Of course setting "shrinking the economy" as a goal isn't going to do much good. But "shrinking parts of the economy" might be necessary for a safe and healthy future. And whether the parts that don't need to be shrunk will still provide enough growth to end up with overall economic growth is hard to say (i.e. a safe and healthy future might require some sacrifices compared to the status quo).
Oversimplifying, growth can come from increasing the resources you use or the efficiency with which you use them. The former might not be something that we can keep doing at the current rate (and we might need to reduce some resource usage). The latter is pretty much a pure win.
Similarly, aggregate growth can come from hypergrowth in a small part of an otherwise stagnant population. And aggregate degrowth can come from modest growth in part of the population and shrinkage in another part. So just setting "aggregate growth" as your target is just as naive as setting "shrinking the economy" as a goal as it might not have the results we collectively want.