You're not thinking about safety.  Yes it would be nice for bitcoin to be able to handle 2000 as many transactions as it can now, however that is not as important as keeping bitcoin decentralized.  Let's keep in mind why bitcoin was created: to create a digital gold standard so that people could protect their assets from central banks.  If bitcoin also becomes a ubiquitous payment system that would be great, but not if it comes at the expense of decentralization.

Limiting block size creates an inefficiency in the bitcoin system.  Inefficiency = profit.  This is a basic law of economics, though it is usually phrased in such a way as to justify profits by pointing out that they eliminate inefficiencies.  I am taking the other position, that if we want mining to be profitable then there needs to be some artificial inefficiency in the system, to support marginal producers.  Of course that profit will attract more hashing power thus reducing/eliminating the profit, but at a higher equilibrium.  However, I am not too worried about this aspect of large block sizes.  It is a fairly minor problem and one that is a century away.


Well I found several predictions saying that it was only going to continue for about 7 more years.  However, that was about 12 or so years ago, so obviously those predictions didn't come true.

The problem with Moore's Law predictions is that they don't take into account game theory.  They assume that nearly everyone is either working to make better chips, buying better chips, enjoying better chips, or simply having nothing to do with better chips.

We need to imagine a world where the miners, bankers, and governments work to suppress computing technology.  Not because they want to destroy bitcoin, but because they want to be the dominant players.  If bitcoin is wildly successful, Moore's law will have an opponent.


That would probably work pretty well.  It would end (hopefully) before bitcoin is too big of a deal.

The goal should be to get to a situation where it is simply socially unacceptable to suggest changes to the bitcoin protocol.  This needs to be the situation before mass acceptance.  Once mass acceptance happens conversations like the one we are having now will be held behind private doors by central banks (central banks will always be with us).

No, it does not mean that.  It means this:

2015: 1.5MB (block reward = 25)
2016: 2.25MB (block reward = 25)
2017: 2.8125MB (block reward = 12.5)
2018: 3.52...  (block reward = 12.5)
2018: 4.39...  (block reward = 12.5)
2019: 5.49...  (block reward = 12.5)
2020: 6.18...  (block reward = 6.25)
2021: 6.95...  (block reward = 6.25)
2021: 7.82...  (block reward = 6.25)

and so on.  That seems like a schedule that won't kill off too many nodes.

An extremely large block size would mess up the economics of mining eventually.

Let's keep in mind some important factors:

1) It will be impossible to limit the block size in the future, if bitcoin is very successful.  Governments and the ultra rich will control all of the nodes that are powerful enough to mine blocks.  They will also (due to their power) have indirect influence over the other nodes.
 
If the 10000 bitcoin enthusiasts decide that the block size is too big it won't matter; they don't control any of the 10 nodes capable of mining blocks.  If the enthusiasts decide to start rejecting blocks that are too big they will find themselves on a fork that no one cares about.  We need to assume that the miners of the future will be hostile to the principle of decentralization.

If bandwidth is the bottleneck, the big players can simply take action to slow the rate of bandwidth increase.  No one will notice if bandwidth increases by 49% per year instead of 50%.  One by one nodes will drop out until there are only a few left and then the crisis will be resolved, by implementing a Central Bitcoin Bank to determine the block size.

2) It will be possible to increase the block size in the future, if it has to be done.  The big players will press for it, and the small players will be convinced that they need to go along for the good of the system.

3) Trends don't continue forever, and even if they do it isn't always relevant.  Right now bandwidth is the foreseeable bottleneck.  Perhaps the the growth of bandwidth will slow.  Perhaps it will continue, but something else (that we aren't thinking of right now) will become the bottleneck.

So putting these three principles together here is what I see:

increase the block size by 2X% per year, where X is the block reward.  So we'd have a couple more years at 50%, then four at 25%, then four at 12.5%, and so on.  This is still an astounding growth rate.

My concern is that there is little room for error with geometric growth.  Lets say that things are happily humming along with bandwidth and block size both increasing by 50% per year.  Then a decade goes by where bandwidth only increases by 30% per year.  In that decade block size grew to 5767% while bandwith grew to 1379%.  So now peoples connections are only 24% as capable of handling the blockchain.

