The contention is if history has gone through multiple and innumerable cycles and has ended up at the same outcome multiple times before, given an infinite number of potential outcomes, there must be common principles that led to the clustering at that outcome.
If you choose to ignore what those conveniently documented outcomes were and by extension what led to them, can you exercise any reasonable control over something you have no knowledge of?
Would the statement, "This time will be different, have any credibility if you have no control or knowledge of the issues?
Everyone at some point will say anyone, anything, and nothing, and what is said will likely be less true than not true when it is not backed with support.
Rational and rigorous approaches from first principles lend credibility to something being potentially more true than not, and by the law of approximation we can improve these approches over time until we eventually get to the point of it being true.
Wouldn't you say its better to be true, than not true if you want to succeed and live?