Why Bitcoin Core Developers won't compromise

[Viper1]

I will be petitioning miners to signal bigger blocks.

BU is a very bad choice. If a group of people truly cared about resolving this issue they would have simply forked core to include segwit and a 2Mb block size. I suspect people would have happily signaled and even forked to that which would have communicated an extreme lack of confidence in core. That's how you "win" at something like this. The way people are going about it now is completely foolish and risky.

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[dinofelis]

Nothing stops freedom money from having an issuing mechanism that more or less regulates its value to a constant, and hence can become a much better unit of account

This reminds me of Panama's currency: the Balboa.  Like Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and other Latin American countries they suffered from high inflation.  So, they pegged the Balboa 1:1 with the USD.  After a while, they figured why print Balboas if they are pegged to the USD.  They now use USD and call it Balboa.

I must have been misunderstood.  I didn't say "peg to the USD".  I did say "regulate to an amount of value" (and I took the amount of value that $1 represents today).   A given amount of hash work represents an amount of economic value.  If one can have a decent estimation of how much economic value an amount of hash work will represent in the future (say, Moore's law and somewhat extra), we can program in advance the amount of hash work that can make a coin at a given moment in time.  If we can fix that more or less to what corresponds to $1 today (say, one fifth of a Big Mac), then people will automatically generate coins if they are worth more than the economic cost of hashing them.  There's no "pegging mechanism" to the dollar ; there's a pegging mechanism to economic cost of hashing.  This curve can be even slightly deflationary (that is to say, the expected hash cost will increase over time, the difficulty will outpace technological evolution).  It doesn't matter much.  There's a value regulation mechanism.

How does this compare with the elasticity of the USD?  They can print more, but aside from gift cards and similar tokens - which are pegged 1:1 with the USD - you don't have much option.  I've had a difficult time getting anywhere to accept my Quetzales, except in Guatemala  They seem to like them there.

The FED tries to regulate the VALUE of the USD to follow a more or less established inflation curve.

If suddenly, someone dumps 500 billion dollars on the market, the FED will sell assets and buy up dollars to avoid a serious crash of the dollar value.  
You cannot crash the dollar market by dumping it.  You cannot corner the dollar market by buying up all dollars: the FED will print you out of business.

Probably, the European central bank is even more an "automatic regulator of value" than the FED is, because the FED also has political goals, while the ECB doesn't, really.

But nobody actually wants "internet money" - except dark markets.

I use it as money.  I buy clothes, musical stuff, flowers with it.  I also offer a 20% discount if people pay with BTC or LTC because I know PayPal won't take the money out of my account one day because somebody's account was hacked and they would prefer I pay the cost than they do.

Sure.  I also use bitcoin occasionally.  But I mean, "the general public".   The gains you have by using it don't outweigh the volatility risk.  Apart from special applications, and apart from some geekiness, honestly, doing a wire order to an exchange, buying coins, withdrawing them, paying on the internet, is more hassle and cost than using my credit card for everything which is "open and legal".  And with my credit card, I have some legal protection if I'm scammed.

Putting aside a reserve of bitcoin for future buying (which I did, because of said hassle) and see that it takes a factor of 5 gains, induces me to keep them aside even if that wasn't the purpose.   But it could just as well go down.  So this "money" cannot be stored as neutral value keeper.  If you store it, you speculate (heavily).  Most people speculate on "up", of course, but they speculate.  They end up speculating even if that was not the idea.

[freebutcaged]

If all the miners were experts they could've figured out which is what and who is blocking the development.

I have an advanced degree in my own profession. I ran the pro-formas. I also did a thorough review and, after much consideration, came to the conclusion that it is a debate of Bitcoin as a commodity vs. currency. I believe Bitcoin is a currency to use.  I am running a proforma and needing to convert BTC to USD to show the government because I am going to work mostly in Bitcoin, Litecoin because of their security and certainty that they are not fake.  I also want to support the system and believe they are a great form of payment!

After considering the facts, I made the most informed decision I could in order to support Bitcoin as a currency.  I believe we need faster confirmations and low transaction fees (micro-payments) in order for this to work. I think this will help more people adopt it and increase its usefulness.  I see larger block sizes as the most logical answer: (a) it addresses an immediate need; (b) provides for additional scale-ability in the future and (c) does not prevent layer II solutions.  

