wow, i just wasted so much fucking time...... at least i'm six beers and two joints in......
I haven't seen many people at all suggesting that "it is wrong to hard fork." could you point to any examples?
There are many examples of this, I have been arguing this point since I have entered this discussion, most recently:
Changing BTC as it is now, it means its dead. Leaving as it is now, it means dead too. I am not sure how BTC can survive in these circumstances.
I see many PRO and AGAINST fork.
so, in other words, no examples. okay.
Ironicly both you and icebreaker have equeted Bitcoin XT as an attack on Bitcoin, I can argue that attacking Bitcoin is wrong so therefore forking in the way that XT does which I consider legitimate is according to you wrong. If you insist I will search my post history and find more specific examples, but I do not even know what the point of that would be, why do I even need to prove what other people have said, to you?
In fact, i've seen quite the opposite from XT opponents. i'd love for you guys to fork now with a mining minority, so we can write the epilogue on this embarrassing chapter in bitcoin's history, when a group of developers tried to use populism to break consensus.
That is a ridiculous thing to say, Bitcoin XT does break the consensus mechanism and I will repeat again that XT will only cause Bitcoin to fork if 75% consensus is reached.
75% "consensus"? why not 51%? call it what it is, an attack. if the fork were capable of achieving consensus, why the need to force 1/4 of miners (or more, given the possibility of lucky runs) into submission? that is not "agreement." what you're looking for is a democracy, where a temporary majority forces its will on the minority---not so unlike a 51% attack.
please look elsewhere.
I think it is legitimate to fork Bitcoin with 51%, it might be ill advised but it is not wrong, since this represents the freedom and will of the participants of the Bitcoin network. Nobody is forcing the miners to do anything, they have the free choice to point their hash power wherever they want. Bitcoin is a type of democracy where the economic majority rules. However unlike democratic states, tyranny of the majority is impossible under the consensus mechanism of Bitcoin because the minority of such a split can choose to stay with the old rules in effect splitting Bitcoin in two. This is a good thing and a beautiful solution to the age old problem of tyranny of the majority. This is why a temporary majority can not force its will on the minority as you claim.
do me a favor: link me to the last hard fork that forked based on 75% hashing power or less. then consult the
Merriam-Webster dictionary and see the first definition of "consensus":
1 a : general agreement : unanimity
I know what it means, you know consensus did exist before Bitcoin. Do me a favor and learn more about political philosophy and history. Then you would realize that consensus or unanimity is impossible among large groups of people. Which is why we need to build these political structures in order to best approximate effective decision making processes. Within Bitcoin this mechanism exists as the consensus mechanism, it is called consensus because most of the time there is unanimity however when fork events happen because of disagreement, then unanimity becomes impossible, it can then only be resolved through a fork. This is the decision making process of Bitcoin to think that we can all just agree with each other is completely ignoring human nature and the lessons taught by history.
ever notice how "majority" is used several times in the bitcoin whitepaper in the context of transaction validity? yet "consensus" is used only once in regards to "needed rules and incentives." gosh, i wonder why that might be?
Because consensus is required for transaction validity. Yet only fifty one percent is required to fork Bitcoin. You are confusing the different functions of the Bitcoin network.
i've seen many suggesting that it is wrong to promote a contentious hard fork, because it threatens to break the consensus mechanism. that's a lot more risky than forking with a hashing minority. in the latter case, XT will just die as any invalid chain does (perhaps its life could be temporarily extended with checkpoints). in the former case, we would have multiple surviving blockchains.
It is not wrong to support a contentious hard fork. In the same sense that it is not wrong to support a contentious political party. The definition of contentious being "causing or likely to cause an argument; controversial." Synonyms of contentious are controversial, disputable, debatable, disputed, contended, open to question/debate. I do not think that these things should be considered wrong to support, furthermore who decides what is considered contentious? If anything this is actually a good example of a mentality that does promote group think so to speak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GroupthinkThe similarities with the Bitcoin community and group think are uncanny. You have actually inspired me to further research this, really take a look for yourself in the wiki article, even if this is not the case with the current blocksize debate this could very well cause other problems down the line, we do need to make important decisions collectively that will determine the future of Bitcoin after all.
the specific misinformation i was speaking of here was your assertion that "power" could be "centralized" among Core developers. that's patently false
That is not misinformation since "power" becoming to "centralized" among Core developers is a complex and nuanced multifaceted issue, even subjective. Therefore you can not say it is false as if it is some sort of fact, since we can not objectively measure or observe such things using scientific methods, this type of thinking is in the realm of the humanities. Which is why I felt like I could contribute to this discussion with my background in political philosophy, especially considering that most people in our community have technical backgrounds. You can of course say that you disagree, but that is different to saying that something is false.
