I think your entire post is hugely optimistic despite the negative overtone! The fact that other people see there are these important and fundamental questions

I think your entire post is hugely optimistic despite the negative overtone! The fact that other people see there are these important and fundamental questions that can be addressed by this nascent field gives me hope that this won't be another one off attempt like so many before. I'm very hopeful that it can snowball due to the hype around machine learning even if I'm personally skeptical that machine learning is a particularly fruitful avenue.