I'm not sure you can say that the standard model and gravity fall out of a theory if an almost infinite amount of other stuff falls out of it too.

Currently the theory "predicts" around 10^500 vacuum models, all of which have different properties.

That's quite a large number, and makes specific predictions rather difficult.

There was a vague hope that maybe something stringy would fall out of the LHC. That didn't happen. There's now an even more vague hope that it might fall out of Son Of LHC instead.

Outsiders might wonder if this is really just throwing string at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

It hasn't yet, but it's always possible it might.

Physics has always been throwing math at reality and seeing what sticks. So why is it invalid to come up with a more universal mathematical object and seeing how it converges. Sure 10^500 but how how quickly are we throwing away 10^450 after experiments x, y and z? Perhaps they've invented too flexible an object and so it will never settle down, or perhaps they've invented the perfect mathematical object that will slowly but surely settle down on our reality as long as we keep feeding it experiments. A lot of science is discovering what can't be. Whatever is left is the discovery of something new.

> Outsiders might wonder if this is really just throwing string at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

Isn't that part of it? Smash particles together at increasingly higher energies, see what happens. I don't think we can pretend to predict everything that will happen.