it's almost as if you sit with a thesaurus next to you, believing that using the ideal synonym will win the argument.
firstly, re-read what you wrote earlier:
Centralization of power is prevented from developing in the Core development team, exactly because of this ability to hard fork away from the Core development team. It is this mechanism that ensures this aspect of Bitcoins freedom. Which is why intrinsically at least it is not wrong to hard fork away from the Core development team.
secondly:
how can centralization of power develop, in this context? i argue that it cannot. there is no power. this greatly differs from the protocol-level discussion where the various parties hold some level of power to hold the others accountable (e.g. nodes have the power to enforce the protocol and render a miner's fork invalid). these incentive-induced checks and balances have absolutely fuck-all to do with developers. development is completely external to the protocol, and developers have zero power to enforce code on anyone. all this "centralization" talk in the context of development is a silly red herring to confuse simple-minded people who take the word at face-value without thinking about it.
You have not acknowledged my point that influence is a form of power. I understand that development is external to the protocol but "power" in Bitcoin is not only reflected in the protocol.
stop using it as a way to rationalize promoting implementations that lack merit. you repeatedly do this: when someone criticizes the merit of XT (for whatever reason -- node centralization, increased latencies, bandwidth/storage limitations, IP blacklists, etc) you concoct this falsehood that "supporting anything besides Core" is rational in order to "decentralize" development.
This is not true, I have actually addressed these issues you mention and there are certainly pros and cons to increasing the blocksize, it is certainly not clear cut and it should indeed be a balancing act. I have also never said that I "support anything besides Core", to be clear this is not what I believe.
i've watched your attempts at debate for some time. you never address the technical issues. rather, you write some "words" in response and use terms like "balancing act" to dismiss technical criticisms without addressing them. a cursory glance at the rest of your response here shows more of the same. your method of debate is never to address the points made, but rather to say "I don't think that is true" or something similar, then state your general "feelings" about the topic. merely writing a response to an argument is not sufficient to prevail in a debate. you're wasting everyone's time.
You are the one that is being dismissive of my arguments by not acknowledging them. I have even directly discussed these issues in the article I wrote on the subject.
Ive made clear this does absolutely nothing to "decentralize" development; by definition, open source development is decentralized. so, in effect, you are using a patently false argument to baselessly argue in favor of XT.
Decentralization is not necessarily that easily measured, it is a spectrum after all. I have also never used decentralization of development as an argument in favor of XT. I support BIP101 because I think that increasing the blocksize according to the schedule in BIP101 is better then not increasing the blocksize at all. I do use decentralization of development and freedom as justifications for supporting BIP101 when confronted with the accusation that it is wrong for me to choose an alternative implementation because it is contentious.
common usage of the word "centralize" suggests power and authority. you can dance around the subject all you want, but developers have no power or authority to do anything. they can release code; others can choose to run it or not. that goes for anyone, Core or otherwise.
They have authority over the Core implementation and they have a large amount of influence and reverence from the community. This does classify as power and authority.
and you've certainly used centralization of development (under Core) as an argument in favor of XT. and yes, your position on BIP101 is clear, too---you dismiss all technical issues while showing a feeble understanding of them, and conclude therefore that it is acceptable. your assessment of node viability under drastically increased block size the other day on the basis of calculating the downstream speed of one node---that was just too cute.
I have admitted to not being an expert in mathematics and computer networking, however attempting to calculate the actual numbers involved is the opposite of me dismissing the technical issues and certainly does prove your accusation wrong. Furthermore I have requested that anyone can correct this basic and admittedly crude formula and improve it or point me towards better research, so far nobody has done so. Which is why for you to criticize me without actually presenting a better calculation is really quite a hollow criticism.
no one said not to choose an alternative implementation "because it is contentious"---just another straw man.
Counter example:
i've seen many suggesting that it is wrong to promote a contentious hard fork
i said that a contentious hard fork threatens to break consensus and could result in multiple blockchains. that is why a contentious hard fork should be avoided.
I do not think that this is a good reason to avoid contentious hard forks. Surely you can understand why I do not think it is wrong to support controversial decisions, I vote according to my conscience.
further, erroneously projecting "centralization" onto Core is no mistake, as it has a loaded connotation among bitcoiners. this is a pretty dishonest form of debate, hence "misinformation" and "fallacy."
Because I am using a fairly subjective term like "centralization" which you think is erroneous. You think I am therefore "dishonestly" using "misinformation" and "fallacy". First of all it is obviously not misinformation as I explained before, secondly I do not see the fallacy, you should at least tell me what logical fallacy I am using or explain how what I am saying is a logical fallacy. I can give you an example, calling me dishonest is a case of ad hominem.
