Have we reached peak tribalism?

[franky1]

I'm not saying we shouldn't check the code before we run it, I assumed that was a given, heh.  But clearly discussing the code and, more importantly, the effects of the code, would be a vast improvement over the current speculations and accusations about a person's supposed intent that seems to pervade most threads lately.  Talk about good and bad code, not good and bad people or companies.

i agree about things like that.
where talking about "is trumps hair real" having nothing to do with the politics and laws he may introduce
where talking about "is trump a sexual harasser" having nothing to do with the if he will fix the world debt problem

but when he introduces a new law.. reading it takes priority, understanding the law takes priority. but knowing why he introduced it and his intentions of using it reveals HOW it will be used.

EG
a law that allows tax offices to view peoples bank accounts.
thats it. thats all a law code mentions..

reading the lawcode alone can cause speculation, exaggerations, doomsdays and hysterics.

but knowing if it would be good by only being used to find the richguys screwing tax.. or the poor... also matters

for instance
personal attacks like "gmaxwell has a beard, ewww.. and he is fat" is just nonsense teenage drama that has no merit. and should not be the debate
but...
personal attacks like "gmaxwell wants to bilateral fork the network to get his commercial services accepted to repay his debt to bankers" has merit. because it impacts other people financially and intentionally

[QuestionAuthority]

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. As far as fixing the problem? How does one fix human nature? Calculating the biological component of Bitcoin was Satoshi's biggest failure.

Ahm curious as ta what you meant by that second sentence there 'bout the biological component.

OP, ya dam rite 'bout the tribalism, but itsa like dat evverwhere, even in tha workplace an'even in tha smallest of tribes. Ain't goin' away anytime soon less'n we collectively crawl our tribal asses back inta tha sea, evilootionarilly speakin'.  An' even then we'll still jist be killin' each otha inna water.

The human element. People are unpredictable.

On the contrary, People are predictable. When Bitcoin started out, the creator was anonymous and then he/she/they abandoned the project, when Gavin was approached by the government. Gavin came to the forefront and received a little bit of power and this went to his head.

The project became to big for him, and he left the scene. He underestimated his support and wanted to come back, but he was not welcomed with open arms. He then started a competing fork, to take back the power. < hostile takeover > but this failed.

So, what is not predictable? Money / power / greed / jealousy / anger / fear are all human factors in this whole experiment. Can we blame these guys? I guess not. Do we accept them back with open arms? Yes, I think we should accept any contribution that would be deemed positive for Bitcoin development.

Will the people making that decision, allow for them to get a foot in the door? No, I doubt it.

Surprise, we are all human after all. ^smile^ B.t.w OP, good topic.

Well then Satoshi definitely failed because bitcoin requires trust. Sending non-reversible money to a business without the ability to pull the money back from a fraudulent business requires trust.  Money / power / greed / jealousy / anger / fear =/= trust

[franky1]

The project became to big for him, and he left the scene. He underestimated his support and wanted to come back, but he was not welcomed with open arms. He then started a competing fork, to take back the power. < hostile takeover > but this failed.

this is where lack of knowledge fails.. people start speculating

non-core devs want consensus (one chain) agreement..

its actually blockstream employees that want dominance via intentional splits (bilateral fork).

What you are describing is what I and others call a bilaterial hardfork-- where both sides reject the other.

I tried to convince the authors of BIP101 to make their proposal bilateral by requiring the sign bit be set in the version in their blocks (existing nodes require it to be unset). Sadly, the proposals authors were aggressively against this.

The ethereum hardfork was bilateral, probably the only thing they did right--

yep other implementations disagreed to a intentional split.. and only gmaxwell proposed intentional splits.

you would have learned this if you read the code of non-core implementations and understood..
or
if you looked at peoples real motives by researching them.
but instead you followed the teenage drama of accusations about things unrelated to code. and then made your mind up from misinformation handed to you by the teenage drama creators

as mentioning doing a talk with the CIA. there are video's of it, so there are no secrets of what was discussed. but what about blockstreams closed door roundtable events with the bankers this month... oh wait you will downplay that teenage drama..

[ebliever]

Because this problem is a function of human nature, it is fairly intractable. You could "fix" the issue of changes being slow in coming by creating a more centralized authority with fewer roadblocks to implementation of changes, but then this would run the risk of buggy or otherwise harmful changes being implemented.