I, also, believe we need to hit the top of "S-curve" market adoption (if it is one) in order for most of the SegWit options to function optimally.  That is how I arrived at my decision to run and support BU.  Now, it's up to each person to arrive at their own conclusion.  That's how I made my decision: BU is the only way to scale blocksize and it's not perfect. I prefer BIP101 because of the predictability, but it's up to each person to make up their own mind.  

Name calling brings down the community.  

But is it malicious segwit or not?
Is it a Trojan horse segwit or not?

Will other(old) nodes be able to function if not upgraded to segwit or not?

Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?

I already suggested a method but I don't know if that is actually possible or can be achieved;

Instead of thousands of full nodes can we have 1000 nodes containing and storing/validating first %10 of blockchain data then another 1000 nodes going with the next %10 of the data and so on to the end, could we treat 100 computers as a single super computer if we were to write the protocol for it?
How come we are accepting the current protocols as the only central authority of network I'm sure we'll do the same with that kind of protocols.

[dinofelis]

Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?

See how important this point is !

Note that most users don't use full nodes.  There are more than 5000 or so bitcoin users in the world.


Look at the edit at the end of my previous post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1915733.msg19025925#msg19025925

in order to see what's the genuine utility of full nodes.

[ArticMine]

...
Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?
...

Do you really believe the current VISA network could be run with the technology of 1949, namely: tabulating machines, punched cards and telegraph lines? This is when the Diner's Club was first conceived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International

Back in 2013 I built a computer with an 18 TB raw 12 TB usable RAID 6 array in order to store the Bitcoin blockchain. I purchased the RAID controller from Roger Ver's Bitcoin store. My RAID array is mostly empty, but I suspect it will become useful in the future to store a certain alt-coin's blockchain. I will leave it to the reader to guess which one. Hint: It has an adaptive blocksize.

[dinofelis]

But is it malicious segwit or not?
Is it a Trojan horse segwit or not?

Will other(old) nodes be able to function if not upgraded to segwit or not?

Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?

I already suggested a method but I don't know if that is actually possible or can be achieved;

Instead of thousands of full nodes can we have 1000 nodes containing and storing/validating first %10 of blockchain data then another 1000 nodes going with the next %10 of the data and so on to the end, could we treat 100 computers as a single super computer if we were to write the protocol for it?
How come we are accepting the current protocols as the only central authority of network I'm sure we'll do the same with that kind of protocols.

My current own understanding of bitcoin is the following: it has *economic* incentives that centralize it, into a separate industry of "block chain providers" (miner pools / miner hardware owners) and its customers (bitcoin users that want to transact).

The customers need the block chain providers to be able to use bitcoin (that is, to transact) ; while the chain providers sell the chain to the users who pay for it by buying the coins that these chain providers can obtain or invent (fees and block rewards).

This is not very different from a central bank + commercial banks providing payment services to their customers, but there ARE notable differences, nevertheless: there's no organized decision hierarchy amongst the industrials, and as such, these competing entities are for the moment locked in into an immutability of the protocol they use to make the block chain.  None of them, individually, can deviate from it ; and there's no global decider for them (for the moment).  There's no "board of governors" of the industry of block chain providers.

As a whole, this system works quite reliably.  The customers send their transactions to the industrials, who have some incentive to include it in the block chain they provide to the customers and it is almost impossible for any one to deviate from the established rules of functioning, without risking to lose a lot of money.  The customers use the transactions to obtain value, to speculate amongst themselves and so on, and this establishes a market price of the tokens they transact ; this market value is what the industrials can obtain from their customers by selling them back the coins they obtained from them or they were allowed to invent from thin air.

This split between industrials and customers is a basic design "feature" of bitcoin, which I consider a big mistake.  The other feature, which I also consider a big mistake in bitcoin is its emission curve which turns it into a speculative asset, and doesn't allow it to become a genuine currency.  But who am I to consider these features "mistakes" ?  They are only mistakes if we wanted to make a decentralized currency.  They are not a mistake if we wanted to make a highly speculative asset: in fact, the design for that is near perfect.