"centralization" isn't subjective at all in the context of bitcoin, hence your use of it to spread fear around Core development. it means "concentration of power" and you know it. ad hominem? i didn't say anything about you. i said it was a dishonest form of debate to concede that
Centralization and decentralization lie on a spectrum and it certainly can be subjective. Furthermore saying that I am using a dishonest form of debate implies that I am dishonest, you are attacking my character not my arguments by saying that, therefore it is ad hominem.
if you fear that people don't properly understand that bitcoin is open source and will blindly follow any implementation they are told to, that doesn't amount to centralization of power. the developers still have no power to force anyone to do anything. peoples' ignorance does not change that.
Peoples ignorance does change that. Modern democracies are a great example of this, their dysfunction is largely fueled by peoples apathy and ignorance.
no. peoples' ignorance does not grant developers power to do anything. as always, everyone involved at every level has the freedom to do anything they want in this context. fork whatever they want, run whatever they want. this is just irrational fear mongering. you're trying to suggest in a quite illogical way that "people are ignorant" --> "Core is bad"...... sorry but no.
I never argued that because of peoples ignorance Core is bad that would be ridiculous, you are now guilty of using a straw man. I am sorry to break the news to you but Bitcoin is a type of democracy, much better then the democratic states we are used to but none the less some of the same problems still accompany Bitcoin and it even introduces some new ones as well.
Many people today live in a cage that they do not know they can break out off, this is true for the present political system, even though it is based on their ignorance it still empowers the status quo.
In the same way if more people thought in the bizarre way that you described it would still give more "power" to the core development team even if just in the form of influence, which can be seen as a type of centralization of power.
nobody cares about your irrelevant analogies to modern democracy. they say nothing.
The analogies to modern democracy are not irrelevant, you are in danger of ignoring history.
expertise =/= power.
who ought to have influence on discussions of bitcoin's security and technical viability? perhaps those with expertise in large scale systems engineering, database programming, who have established themselves as experts on cryptographic money? or should it be people who don't know have a technical background or technical understanding of the protocol, who "majored in political philosophy in college?"
serious question.
This is a good question, I do not think that Bitcoin should become a technocracy centered around Bitcoin Core, which I feel like you sometimes are leaning towards. I think that these questions about the future of Bitcoin are multidisciplinary in nature. The technical experts are important for these questions but so are the political thinkers and the economists. Since Bitcoin has far reaching political consequences while also depended upon certain economic theory. This blockchain debate is a great example where economics plays a very important role in our different conceptions of Bitcoin, the concept of a fee market is a good example of this. Furthermore decentralization is predominantly a political concept favored for political reasons. We could just as easily favor centralization and get the technical experts to build that instead. Our philosophy and principles of decentralization are a result of our subjective ideologies, which are the product of political thought.
Bitcoin is far more then just open source in regards to decentralization. The consensus mechanism allows for much more complex and robust decision making processes to take place, the possibilities of which we are only just starting to explore.
oh? like what? do tell. i really don't even know what you're talking about.
Seriously? Proof of work allows for even more decentralization in the decision making process compared to other open source projects.
So you are saying that we need a centralized review process within specific versions which is therefore centralized, which applies to Core and XT, I can agree with that. However extending that logic I can say that two centralized review processes are more decentralized then just one. I can even go further and say that the more of these centralized review processes are started through more alternative implementations it would make development even more decentralized. I do not see how this logic can be flawed, in the same sense that two nodes are more decentralized then one, increasing the node count increased decentralization, the same is true for Bitcoin development.
what makes an open source project decentralized is a lack of centralized control. again, as gavin and hearn showed us, no one has centralized control. that is true now, it is true with a billion code forks. get over it. this is a non-issue. as i said earlier, an open source project is decentralized by definition---prove me wrong.
That decentralization and centralization exists on a spectrum already proves you wrong. It is not either decentralized or not, that is a oversimplification of the situation.
Thinking that we should only have one of these centralized review process so that people can no longer "hijack" Bitcoin and make any changes is inconsistent with the principles of decentralization. It is also completely missing the point of the Bitcoin consensus mechanism to think that if we do not have a centralized review process that the supply of Bitcoin will be increased. Bitcoin is meant to be distributed, decision making collective, psychology and game theory align incentive. This is why we do not need a centralized review process, at least not in the form of a singular one since that is the very definition of centralization after all.
I support BIP101 however I do not favor it, If BIP100 where implemented I would support that instead.
