It read that way to me too. It's the familiar switcheroo/hoist by their own petard/ironic one-upping move, a routine as well known to the internet as ape behavior is to Jane Goodall.
Here we go again, with overzealous correction of "myths" that aren't myths.
>Like many myths, the “age 25” idea is rooted in real scientific findings, but it’s an oversimplification of a much longer and more complex process.
In order words, it's a legitimate observation if you engage in charitable interpretation instead of completely strawmanning it. During childhood/adolescence the brain engages in "synaptic proliferation" creating an excess of synapses, and follows that up with "synaptic pruning", paring back the excess based on frequency of activation, and at the same time myelination adds a fatty layer for better insulation.
The pruning and myelination really do, mostly, finish (emphasis on mostly), in your mid 20s, and criticizing that as a myth because it's not an absolute finish to the process, or not absolutely concluded when the clock strikes midnight the night before your 25th birthday is asinine.
What's worse, in this case, is the article is every bit as comfortable proposing a target date, at age 32 instead of 25, which, if you want to be similarly uncharitable, you could decry as a myth for spurious reasons relating to the non-absolute nature of biological averages that year 32 is attempting to represent.
But what's worst of all, I think, is that it's not even disputing pruning and myelination timelines, it's talking past the point about structural maturation of the frontal lobe, a real thing, to simply emphasize a different thing, the efficiency gains revealed from studying white matter topology, a kind of long distance structural reinforcement, as if it's a correction or refutation of the age 25 thing. But in truth it's a real but complementary finding that shifts the window for long distance efficiency to 32, which isn't even a different form of structural buildout or pruning but about the reinforcement of existing highways.
I want to make a ruling here that science reporters are no longer allowed to use the word "myth" to characterize known and true processes being complemented by new research. There has to be a hook to celebrating the complexity of the brain that isn't constantly recycling the myth framework.
I hear this a lot but I've never understood why people think it's a deal breaker. You don't need to start from definitions and in fact sometimes that gets it exactly backwards because the point of research is to understand something well enough that in light of the research, you actually can define it, eg Dark Matter. Or, in a different time, AIDs before we knew what it was.
You can have clusters of related case studies that share the observable effects, and reason and research your way to correlations, and investigate those to discover causation and mechanisms, and infiltrate the "black box" of an unknown thing deeply enough that you account for the whole thing itself.
I think progress on consciousness research in humans is advancing impressively, identifying exactly the kinds of pre and postprocessing done to sensory input and areas of the brain associated with conscious activity and brain to machine interfaces are improving all the time.
Granted the hard problem is still hard and must be respected rather than talked past but the point is we're not stuck. Understanding is gradual and you can model phenomena to the degree that they are understood, closing in from multiple sides.
I hear this a lot but I've never understood why people think it's a deal breaker.
Maybe it's a deal breaker and maybe it's not.
At this point, we're groping in the dark. We don't know enough to stay anything for sure. But we're throwing $billions at it based on the pure hope of somehow getting lucky.
For example, we can't even say for sure that consciousness is something that is isolated in the brain. Neurons exist throughout the human body. Consciousness could very well be a whole body phenomenon --- or not, we really don't know.
Does anyone really know if a human body can be realistically mimicked by software at this point? How much energy and computing power would be required to do so? Is there enough on the planet?
Bottom line: At this point, there are more questions than answers. The one thing we know for sure --- tech billionaires are raking in tons of money from AI.
I suppose I don't disagree with the individual observations, but where you lose me is in treating it all like it amounts to some kind of conceptual system crash that precludes progress as a matter of principle. It's not even that I disagree one way or the other so much as it's a matter of having trailed off from the question of the role of definitions in research.
Maybe it helps to consider dark matter. What we have is effectively a placeholder definition based on its observable effects. We don't know if it's WIMPs, axion-like particles, or even some alternative framework for gravity. But we have enough to state meaningful questions about it and iterate toward understanding from a number of directions using a combination of hypothesis, data and experimentation. Finding out what it truly is would be the culmination of research that settles the question rather than something to be stipulated at the start.
