This reminds me of an old TED talk by Jeff Hawkins where he talks about why he believes both neuroscience and ML are talking past each other. From what I understand his predictions about ML haven't quite worked out, but his insight about science being about uncovering the *counter-intuitive* truths, and that that's part of what makes it so hard, has always stuck with me:

"We taught our kids the Bible says God created all these species, cats are cats; dogs are dogs; people are people; plants are plants; they don't change. Noah put them on the ark in that order, blah, blah. The fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor. We all have a common ancestor with the plant in the lobby! This is what evolution tells us! And it's true! But it's kind of unbelievable!"

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_how_brain_science_will_change_computing/transcript

If only my ancestors had been fortunate enough to marry into the branch of the bacteria family that could photosynthesize, like all my little green cousins here.