"I wish we could leave the framework and name-dropping behind and talk more about what it takes to evaluate predictions, how to cope with biases, etc."

We can, can't we? "We" as in professional software developers. I always thought of this word-hyping of a management thing and a buzzword pool for non-techies. I know this influences our work, but that doesn't keep us concentrate on what's really up... or am i wrong?

By the way, I tried getting into ML but i'm really poor at maths and at that time was not willing to put time into maths. And nearly every tutorial back then threw formula after formula at my face... So a bit of mathematical education could not hurt. Doesn't have to be a PhD though.