paper linked, keep in mind this is a toy model and just based on an arbitrary system with assigned values.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf