That’s my core understanding too, the model is essential and that not only rubs statisticians the wrong way but also the current luminaries in deep learning get visibly irritated by that too. The irony is that JP was very successful with statistics having invented Bayesian Networks, and now has moved on.
Here he asks a very simple question and look at the body language from the panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFYM9j8bGtg&t=50m47s