Not a big deal?  Well, except that we can expect the power of nodes to follow some sort of curve ("exponential" in the vernacular) such that most nodes are barely above the threshold to be viable.  Meaning that this event would mean that the majority of nodes would shut down, likely permanently.

hbdchick talks about this on her blog.  The practice of honor killings seems evil and insane to Westerners.  It is evil, there really isn't any doubt.  However it isn't insane, and in fact is a logical course of action.

The Bedouin practiced what is called "father's brother's daughter marriage" (FBD) which means that you marry the daughter of your father's brother, your paternal first cousin.  While cousin marriage has been common throughout the world and throughout history, FBD is very rare with one exception: areas formerly part of the caliphate.

FBD, unlike cross-cousin marriage, tends to turn a family tree into a ladder.  The result is a much higher degree of genetic similarity among relatives.  The result is that a man will care for his nephews and nieces much more than normal.  If his daughter has scandalous behavior then it could compromise the ability of his relatives to get good marriages (remember that while most marriages are to closely related members of the family, there are still many that aren't).  So for the sake of family success the family has a massive incentive keep its honor intact.

Ok, so now you find that your daughter has been raped.  No one will dishonor his family by marrying a broken woman, and so the woman is unmarriageable.  Genetically, she is a dead end.  However, unlike a dead daughter, she can still harm the honor and thus the marriage prospects of her extended family.  She might get raped again.  She might become despondent and start sleeping around.  Genetically, she has no upside and plenty of downside.  Thus the muslim populations of these lands have evolved a response (honor killing) to handle this situation.

So while it is an evil practice, it is perfectly logical.  The only way to eliminate it would be to eliminate FBD marriage.  Eliminating all cousin marriage would speed the process, though it would probably still take a few centuries.

If this bidder paid above market price then he has an incentive to tell us what the price is.

If he paid below market price then he has an incentive to keep the price secret.

Losing bidders all have an incentive to keep their bids secret until they can acquire some more bitcoins.

But what does it mean by evil?  Does it mean non-Muslims?  Well I am a non-Muslim, which would then make me evil, which would then mean that it calls upon Muslims to fight me.

The media isn't reporting it and the government isn't stopping it because the perpetrators are muslim.


"In organised gangs, men groomed girls they met on the street. Most of the offenders were of Pakistani origin and most of the victims were white"

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863078.ece

Nine muslim men controlled six young English girls in Oxford:

“She frequently caught chlamydia. She was often covered in bruises and burns where the men had stubbed her with cigarettes.”

http://www.cherwell.org/news/town/2013/01/20/oxford-sex-ring-trial-begins


"He admitted the caller’s number had not been checked and said: “I cannot even remember if I informed police of that conversation.”

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/bullfinch/10256213.Care_staff____knew_girl_was_being_groomed___/

There are more examples, but I don't enjoy researching rape.  The situation looks like a war because it is a war.

It took the Roman Empire hundreds of years to collapse.  Right now we are in the midst of a collapse that started in the 1960s, but we won't be even halfway through the collapse before we die.  So yeah, things will keep declining but the lights are going to go out suddenly.  Instead there will be power for only so many hours per day, which is how it works in Iraq and other such places.

The reason that Iraq, Haiti, Swaziland, Jamaica, etc.. all have lower incarceration rates than the US is that they lack the logistical capability to catch and contain criminals to the same degree that the US can.

Other countries, such as Switzerland, Iceland, etc... have lower incarceration rates than the US because they have fewer criminals per capita than the US.

The US is the only country that combines first-world incarceration capability along with large populations inclined to criminality, and thus it is inevitable that it would have the highest incarceration rate.

You bring up good points about injustice in the US.  The system does not produce good results and so I won't defend it.  If this is the point that you are trying to make, then why use this case?  Why not use a case involving Americans?

Instead, in your previous thread, you were trying to suggest that this man was framed by his roommates so that they could get rid of him, supposedly because they are Christian (and thus evil in your mind?) and he is muslim.  That's a crazy theory.  When people want to get rid of an annoying roommate they can usually find a way to do so without murdering a girl and framing the annoying roommate.