The solution is... free market competition. There are hundreds of altcoins out there angling to take bitcoin down. So far none have gained real traction, but every day brings new features and techniques in one altcoin or another, while bitcoin remains mired between warring camps.

Most of my crypto investment is in bitcoin, and I want it to succeed. But more and more I'm hedging my bets with coins like Dash and Zcash because at some point the technological advantage is going to overwhelm the network effect advantage of bitcoin. All the people driving old Model T's (bitcoin) are going to keep noticing the shiny new sportscar altcoins, and more and more will jump ship, or at least hedge their bets.

As the market caps of one or more contenders rise to being a real alternative to bitcoin, bitcoin will have its moment of truth: Either the warring factions will come to the table and figure out what to do to remain competitive, or they will keep shouting at each other, the moment will be lost, and bitcoin will fade until it is a footnote in the economic history books - the forgotten first example of the new asset class of cryptocurrencies.

[DooMAD]

but...
personal attacks like "gmaxwell wants to bilateral fork the network to get his commercial services accepted to repay his debt to bankers" has merit. because it impacts other people financially and intentionally

See, I'm not convinced and I see two problems.  Firstly, do you know gmaxwell personally?  Are you close?  Have you spoken at length with them about this matter?  Or, more likely, is this merely conjecture or theory on your part?  If you don't know someone well enough to comment on what they might "want", then you aren't in a position to comment.  Secondly, there's then the issue of the response it invites.  The natural reply someone will then give to what I've quoted, is that some other boogeyman from the opposite camp is plotting something equally nefarious and the whole thing goes round in circles forever. 

If you simply focus on the concern you have, which is "code that doesnt end in everyone forced to use commercial hubs of permissioned contracts. or new features that bypass consensus" and maybe don't place emphasis on what you speculate someone's motives might be for creating it, then it doesn't invite the same cyclical and perpetual character assassinations.  Less speculation of motive, more weighing up pros and cons.  Then, the natural response is for others to reply in terms of pros and cons, not their own speculations.

[franky1]

but...
personal attacks like "gmaxwell wants to bilateral fork the network to get his commercial services accepted to repay his debt to bankers" has merit. because it impacts other people financially and intentionally

See, I'm not convinced and I see two problems.  Firstly, do you know gmaxwell personally?  Are you close?  Have you spoken at length with them about this matter?  Or, more likely, is this merely conjecture or theory on your part?  If you don't know someone well enough to comment on what they might "want", then you aren't in a position to comment.  Secondly, there's then the issue of the response it invites.  The natural reply someone will then give to what I've quoted, is that some other boogeyman from the opposite camp is plotting something equally nefarious and the whole thing goes round in circles forever.  

If you simply focus on the concern you have, which is "code that doesnt end in everyone forced to use commercial hubs of permissioned contracts. or new features that bypass consensus" and maybe don't place emphasis on what you speculate someone's motives might be for creating it, then it doesn't invite the same cyclical and perpetual character assassinations.  Less speculation of motive, more weighing up pros and cons.  Then, the natural response is for others to reply in terms of pros and cons, not their own speculations.

lol... i know what your getting at. but now your doing the teenage drama of you speculating that im speculating..and we can end up tumbling down the hill you are saying we should avoid..
however i have actually spoke to him at length and do know their motives.

so knowing why they want commercial services actually adds to the point of should we allow commercial services as the end goal of "scaling" or try to highlight to the community to only treat it as a voluntary side service and real scaling still needs to be sorted.

but as i said which we can both agree on. code most important.. then knowledge of actual reasons for code
(not 6th party rumour-mill / chinese whispers hearsay speculation, but first hand) helps understand the consequences of the future impact.

but not going as far as yapping about what if someone stood up during a national anthem or their hair grooming or body weight.

[QuestionAuthority]

You should all leave him alone. Greg Maxwell just wants to get the band back together again.



On IRC, I've witnessed him posting the most unusual response to a question about IBD using chainwork instead of height and not using the header timestamp. He just seemed to start singing, "Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen. Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer. Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy, hair".

No one really understood what he was talking about.

[franky1]

his 'chainwork' is him just buzzwording terms to make it sound less like satoshi designed bitcoin and all the variables are words he decided on.
secondly its to do with bringing the buzzwords inline with his future sidechains that use the same variable so they are all 'compatible'

[DooMAD]

his 'chainwork' is him just buzzwording terms to make it sound less like satoshi designed bitcoin and all the variables are words he decided on.

