I find this interesting as it ties to some thoughts I have relating to economics' relationship to psychology. Specifically, I see economics as a branch of psychology.

Furthermore, I see very limited potential to economics' predictive capacity, except for when it's merely directly measuring something, say like a food thermometer stuck into a chicken breast: it's not so much a prediction as a reading. And as you say "data regarding preferences is still required" - basically you're taking people's preferences as input and then outputting a graph, but people's preferences might change and you can't predict that with economics, but you might be able to do so with some more overarching psychological approach or theory regarding human nature or specific aspects of it.