That summarizes exactly why I tried to unearth the actual substance of the claim that a system "has no model", i.e. what testable implication did his claim have? And that I think I successfully did in the comment I linked.

The implication was that, basically, you don't need to know everything about your environment to build a working controller, and so you probably overestimate how much you have to know about it.

There was such strong reaction to Richard's claim because people associated different concepts with models than Richard did. Like with the "tree falling makes a sound?" debate, the correct approach is to identify the substance of the dispute, and that's exactly what I did.