Part of the reason that the "justice" system in the US is so messed up is because police, prosecutors, and juries have nothing in common anymore.  The result is a siege mentality.  Police talk about "just getting home safely" instead of serving the community.  This is because they aren't serving their community, they are operating in a foreign community.  Juries see a defendant on the stand and they don't think "that could be me" they think "I need to protect my community from this lowlife".  The idea behind a jury of one's peers is that you can get a fair trial.  When jurors and the accused aren't peers then the empathy disappears.

The US has a high prison population because it has the logistical ability to catch and store large numbers of people, along larges numbers of people prone to criminality.  Most countries either lack the capability to imprison a large percentage of their populace, or they lack the large number of criminals to imprison.

Well yes, they didn't die.  If they had died, how would you have been born?  We are descended from the winners, the people who didn't die of random accidents and diseases in childhood, and thus were able to leave descendants.

Because of improved sanitation and medical treatment, raw milk is much less dangerous than it was 140 years ago, but it is still 150x more dangerous than pasteurized milk.  The risk from raw milk is low, but why take the risk?  There is no benefit to raw milk.

None of the above.  I've never set foot in Utah.


People only feel sympathy/empathy for situations that they can relate to.  If someone suffers from an injustice we only feel it if we believe that we could suffer from that injustice.  My children will never be Burmese immigrants in Utah.  The world is a horrible and cruel place, and there is some sadness in that, but in order to function you have to narrow your focus.

Ok, but let's say that I am unable to see that distinction, and I hold the mistaken belief that my children and these Burmese immigrants have enough in common for me to feel more than a little empathy.

At that point I ask, why are you focused on this case?  Why focus on this one measly case where the man is probably guilty.  Shouldn't I instead focus on the widespread pain and suffering that occurs throughout the world?  Why focus on these Burmese when I can feel the pain of everyone in Burma?  What is it about these people that makes them so much more deserving of my concern?  Nothing.

Cows can have sub-clinical cases of tuberculosis.  Meaning that they are infected but not showing signs of infection.  Raw milk from these cows can then give people tuberculosis.  This was a very common problem before pasteurization became widespread.

More people means more military power.  Populations that can sustain a higher population density will win conflicts with and exterminate their lower density neighbors.  Increased population density is just part of the arms race that all human populations are engaged in.

My idea is far more extreme than the death penalty.  The death penalty only sterilizes the rapist.  My idea is to not only sterilize him, but the entire populations from which rapists emerge.

I would sterilize the rapist obviously, thus removing his genes from the genepool.  His relatives share many of his genes, which is why I would sterilize his siblings, nieces, and nephews.  Then I also sterilize the women who are attracted to rapists or who tolerate rapists.

If rapists are no longer born then rape will no longer occur.


You are suffering from a common misconception.  Rape is not about dominance, it is about sex, and sex is about procreation.  This is the reason that 94% of female rape victims are age 29 or younger.  Rape is simply forced mating, a common act among many nonhuman animals and some sort of humans.  The reason that it is common is because it provides its practitioners with an evolutionary advantage.  Turn that advantage into a disadvantage and evolution will sort things out.

Also you seem to believe that people can be taught to have different personalities.  There is absolutely no evidence for this, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.  Rapists are born, not trained.  Other than eliminating them, the only alternative is suppressing them through intimidation.

Eliminating rape would be simple, but people don't have the guts to do it.  Rape exists because there is a genetic incentive.  Reverse that incentive and let evolution take its course.

Policy 1: mandatory abortion of all rape babies.

Policy 2: sterilize all rapists, all women who have or have had consensual sex with a rapist, women caught bringing a rape baby to term, and all children, siblings, nieces, and nephews of rapists.

Did I hurt your feelings by pointing out that you are completely missing the point?  None of the people involved in the situation are Utahns, and so it makes no sense for this situation to be discussed in the context Utah's legal system.

I bought some bitcoins at the very peak (high price on the high day) of a bubble.  Then the next day MtGox was hacked and the price fell to about half that.  Then the price fell month after month, losing 93% of its value.  So there I was feeling sorry for myself, with my coins only being worth 7% of what I bought them for.  Now they're up 2031%.

In short, get some perspective.  If you bought coins above $1200 you still got them very cheap.  The price is going to be in the tens of thousands of dollars sooner than you think.