However, the distinction between "currency" and "speculative asset" plays a huge role if one were to change bitcoin's protocol.  If one doesn't change it, whatever the "original idea" was, doesn't matter, it will do whatever it will do (it IS a highly speculative asset and nothing indicates it won't stay that).  If we want to modify it, however, we would need to know where we are heading.

I think that if we want to turn it into a genuine currency, there's no point in twiddling the technical aspects of it, as long as the two basic aspects, industrials vs customers and emission curve, aren't modified to turn it into something that might look more like a decentralized currency: no more "industrials selling block chain", but users making their own block chain (say, something like PoS) ; and a flexible coin emission that stabilizes the coin's value.  But this is entirely against the religion of bitcoin.  So this is not possible. 

As long as that is not possible, bitcoin cannot turn into a genuine currency and will remain a speculative asset.

I haven't fully studied all aspects of segwit, but it contains a lot of very smart improvements in the technical details of transaction processing.  Purely on the technical side, segwit is a good improvement. 

However, segwit got entangled with something totally different, which is the LN.  The LN can be a smart idea too.  It is however, a totally different concept of transaction, with a totally different trust model. What has screwed up the whole story, is the fact that segwit proponents are LN proponents who seem to want to FORCE bitcoin usage onto the LN, and for that, OFF the main chain.  But that is fundamentally problematic in my eyes.  The fact that one uses a totally bogus argument, namely the "importance of the non mining full node in Joe's basement", while one ignores entirely the actual semi-centralized true power structure of bitcoin, which is industrials making block chain versus customers using the block chain and paying the miner's tokens, and *keeps a tight limit on on-chain transactions* on the basis of this bogus argument, sounds strange.

Because in order for the LN to be trustless, one needs to be able to settle easily.  If not, if ever the on chain settlements are *not in principle capable of settling the entire LN quickly at any moment*, the LN is like "fractional reserve banking" but not in coins, but in transactions.  In principle each one of us can settle, but we can't, all of us.  In a fractional reserve bank, each one of us can withdraw his money, but not all of us.

In other words, the LN is only trustless, if at any moment, it can settle FULLY on chain.  Like full banking: at any moment, EVERYBODY can withdraw their money.

I would be entirely favorable for the LN, if the possibility to settle, for everyone, at any moment, were possible.

[ImHash]

...
Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?
...

Do you really believe the current VISA network could be run with the technology of 1949, namely: tabulating machines, punched cards and telegraph lines? This is when the Diner's Club was first conceived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_International

Who would compare VISA with bitcoin can you ask every individual around the world using a VISA card to run the entire network in their computers?
Albeit with 1MB blocks we're going beyond the average user's capability of running full node, while full nodes are no use whatsoever, only miners decide everything, you disagree then try running 1M full nodes and broadcast a transaction then you'll be waiting until the end of days for your coins to validate and become spendable.
There is no need for 2/4/6/8 >MB blocks as 500KB would be enough for next 6 month, IMAO bitcoin should increase blocksize by 500KB every 6 months.
What do you people really expect from Core team?
Governments around the globe are breaking under the pressure of managing a currency, yet Core has managed to maintain a fu**ing economy not by controlling it but by proposing the ideas and letting the decentralized network to reach a consensus.
Is little Wu ready to lead a international nation/country without enforcing his desirable rules upon the whole system?

[Viper1]

as 500KB would be enough for next 6 month

How did you come up with that number?

[classicsucks]

In fact, as long as these 20 entities are not attackers, and they have never been

As of today. But that "20" will continue to shrink until someone can control 51%. It's inevitable assuming "all things" stay the same.

Well how about this alternative: one corporation controls the trajectory of bitcoin protocol and network, and we're supposed to magically trust them with this responsibility, despite their sketchy and counter-productive behavior? *cough* Blockstream *cough*

Even if only one person "controlled" bitcoin, who is to say that they would want to run it into the ground?

[dinofelis]

In fact, as long as these 20 entities are not attackers, and they have never been

As of today. But that "20" will continue to shrink until someone can control 51%. It's inevitable assuming "all things" stay the same.

