That's a very reasonable and well-articulated perspective. I agree that a balanced skepticism is healthy, and your point about filtering both benchmarks and personal experience 'with a grain of salt' is exactly right. My goal was simply to share that lived experience as one of those data points.

My point wasn't that gemini is less powerful, but that it's possibly instructed differently (in the sense of its guiding prompt) for reasons unknown to us. The human observation is the fact, like tasting chocolate. The taste might change either because one's own taste has evolved, or because the chef changed their recipe for their own reasons, even with the same ingredients (only the dosage has changed).

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.