The problem was not that the models were wrong, it was that what they were trying to accomplish was unmodelable.

[...]

Fundamentally, I believe that the world is unreasonable. It is, at it's core, not amenable to reason. Better technique may push the failure point back just a bit further but it will never get rid of it.

Since you mentioned Scott Aaronson, you might want to have a look at this post.