It strikes me that the theories are not mutually incompatible at all. They have very different purposes. Chomsky is trying to understand meaning and intelligenc

It strikes me that the theories are not mutually incompatible at all. They have very different purposes. Chomsky is trying to understand meaning and intelligence at a deep level. Norvig is trying to build models that help people right now (and incidently, help his company to make more money). Any new insights from either path will help refine the other. So it sounds like what you decided was that you wanted to explore one path and not the other. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a very different statement.