This isn't sad, because we don't simply compare pitch ratios when we listen to music. Real human consonance perception is much more interesting than that, and William Sethares has formalized a very good model:
http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html
There's great opportunity for microtonal tunings without the dissonance often associated with microtonal music. And as others have already pointed out, traditional techniques already do this (eg. stretch tuning). The theory explains why it works, and how to expand it to arbitrary timbres, including those possible only with synthesizers. I'd love to see more musicians experimenting with it. There's a whole lot of unexplored musical novelty out there.
I love Sethares work, but to use it in its full generality, we'd want arbitrary timbres. In practice, most of our timbres are highly harmonic.
Speaking of which, another theorist, Dmitry Tymoczko, has some fascinating theories on harmony that you might like in his book A Geometry of Music. A few years ago, when I was reading his and Sethares's work, I really felt like their ideas put together would make a fascinating grand theory of tonal music.
There's great opportunity for microtonal tunings without the dissonance often associated with microtonal music. And as others have already pointed out, traditional techniques already do this (eg. stretch tuning). The theory explains why it works, and how to expand it to arbitrary timbres, including those possible only with synthesizers. I'd love to see more musicians experimenting with it. There's a whole lot of unexplored musical novelty out there.