Well how about this alternative: one corporation controls the trajectory of bitcoin protocol and network, and we're supposed to magically trust them with this responsibility, despite their sketchy and counter-productive behavior? *cough* Blockstream *cough*

Even if only one person "controlled" bitcoin, who is to say that they would want to run it into the ground?

Indeed, the true centralization of crypto in general is linked to who can decide about the protocol.  MOST crypto is heavily centralized in this respect, because most crypto has a lead developer that decides about future evolution of the protocol.  We saw this clearly with ethereum where the unthinkable in crypto happened: modifying the past, not by modifying the block chain data, but by modifying the protocol that tells you how to interpret that block chain data.  Many other coins have such single dev team: DASH with Evans, LTC with Lee, of course ETH with Vitalik, ...
If you can change the code, you can change all of it, no matter all the "crypto".

In fact, bitcoin is decentralizing by not letting Core just do what it wants on this side ; but it is centralizing in the mining industry.

The point, of course, is that if there's a limited power structure in crypto (that is, if the deciders can sit in one room and come to an agreement, like they did on litecoin), it is a kind of "governors of the central bank".  Governors of the central bank also don't want to run the fiat they command, into the ground.

[Qartada]

Comparing fiat to crypto is apples to oranges. Replacing one fiat with another is not the same thing as replacing fiat with a non-government currency. I think you are arguing details and failing to see the point.

Your emission scheme is just that - a scheme. Why would you want to peg to something you want to replace? That doesn't make sense. My guess is you're an older fellow who just can't wrap your head around life without the USD.

It takes years of brainwashing, like majoring in Economics-style-brainwashing, to think deflationary currencies are bad and elastic money supplies are good. Its the foolishness, if not downright insanity, of thinking that there is a magic algo or philosopher kings who can decide what the volume and value of money should be on any given day rather than leaving it to the market.

Right, let's just get this straight.  

The US dollar is not volatile compared to Bitcoin.  Furthermore, the volatility in the day that it has typically varies around the same price range, while Bitcoin can swing by huge percentages in the course of a few days.

People here can imagine a life without USD, but that's just it:  imagining.  It will take time because Bitcoin's volatility is based on people's confidence, which is not as high as it will be yet.

Sure, it's not 100% accurate (the Big Mac Index is pretty close), but it's a damn good way to determine what the value and spending power of your Bitcoin is and what it has been in the few years that it's existed for.

Bitcoin is volatile in terms of US Dollars. My point to dinofelis is: So what? Why is that a problem?

Another question for dinofelis: Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

It's a problem because US dollars, in this case, are representing what items you would be able to buy with Bitcoin as they're a relatively stable thing to compare it against.  Bitcoin's volatility against USD means that it won't be practical for regular transactions until the amount of money that people hold in it has stabilised.

[CoinHoarder]

I sent a transaction 5 days ago with the proper fee...

It still has 0 confirmations.  

Bitcoin is practically useless at this point until one of these scaling proposals are activated.

[dinofelis]

Bitcoin is volatile in terms of US Dollars. My point to dinofelis is: So what? Why is that a problem?

Another question for dinofelis: Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

It's a problem because US dollars, in this case, are representing what items you would be able to buy with Bitcoin as they're a relatively stable thing to compare it against.  Bitcoin's volatility against USD means that it won't be practical for regular transactions until the amount of money that people hold in it has stabilised.

Indeed, it is somewhat delusionally to think that if some asset in a liquid market has high volatility as expressed in a major fiat, such as the US dollar, it is the dollar that is fluctuating and not the asset.  In the relatively short term, big fiat are very stable units of account (unless something quite spectacular happens) in the sense that a quantity of this fiat represents a constant market value of commodities, whether it is bread, computers, cars, bananas, coffee, theatre tickets, or... other stable currencies.

Of course, and that was I think the essence of cryptoanarchists' remark, this is somewhat self-referential.  But in the end, it doesn't matter.  If you can buy about the same amount of Big Macs, bread, tooth brush, cars, bananas etc... with, directly, or after exchanging it for another currency, it HAS a stable value.  Because in the end, value, that is an amount of Big Macs, bread, tooth brush, cars and bananas.

