I feel very sad reading this. You are absolutely correct that I view HN as watercooler where I make hyperbolic statements, but incorrect when you say that that I did not take you seriously. I was frustrated because I felt like you were latching on to a figure of speech just to be argumentative instead of trying to understand what I meant (I was not trying to say that neural networks are literally new, I was trying to say that we have no proof that the parameter to flop ratio is even close to optimal because architectures are still changing a lot).

You are right that neural networks are not in their infancy. Best wishes.