So depending on how you look at it, you already have a working definition of consciousness sufficient to organize research, we already have made real progress of the kind that should be impossible if definitions were really dealbreakers, and having "a definition" in the complete sense is something you would never have up until the point the question was settled once and for all, which happens at the end of research rather than the beginning.
I see Wittgenstein mentioned more often in these parts which is awesome, and I think the best Wittgensteinian attitude to adopt here is to turn the tables on this whole question and refuse to agree that there's such a thing as a question of definition that stands between us and research progress.
Those currently hyping AI as the cure for everything aren't spending $billions on research. They are attempting to build and market a product --- one that is inherently flawed and falls way short of expectations and any reasonable definition of "intelligence".
Always appreciate people citing real data! I honestly would not have been able to guess one way or the other but unfortunately most comments are kind of hip firing in random directions that are impossible to keep track of, so it helps to keep these discussions grounded.
The creator of VLC has publicly noted dollar amounts they could raise if they either sold or compromised VLC, but it came and went without controversy. OBS Studio, 7-Zip, Notepad++, and Nextcloud have all published offers they've received and declined, or quoted per-install payment figures. In fact, it's practically a rite of passage for open source projects to talk about the value of their work in terms of what they could monetize but choose not to.
Communicating about what you're knowingly rejecting is a point of pride, not a confession. But since there's no such thing as an OBS, or Nextcloud, or VLC Derangement syndrome, nobody grabs the pitchforks in those cases.
There is a difference between "FYI, we're rejecting a ton of money for us, that's how serious we are about not selling out" and "We ran the numbers, and on balance, taking these 30% more money doesn't seem like the right thing to do because it would be against our stated mission statement".
The second one doesn't sound like real conviction.
Thank you for directly addressing my point! I disagree but I respect your prioritization of of substance. I agree that notionally there's a difference but (1) they never said they "ran the numbers", (2) there are other good reasons for having access to that data that don't involve selling out, and (3) this all hinges on squinting and interpreting and projecting, and splitting the difference on linguistic interpretation is about as weak as circumstantial evidence can possibly get.
Real argument: "they said they're doing "privacy preserving" ads, look at this post where they announce it". Real argument "they say they're putting AI in the browser, I don't like that. Here's the statement!" Real argument: " they purchased Anonym and are dabbling in adtech, here's the news article announcing the acquisition!"
Not real argument: "They said they didn't want to take money to kill ad blockers but if you squint maybe it kinda implies they considered it, at least if you don't consider other reasons they might be aware of that figure." At best it's like 0.001% circumstantial evidence that has to be reconciled with their history of opposing the Manifest changes. If reading tea leaves matters so much, then certainly their more explicit statements need to matter too.
The thing that's unfortunate here is I would like to think this goes without saying, but ordinary standards of charitable interpretation are so far in the rear view mirror that I don't know that people comfortable making these accusations would even recognize charitable interpretation as a shared value. Not in the sense of bending over backwards to apologize or make excuses, but in the ordinary Daniel Dennett sense of a built-in best practice to minimize one's own biases.
> At best it's like 0.001% circumstantial evidence that has to be reconciled with their history of opposing the Manifest changes. If reading tea leaves matters so much, then certainly their more explicit statements need to matter too.
Their history is less relevant now because it's a fresh CEO that came up with this statement on his first day. New leaders often means a change in direction and this is a worrying sign. Also the number he quoted is far too explicit. Doing something like that would instantly move Firefox to be the absolute worst browser possible considering even advertising- and tracking-loaded crap like Chrome and Edge don't go that far.
Clearly they have been running the numbers and clearly he feels fine talking about it which is a pretty strong departure of previous values.
Of course I'd not continue using Firefox in this case, and I'm sure it would get widely forked. I found it pretty shocking.
