The core point was that DR didn't magically become a better mechanic than AC because it was simulationist. If you still make that claim, the burden is on you to show causality. The argument that "GURPS is best, and GURPS is simulationist, so simulationist is best" is no different from "My fair mother cannot fly, a rock cannot fly, ergo, my mother is a rock."
Okay, but all I'm saying is that approaching game design in a simulationist way, as the GURPS designers clearly did, can lead to more interesting gameplay because it forces the designer to look at something they find "overly" abstracted to the point of non-sensicality (AC) and split it up until it "makes sense" (DR/DT + dodge), thus making for more interesting player choices. Not sure how you take that same route without at least some kind of simulationist attitude.
Anyway, you'd agree that it's hard to imagine the GURPS-designers arriving at the kind of system they did without the simulationist inclinations they had, right? So my point is just that you can't separate the simulationist side of GURPS you don't care about from the system you love, but that this system is for a large part the result of that approach to design.
If your point is just that having a certain outlook isn't enough and you also need to be very competent at incorporating it all into a cohesive and entertaining system, then of course. I just think in the case of the simulationism these are more complementary than Sawyer with his "where's the fun in lying on the floor bleeding out for hours" lets on.