Science is not academia. You say you prefer to judge things as "what you can do". Well, how do you judge "what you can do"? Astrologists, homeopaths, podiatrists, Christian scientists (!!!) and other such "heretics and mad men" rejected by the scientific establishment, will all tell you that they "can do" stuff, and so will all their many paying customers. How do we know they can't do what they say?
Because science gives you the tools to know that you're wrong. If you're a good scientist, you will be wrong _all the time_. That's how science advances: one mistake at a time. But you can't make mistakes if all you ever do is doing stuff with computers, like beating all the benchmarks, because that is a meaningless result judged by its own, self-chosen, measure of success that can never fail; and so can never inform.
Peer review is also not science, but it has been great to catch errors in my papers. Not in conferences, mind. I try to stay away from conferences. Everybody flocks to conferences because of quick turnaround, instant gratification. Journals have the good reviewers who can take their time understanding your work and helping you find where you've gone wrong. "Reject with encouragement to resubmit" is the best review result I ever got.
>> I judge things as "what you can do", not "what can you predict".
The goal of science is not to make predictions, but to understand how the world works, and why. Put that into instrumentalism's pipe and smoke it.