In the very long run, fiat currencies are less good units of account ; but then, not much is, because the notion itself of "same value" in remote and totally different economies is ill defined.  How do you compare the value of, say, a dagger in the 7th century with something today ?

But a thing even used as a major currency, that doesn't have a price-stabilizing mechanism, will NEVER stabilize, simply because of the variable economic activity, and the variable velocity of money in Fisher's formula:

Q.P = M . V

From which: P = M . V / Q, the price level depends on V and on Q.   V depends heavily on the hoarding habits of people, and Q depends on the economic activity.  If M is a hard number, it will never be stable.  Especially if a large part of M is being hoarded, and V is very sensitive to the small amount of non-hoarded coins.

If there's a feedback mechanism from P to M, which is what central banks do, then this can stabilize P.  If no such mechanism is known, P will be very dependent on V and Q.

[Sr.Urbanist]

I must have been misunderstood.  I didn't say "peg to the USD".  I did say "regulate to an amount of value" (and I took the amount of value that $1 represents today).   A given amount of hash work represents an amount of economic value.  

This is true.  One thing I did not realize when I bought my first S9 was that "difficulty" continues to increase.  That simply means, which I did not know when I started, that as more hash power comes online it reduces the percentage I contribute.  In January I received 0.018 BTC per day.  Now, I receive 0.013 BTC per day.  Correction, 0.011 the last 24 hours. My hash percentage has almost been halved and the price of Bitcoin has nearly doubled.  If the price were to fall to $700, I would turn off the miners.  

If one can have a decent estimation of how much economic value an amount of hash work will represent in the future (say, Moore's law and somewhat extra), we can program in advance the amount of hash work that can make a coin at a given moment in time.  

I do that in my pro-forma. I'm sure the larger and sophisticated companies do the same.  Who would regulate it?  If it's in the code, well, I'm sure there is a coin that does that: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency/coins

If suddenly, someone dumps 500 billion dollars on the market, the FED will sell assets and buy up dollars to avoid a serious crash of the dollar value.  You cannot crash the dollar market by dumping it.  You cannot corner the dollar market by buying up all dollars: the FED will print you out of business.

When visiting Argentina, México, Guatemala and Morocco - to the best of my recollection - they accepted USD.  Is the value of the Méxican peso low because they accept USD?  What happens when a lot of USD goes out of the country through black market or people taking $9,999 outside the US?  If people bring it back in ... let's say all of the evil corporations bring their money to the US from offshore accounts, how does that impact the value of the USD both in the US and globally?  

Sure.  I also use bitcoin occasionally.  

Cool.  I was starting to wonder  

But I mean, "the general public".   The gains you have by using it don't outweigh the volatility risk.

They do for me because of my globetrotting nature, but that's why I am in BTC.

I agree that those who hold speculate.  There is no doubt about that.  Mainstream adoption, for remittances and such, would likely be an "in-and-out" transaction w/ a company holding that risk.  Ethereum may be the best place for this, but I think that whole damn thing is funky because of the pre-mine and DAO.  If you want to talk about scam and trouble with the SEC, the Ethereum founders use tricky language to avoid regulations and are located in Switzerland - thinking it will help them avoid regulations.

Apart from special applications, and apart from some geekiness, honestly, doing a wire order to an exchange, buying coins, withdrawing them, paying on the internet, is more hassle and cost than using my credit card for everything which is "open and legal".  And with my credit card, I have some legal protection if I'm scammed.

Yup. Good thing you don't live in Greece or Spain.  However, there is something private and personal about our spending habits that have been exploited.  Even when the banks - they speculate and *shouldn't* - have required a bailout.  

I have bank accounts as well.

Putting aside a reserve of bitcoin for future buying (which I did, because of said hassle) and see that it takes a factor of 5 gains, induces me to keep them aside even if that wasn't the purpose.

I was glad to see the price drop a little and I'm hoping it does not go over $2000 before the end of June-ish.  

So this "money" cannot be stored as neutral value keeper.  If you store it, you speculate (heavily).  Most people speculate on "up", of course, but they speculate.  They end up speculating even if that was not the idea.

