Apologies if this question is too philosophical and vague! I've been thinking about QFTs and continuum mechanics, and reading about their interpretation as effective theories. In these theories we have natural cutoffs at high momentum (small scales). We make the assumption ($\star$) that the large scale physics is decoupled from the small-scale. Therefore we hope that our predictions are independent of the cutoff (after some renormalization if necessary).

Why is the assumption ($\star$) so reasonable? I guess it seems observationally correct, which is powerful empirical evidence. But could it not be the case that the small scale physics had ramifications for larger scale observations? In other words, would it be reasonable to expect that the predictions of a TOE might depend on some (Planck scale) cutoff?

This question may be completely trivial, or simply ridiculous. Sorry if so! I'm just trying to get a real feel for the landscape.

Edit: I'd like to understand this physically from the purely QFT perspective, without resorting to analogy with statistical physics. It might help if I rephrase my question as follows.

In the Wilsonian treatment of renormalization we get a flow of Lagrangians as the energy scale $\Lambda$ changes. For a renormalizable theory we assume that there's a bare Lagrangian independent of $\Lambda$ in the limit $\Lambda \to \infty$. We calculate with this quantity, by splitting it into physical terms and counterterms. I think these counterterms come from moving down the group flow, but I'm not quite sure...

But why do we care about (and calculate with) the bare Lagrangian, rather than one at some prescribed (high) energy scale (say the Planck scale)? I don't really understand the point of there existing a $\Lambda\to \infty$ limit.