(this is from 2017)
No it is from 2011. The text mentions an event in 2011, so it couldn't have been written earlier, and the first HN submission [1] was in 2011, so it also wasn't written later.
The title should say (2011), otherwise the whole piece is confusing.
It was available earlier. Here's the HN history:
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Chomsky%20and%20the%20Two%20Cu...
The oldest submission is from 15 y.o ago - that is 2010.
I resubmitted it - thinking - with the success of LLMs - felt this was worth a revisit from "how real-world scientific progress works" point of view.