The other examples don't reassure me one bit because they're not the same teams and in many cases they were simply external pushes like offers that were rejected. Here it's a different team that already has been changing direction for the worse recently (e.g. PPA, purchasing Anonym), and came up with this without external pressure. There's also plenty of situations where FOSS projects did go full evil.
Anyway I don't really have any better options than firefox and I'm sure that it would get heavily forked if they started siding with the advertisers, but it is worrying to me especially coming from a new leader on his very first day. Not only because it's about ads. Just because it removes user freedom of choice completely if they were to enforce this.
> The creator of VLC has publicly noted dollar amounts they could raise if they either sold or compromised VLC, but it came and went without controversy. OBS Studio, 7-Zip, Notepad++, and Nextcloud have all published offers they've received and declined, or quoted per-install payment figures. In fact, it's practically a rite of passage for open source projects to talk about the value of their work in terms of what they could monetize but choose not to.
In all of those examples, the devs note that people have reached out to them, unprompted, to try and get them to sell out. That's materially different from a company proactively looking into the payoffs of selling out. The only question is whether the latter is what's happening; I'm having trouble tracking down the actual thing that was said (I think in an interview?).
Please stop calling people deranged for expecting Mozilla to do the right thing without dissembling. Having your previous such comment flagged and killed should have been sufficient reminder to you that you're behaving inappropriately for this forum.
Take a look at Graham's hiearchy and see if you can move up the ladder from tone policing. Were any of my examples: VLC, 7-Zip, Nextcloud incorrect? Let me know and I'll thank you your good faith effort to be responsive to substance.
>that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped.
I find this framing to be beyond maddening. Sure, it wasn't an iPod, and if you measure it against that kind of expectation, of course it's a flop, because it wasn't an overnight success.
But I think it's more appropriately understood as a soft launch of an ecosystem, to strategically rebalance Valve away from the potential risk of being locked into Windows. It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors, so they weren't shipping hundreds of thousands of units to Walmart shelves was just sat there and lost them tens of millions of dollars, which is also what I think of when something's considered a flop.
But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem that bore fruit in large part due to the credible long-term commitment as the library of steamos compatible games grew and set up the Steam Deck for success. And now it looks like the wind is at their back with the new line of hardware, but I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago.
I think it reflects a kind of intelligence and long-term thinking that Google is pathologically incapable of, by contrast.
>> that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped.
> I find this framing to be beyond maddening [...]
> It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors
As numerous post-mortems (some of which I quoted in the article) recount, the hardware partners themselves largely consider their experiment back then a flop as well.
> But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem
With respect, I think you're overselling it. It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move. If you read some of those linked post-mortems, I think you might agree as well.
> I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago
I think there's nuance here, which is that Valve made lemonade from the lemon that was the flop of the Steam Box. They turned that failed move into an initial investment through diligence and effort. In a sense, that's part of what I'm trying to bring attention to -- Valve didn't just write off the failure and abandon the market, but took signal from it and tried again.
Fair point on the vendors - surely they hoped to make $$ from it. But I think you're underestimating the significance of standing up Proton and the critical experience working through bugs and getting experience with hardware, and gradually growing the inventory of compatible games. Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine, which says everything about the value of the Steam Machine.
> But I think your underestimating the significance of standing up Proton
I don't think I'm underestimating it at all. Proton and SteamOS were huge, they were extremely well-timed, and they've been a boon for everyone involved (except M$ shareholders, I guess).
However, none of that necessitated whatever the Steam Box release was. It's not like it moved a significant number of units and that's why Valve invested in Proton/SteamOS; Steam Box was long discontinued before the first public release of Proton (2018, IIRC).
> Simply put, there's no Steam Deck without the Steam Machine
Agreed, and I call that out in the article, but that doesn't make its original release not a flop. Hence my lemonade comment -- you don't make lemonade from apples; you have to have a lemon first.
>It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move.
And on the other hand you're saying:
>I don't think I'm underestimating it at all. Proton and SteamOS were huge, they were extremely well-timed, and they've been a boon for everyone involved
If you were actually acknowledging that it would have showed up in your definition of success, but it doesn't, despite it being the most important thing.
