The other option is that the problem is irreducible. Like when economist warn about an impending event. The system may be too complex and therefore we will only get a probabilistic understanding of what may be. It can also be that the system is extremely sensitive to initial conditions and therefore any models we try to create will never have sufficient data to predict the quakes well enough. It may be that the time scale that earthquakes are predictable is too large to be useful for us as a "brace for impact" type of warning system.

If you are interested in this type of stuff you should look up complex systems. The Santa Fe Institute youtube channel has a lot of interesting stuff, but its a bunch of dry presentations.