How anything can be a mystery to someone of such overwhelming intelligence is the real puzzle here. Sidestepped again, oh woe is me. It's not my job to explain your own view to you. Only you can bring yourself to your senses, you've proved countless times that you won't hear reason from anyone else.

The thrust of the Rome Burning metaphor is not the fact that Rome burns, but that you are Nero meddling fiddling whilst it happens. You missed that point though, so eager to to try and deny that there is any risk https://medium.com/@octskyward/crash-landing-f5cc19908e32

...and gavin said what now?

Gavin in May 2015: "increasing the max block size is urgent"
Gavin in July 2015: "The sky will not fall if the block size stays at 1MB"

You don't ask questions because you want answers. Your questions are devices used to restate another persons argument in such a way that you can then make arguments against them which cannot be refuted. By doing this you are attempting to create the illusion that your arguments actually refute what the other person said (as opposed to your mischaracterisation of what they said).

As this is a generalisation, your immediate reaction is to then go away and discover a single incident where this did not happen, and then argue that because this didn't happen one time, it never happens.

You use the same pattern here, without a question.


[The exact names of the financial institutions aren't important] - Yes exact names are not important.

[only that their "sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain."] - you attempt to establish the credibility of this statement by contrasting it against the absurd.

This is a recurring theme, and it is the whole basis of your argument. You craft entire walls of text specifically designed to give the impression that you are of superior intellect, and that the other person is a buffoon. You think that by doing this you increase the legitimacy of your position. You do not.

This is the subtlety that you are missing: "Let each thing stand on its own merit"

This applies equally to LN / Sidechains as it does to your own self.

Sometimes one is just plain wrong. Acknowledging this is more important than being right.

For example, your handwaving over full blocks. I likened them to Rome Burning for a very good reason. Full blocks and a constantly increasing mempool cause significant problems. Maybe you should look into it, its the thing that most concerned me and I think is the biggest motivation for making sure that full blocks don't happen.

Peter R's paper, demonstrating the block size is self limiting, puts a fork in it! (so to speak)

It isn't me that is trolling ICE. I post what I believe to be true, based on what I have read, and learned and understood. I think there is a difference between us though: I know I might be wrong, and if I am, I'll be fine about it.

Who are these financial institutions, and why do assume they are necessary. You seem to ignore the fact that bitcoin is money. Its a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value. The blockchain facilitates these things. Your financial institutions are an unnecessary complexity, the blockchain doesn't need financial institutions it *is* the institution.

Your summation quite clearly reveals some other agenda. You know that increasing the block size undermines it, so you are fighting tooth and nail to try and prevent it.

I see centralization and scalability as a trade-off, and for better or for worse, the block chain only offers one trade-off. I want to see technology
built on top that introduces lower levels of trust than typical fully centralized systems, while offering increased convenience, speed, reliability, and scale. I just don't think that all of that can happen on the lowest layer without hurting everything built on top. We need different trade-offs, and the blockchain is just one, but a very fundamental one.

I've tried really hard to try and see the opposing POV but I come up short every time, and I think that's because I can't understand the philosophy behind making BTC some elitist tool when it seemed right from the outset that it was anything but.

If that makes me part of the "free-shit" army, then so be it. I'm not (yet) so morally bankrupt that I think that my well being can only come at the expense of others. That's what cripplecoin sounds like, thats why I don't want any part of it.

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

I cut my exposure to equities by half today, AAPL was amongst those that got the chop!

The nature of bitcoin is that if mining becomes too centralized and the miners decide on an unpopular fork, the users can just ignore them (well, we will need some miners, and in the worst case we might have to manually drop the difficulty to keep things running with less hashpower).

As long as the user base disagrees with the change, they don't have to follow along.  More users is more decentralized. The miners only have as much power as we grant them, and we can take it away if necessary.

If you truly understood your own position then you would argue it instead of just railing at people who might have an opposing view. Call me some more names, it's really helping the credibility of your argument.

What *is* bloat? (apart from the intentional choice of hyperbolic word). Can you put a value on what is considered bloated? Can you confidently say that your idea of what constitute bloat is some world wide standard?