I think there is something to be said for companies putting their money where their mouth is. Getting behind Gaming on Linux with a hardware launch is pretty substantial and Valve have been explicit since 2013 that they think it's the way forward.
They also continue to have first class support for BOTH windows and Linux without forcing it down anyone's throat which is not the strategy for literally every tangent related market.
There are no super annoying layers to this strategy
Valve could have done a number of things to force users to use Linux such as.
- Linux game exclusives and Linux discounts.
- Preventing the steam machine from running on a windows machine by dropping certain hardware
- Making windows users second class by not releasing the latest updates and features.
- Making other hardware incompatible with windows e.g. Valve Index, Steam Controller etc
Yeah, it's like the people who say, oh, the iPhone mini was a flop. That was a BILLION DOLLAR product. How many companies would LOVE to have a billion dollar product???
Ingenious to have Santa endorse your product. One thing I've thought about is how it costs money to use the likeness of a living celebrity or familiar brand, and so you can or can't "get" them and their value depending on the cost. And how by extension that implies values of familiar "big names" in the public domain. Presidents, cities, natural landmarks, figures from ancient mythology, etc. They are there for the taking.
Maybe you can't get a Kardashian or, for the 80s, maybe Madonna. But you can get Santa.
Instead of criticizing an actual contract to engage with a third party or a code push or an affirmative statement, you're attempting to parse a random combination of tea leaves and chicken entrails to indict Mozilla for a hypothetical thing that they explicitly said they're not doing. If that's not scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's only because you're able to imagine an even lower bottom than that that you're willing to reach for.
>>you're attempting to parse a random combination of tea leaves and chicken entrails
It is exactly the opposite — it is reading the actual language used for its intended meaning.
Every CEO is expected to not only understand the issues he faces and is managing, but to ALSO carefully choose the words to describe the situation and the intentions of the organization he leads.
When a CEO makes a statement about what should be a core fundamental principle of an organization, we can certainly expect that CEO to choose their words carefully.
Those words are, or at least should be, the exact opposite of "tea leaves and chicken entrails".
If the CEO is sloppy and the chosen words should actually be considered "tea leaves and chicken entrails", that is a different problem of a less-than-competent CEO.
If those words were actually chosen carefully, consider these two statements:
The actual statement: "[I don't] want to do that. It feels off-mission"
A different statement: "This is a core fundamental principle of Mozilla and I will not lead the company in that direction — not on my watch".
One could technically say "they both say 'Not today'".
But that would be absurd, and stupidly throwing out significant meaning in what the CEO chose to say and how he chose to say it.
He made the first vague statement with weasel words instead of something resembling the bold and unambiguous statement resembling the second statement.
The statement he did make is "I don't want to", which type of statement has often preceded an eventual "sorry, we had to".
There is a lot to make Firefox users nervous, and his choice of statement here did not help matters.
Or for a similar point, it's been shown over and over that attempting to crowdsource the revenue is a staggeringly unrealistic response with no real world precedent in the history either of browsers or online crowdsourced funding. You would think that would matter to people who point to that as a possible panacea.
Actual attempts to get users to pay for the browser itself, like what Opera did, simply didn't work and led to the insolvency of the browser and having to sell it off to someone harvesting its users as data.
Right, I was ready for the headline to be this like deep dive into the history of letting go of several engineers, or assessing the costs of purchasing pocket, or a deep dive into source code changes related to dabbling in ad tech or something.
You know, actual reporting sourcing something new. But in truth, it was just extrapolating a bunch of sweet nothings from the freezing of a quote already published in The Verge. It reminds me of Boston media market sports reporting. You're a sports writer, you have a deadline, and you have to take Curt Schilling's press conference and try and turn it into a story. So take something he said and squeeze it dry, trying to extract some implication of clubhouse drama, to drive the next new cycle and survive to your next paycheck as a reporter. That's the grift, that's the grind.
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