'ChainWork' was in Satoshi's code while he was still active, so others reusing the term shouldn't really diminish Satoshi's contributions, but rather echo and reinforce them:  

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/3b7cd5d89a226426df9c723d1f9ddfe08b7d1def.patch

Code:

+    // Calculate bnChainWork
+    vector<pair<int, CBlockIndex*> > vSortedByHeight;
+    vSortedByHeight.reserve(mapBlockIndex.size());
+    foreach(const PAIRTYPE(uint256, CBlockIndex*)& item, mapBlockIndex)
+    {
+        CBlockIndex* pindex = item.second;
+        vSortedByHeight.push_back(make_pair(pindex->nHeight, pindex));
+    }
+    sort(vSortedByHeight.begin(), vSortedByHeight.end());
+    foreach(const PAIRTYPE(int, CBlockIndex*)& item, vSortedByHeight)
+    {
+        CBlockIndex* pindex = item.second;
+        pindex->bnChainWork = (pindex->pprev ? pindex->pprev->bnChainWork : 0) + pindex->GetBlockWork();

secondly its to do with bringing the buzzwords inline with his future sidechains that use the same variable so they are all 'compatible'

I'm not following your meaning, as there wouldn't be much point in even having a sidechain if it wasn't compatible.  Sidechains aren't a bad thing, provided:

a) we don't create a two-tier system, as sidechains should be more of an optional convenience in certain situations, not a new "economy class"
b) people are not priced off the main chain or kept waiting too long for space in a block, leaving them with no alternative
c) they remain decentralised and permissionless.  

If those boxes are all ticked, then I'm looking forward to sidechains and the possibilities they can offer.

[Khepri]

Look it starts at the top.  You have to setup and enforce an open unbiased structure of communication.  You leave this to a community and the fact is that people will be people.  It's no secret that, like another poster here mentioned, it's about minds.  You ever hear the saying "You can't teach common sense"?  You also can't change human nature.  Truth is, we kind of take refuge in other people's messes and particularly in some feeling of superiority.  This is why I can't completely get behind the idea of a decentralized-everything as there needs to be some functioning body who's function is to keep the course. 

Now in the case of a forum, this forum.  I wouldn't say peak tribalism, but from what I've seen we're in deep.  It could be worse, don't let it get there.

[franky1]

b) people are not priced off the main chain or kept waiting too long for space in a block, leaving them with no alternative
c) they remain decentralised and permissionless.  

put it this way..

if B was not a problem then we wouldnt need blockstream building sidechains..

as for C.. research LN's use of multisig and hubs.. plleeaassee

his 'chainwork' is him just buzzwording terms to make it sound less like satoshi designed bitcoin and all the variables are words he decided on.

'ChainWork' was in Satoshi's code while he was still active,

yes chainwork has meaning.. yes its been in bitcoin since early on..
but most people including satoshi concentrated on blockheight as the measure. but gmaxwell is tweaking things to make the term chainwork to become the popular measure because he has plans for it.

rather than just a variable.. he wants to make it an important buzzword that has big meaning.
bringing less emphasis on block height..
its all part of the twisting sheeps minds into thinking adam backs 'hashcash' was bitcoin 0.0.0.01

you'll soon see it more when blockstream releases some PoW sidechains with a few more buzzwords

[RealBitcoin]

in 2009-2013 people used sourceforge and then github to openly submit proposals.

this has then been sidelined in 2013+ requiring submitting a proposal to a mailing list to have it vetted first.
then a new layer was added where it needed to be discussed in IRC or the forum before being worthy of catching peoples eye on the mailing list.

its no longer open communication but a one way street with regular checkpoints and guards

Well that is really sad, but you also have to limit some of the trashy ideas too. You can't just allow every stupid person to come up with ideas.

Maybe we need a decentralized developing software to fix this, but seriously, we need this.

A sort of decentralized Github, where everyone can submit proposals, but they all need to pass a certain voting treshold to pass.

[cpfreeplz]

How do we fix this?

Divide and conquer. Bitcoin x and bitcoin y go seperate ways and they either both continue or one fails. It seems like the only option at this point. There's no other way to go about it because everyone is dick-measuring and assuming they have the best solution because they came up with it.