I agree. I am holding it because of the high tx count and not wanting to pay high fees.  I'm also saving to buy another miner.  It's just another currency for me, a foreign currency for the country of the Internet.

[Sr.Urbanist]

I sent a transaction 5 days ago with the proper fee...

It still has 0 confirmations.  

Bitcoin is practically useless at this point until one of these scaling proposals are activated.

I'm sure you have seen this:
https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

[Sr.Urbanist]

Fisher's formula:

Q.P = M . V

From which: P = M . V / Q, the price level depends on V and on Q.   V depends heavily on the hoarding habits of people, and Q depends on the economic activity.  If M is a hard number, it will never be stable.  Especially if a large part of M is being hoarded, and V is very sensitive to the small amount of non-hoarded coins.

If there's a feedback mechanism from P to M, which is what central banks do, then this can stabilize P.  If no such mechanism is known, P will be very dependent on V and Q.

V = value
Q = quantity
P = price
M =

I love theory. It's so cool. Seriously. 

[cryptoanarchist]

Bitcoin is volatile in terms of US Dollars. My point to dinofelis is: So what? Why is that a problem?

Another question for dinofelis: Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

It's a problem because US dollars, in this case, are representing what items you would be able to buy with Bitcoin as they're a relatively stable thing to compare it against.  Bitcoin's volatility against USD means that it won't be practical for regular transactions until the amount of money that people hold in it has stabilised.

Indeed, it is somewhat delusionally to think that if some asset in a liquid market has high volatility as expressed in a major fiat, such as the US dollar, it is the dollar that is fluctuating and not the asset.  In the relatively short term, big fiat are very stable units of account (unless something quite spectacular happens) in the sense that a quantity of this fiat represents a constant market value of commodities, whether it is bread, computers, cars, bananas, coffee, theatre tickets, or... other stable currencies.

Of course, and that was I think the essence of cryptoanarchists' remark, this is somewhat self-referential.  But in the end, it doesn't matter.  If you can buy about the same amount of Big Macs, bread, tooth brush, cars, bananas etc... with, directly, or after exchanging it for another currency, it HAS a stable value.  Because in the end, value, that is an amount of Big Macs, bread, tooth brush, cars and bananas.

In the very long run, fiat currencies are less good units of account ; but then, not much is, because the notion itself of "same value" in remote and totally different economies is ill defined.  How do you compare the value of, say, a dagger in the 7th century with something today ?

But a thing even used as a major currency, that doesn't have a price-stabilizing mechanism, will NEVER stabilize, simply because of the variable economic activity, and the variable velocity of money in Fisher's formula:

Q.P = M . V

From which: P = M . V / Q, the price level depends on V and on Q.   V depends heavily on the hoarding habits of people, and Q depends on the economic activity.  If M is a hard number, it will never be stable.  Especially if a large part of M is being hoarded, and V is very sensitive to the small amount of non-hoarded coins.

If there's a feedback mechanism from P to M, which is what central banks do, then this can stabilize P.  If no such mechanism is known, P will be very dependent on V and Q.

You're going a little off the rails, blindly accepting economic formulas. Here's an interesting article about bitcoin volatility that proves you wrong:  http://woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility-will-match-major-fiat-currencies-by-2019/

Since you didn't really answer:

Q. Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

A. Because of legal tender laws that force you to accept them. Does Fisher's formula take that into account?

Forced acceptance of a rigged scheme is why Bitcoin was invented.

[jonald_fyookball]

Q. Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

network effect

[cryptoanarchist]

Q. Why do people/businesses accept US Dollars in the first place?

network effect

After they removed gold backing domestically from USD in the 30s, and made holding gold illegal, there were several legal tender court cases over people who refused to accept FRNs for payment of debts. The courts, clearly in violation of the Constitution they swore an oath to, ruled against them.

Can you see parallels to what's happening now?

[Searing]

I sent a transaction 5 days ago with the proper fee...

It still has 0 confirmations.  

Bitcoin is practically useless at this point until one of these scaling proposals are activated.

Ditto, took 2 days for mine. Getting beyond stupid.