You put words in my mouth, then claim those invented words make me look stupid. In fact this only serves to make you look even more desperate. if I didn't understand the maxim, I would not be able to point out just how incoherent your thought process must be if you are attempting to equate feature-set with size-of-data. I understand the difference between feature-set and data-size, do you? I'll bet you do. So, don't even for one second pretend you think that systems with more data are inherently more complex than systems with less data.

Do you truly believe they are the same thing or are you again being disingenuous in order to try and maintain your tenuous argument that effectively 'changing a config setting' is somehow more complicated than developing a whole new platform and all the interfaces necessary to communicate.

Its about as elegant as your debating skill....

Fully parsed your argument against Gavin's fix for CVE-2013-2292 seems to be, don't do it because it increases complexity. Again disingenuous or actually not very smart?

Then finally you try to create further confusion between the feature-set of software vs its deployment. To be clear, what is being kept simple is the software. I'm interested to know though just exactly what it is that is complex about the hard fork. I can think of other words that might apply - contentious, unpredictable even undesirable - depending on your viewpoint - but not complex. You put the new release up, and those that want it deploy it. Those that don't do not.

Interestingly those words that apply to the hard fork, could quite easily be used to describe intentionally restricting transaction growth by refusing to update the max block size. So in that respect both 'solutions' are equal.

In another very important respect, they are not equal. Releasing a version of bitcoin core with an increased block size allows for true consensus from the user base. Refusing to do so, is enforcing the view of some core-devs. That's what is despicable.

Thankfully in time, once the details have been ironed out and devs eventually accept some form of block size increase schedule (and they will, however much you cling to your delusion) the hard fork can happen in core, and then the miners can have the final say in what goes forward. If everyone sticks on 1MB coin then you get your wish! I'll send you a cookie, iced with the words "Well done you!".

I think though, that is what you are terrified of. That you know there is actually no way in hell the block size will stay at 1MB, but you are so married to your position that you can't let go and will say anything to defend it. It comes across in your posts.

The introduction of sidechains, LN and whatever other solutions is a complicated solution. It's also a solution motivated by a desire to fix a perceived economic issue, rather than sticking to the very simple issue at hand. It is the very opposite of what you are claiming to be important, that software should be kept simple.

That is a contradiction.

The simple solution is to remove the artificial cap. A cap that was put in place to prevent DDOS.

Your reference of CVE-2013-2292 is just distraction. It is a separate issue, one that exists now and would continue to exists with a larger block size.

The simple solution is to remove the artificial cap hard fork Bitcoin.

The introduction of sidechains, LN and whatever other solutions is a complicated solution. It's also a solution motivated by a desire to fix a perceived economic issue, rather than sticking to the very simple issue at hand. It is the very opposite of what you are claiming to be important, that software should be kept simple.

That is a contradiction.

The simple solution is to remove the artificial cap. A cap that was put in place to prevent DDOS.

Your reference of CVE-2013-2292 is just distraction. It is a separate issue, one that exists now and would continue to exists with a larger block size.

Great job on affirming your emotional attachment by posting inflammatory content, irrational argument and personal insults.

Misrepresenting my position then arguing against that isn't going to cut it.

I said the problem is that the block size is too small, and that the solution is to make the block size bigger. That doing this requires no additional functionality. I contrasted this to the sidechain solution which does require additional functionality. As you rightly say nobody is claiming that is entirely the solution, but that is irrelevant, the point is that this or other solution(s) that require extra functionality are the very thing that your Tanenbaum quote warns against.

All that stuff you said about how we need to change TX size, thats some other thing. Either you are intentionally conflating the two, which is disingenuous or you really can't tell the difference, which I doubt is the case.

It looks to me like your emotional attachment to your position is causing your reasoning to become irrational. I don't think anyone's argument is absurd. I can see how enforcing higher fees benefits some parties, I think that misses the big picture which is that it *requires* additional functionality.

I'm not frightened of pissing contests, I think they are childish. You don't need to "fight" anything. As a smart human being we all need to listen, think and reason. Not inject hyperbole, and inflammatory language into posts to try and bully your opposition. Your argument should stand on its own merit and not the vehemence with which it is delivered.

What frightens me is that the whole thing seems to have turned into a pissing contest.

I'm not frightened of pissing contests

hang on.  Dow futures -20.