It is perfectly normal to be skeptical of tech that is not yet implemented.

It is even more normal to lack the neural structures to accurately envision the technology of next year.

It is thus far unheard of for even the best current mathematicians to take such grandoise futurism seriously, nevermind the 100+ year inexhaustible lifespanning willpower that would be required to meticulously and methodically plot and nurture the beginnings of that civilization-engulfing recipe, the planetwide nepobaby resource connections to actually begin the exact blueprint for an era that would begin the industry of self replicating 'things'.

She didn't debunk him, she agreed it was an in joke. What she was perhaps too afraid to note, I believe, was the sadness of it. Of course you all want these things to be achievable. Some of us are capable of shielding that childish part of us that will always hope for it, while others relent because it hurts too much to wish for such immediate utopia. Born too early, born too late, all the nastiness of existential misplacement.

The truth I've derived thus far: any hard, long look into the states of current evolution and its various treasure troves of compartmentalized biomechanisms will likely rattle you with the chilling realization that earthen life has barely even begun to unlock what an exponentially advancing sentience 100% focused on minmaxing the art of bioengineering would achieve. That is the heart and hope of 'futurism'. I would argue that this runaway intellectualism effect occurs whenever the perfect cocktail of ingredients necessary to generate a 'scientific supercluster' is nestled comfortably within a compatible civilization and solar system, but, true intellect, being an inherently self-checking thing, possesses a sort of obligatory benevolence and sanity check, forcing that IQ supercluster to reign themselves in, tone down their ambitions, the group realizing they could easily consume all of reality if they so truly wished.