Re: [bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT

From: GC <slashdevnull@hotmail•com>
To: Dave Scotese <dscotese@litmocracy•com>,
	Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 13:13:12 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <BLU436-SMTP223358FCB2E76C2E8F04EE7C6780@phx.gbl> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAGLBAhe-xUqVoW9peVEXQhutj6HkkTR3cn4w1ci3bW51G991kw@mail.gmail.com>

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Dave,

³ Š highly skilled psychological warfare agents ..²

Paranoia, much? 

Or perhaps the ³enemies" of Bitcoin are just sitting patiently, waiting for
it to collapse in time due to its internal contradictions.

From:  Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Reply-To:  Dave Scotese <dscotese@litmocracy•com>
Date:  Tuesday, 18 August 2015 12:37 pm
To:  Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject:  Re: [bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT

Three things:

1) Hostility is generally the result of perceived hostility.  If you assume
the best intentions of another person, you will eventually find yourself in
one of two places.  Either you will find truth with that person (becuase
they are also seeking it), or you will drive them away (because you will ask
questions that can't be answered by someone trying to deceive).

2) The Wiki says "The current Core developers are Wladimir J. van der Laan,
Gavin Andresen, Jeff Garzik, Gregory Maxwell, and Pieter Wuille."  I've seen
no hostility from any of these people.

3) The people who are threatened by Bitcoin aren't stupid enough to ignore
#1.  Can anyone imagine that they have not hired highly skilled
psychological warfare agnts to do everything they can to "help" assault what
we decentralization enthusiasts have been working for?

About #2: I'm actually blind to hostility, and that is an intentional
affectation in response to my recognition of #1 and #3 together.  If you
feel another person has expressed a bad idea, just ignore it.  If you feel
they might be misleading others, post a reply about what you know to clear
up any possible misconceptions.  There is no point in identifying
individuals who are being hostile, or pointing out hostility, or being
divisive.  Let the rest of us recognize it on our own.  Maybe send something
like what I'm writing now.

PS: If anyone is interested in conspiracy theories, I had written this into
my gmail compose window and (presumably) hit a wrong key which caused the
thread to be marked as spam and deleted my whole reply.  It hadn't even
saved a draft.  I've never seen gmail not save a draft before.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Eric Lombrozo via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> I should add that in the interest of peace and goodwill, I extend an offer to
> both Mike and Gavin to make their grievances heardŠbut only on the condition
> that we make a good effort to avoid misrepresentation and misreading of the
> other side¹s intentions.
> 
>> On Aug 17, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Eric Lombrozo <elombrozo@gmail•com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Aug 17, 2015, at 6:34 AM, NxtChg via bitcoin-dev
>>> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Great, so how about you go tell theymos to stop censoring XT posts and
>>> banning the other side on /r/Bitcoin?
>>> 
>>> Let users decide what Bitcoin is or isn't.
>> 
>> FWIW,
>> 
>> I don¹t think what theymos did is very constructive.I understand his
>> positionŠbut it only hurts the cause, unfortunately - the PR battle is not
>> the same thing as a discussion on technical merits. He hurts the PR battle
>> and plays into Mike¹s hand by doing that. The actual underlying issue
>> actually has little to do with block size - it has to do with Mike and Gavin
>> feeling that the core devs are being obstructionist.
>> 
>> Regardless of the technical merits of XT, the fact that we¹ve never done a
>> hard fork before, not even for things some other devs have wantedŠand not due
>> to any malice on anyone¹s part but because simply that¹s just the nature of
>> decentralized consensus with well-defined settlement guaranteesŠthis is the
>> problem - Mike and Gavin think they¹re somehow special and their fork should
>> be pushed while the rest of us resist pushing our own controversial pet ideas
>> because we want civility and understand that at this stage in Bitcoin¹s
>> development trying to fork the blockchain over highly divisive issues is
>> counterproductive and destructive.
>> 
>> But the fact of the matter is that in the PR battle, arguments against the
>> fork actually play into Mike¹s hand, and that¹s the problem.
>> 
>> The whole block size thing is too nuanced and too easily spun simplistically.
>> It¹s too easy to spin resistance to bigger blocks (even though the resistance
>> is actually much more towards untested hardforking mechanisms and serious
>> security concerns) as ³obstructionism² and it¹s too easy to spin bigger
>> blocks as ³scalability² because most of the people can¹t tell the fucking
>> difference.
>> 
>> The fact is most of the people don¹t really understand the fundamental issue
>> and are taking sides based on charismatic leadership and authority which is
>> actually entirely counter to the spirit of decentralized consensus. It¹s
>> beyond ironic.
>> 
>> If you guys want to win the PR battle, the key is to make it clear that you
>> are not obstructionist and are giving everyone equal treatmentŠBitcoin was
>> designed such that changing the rules is *hard* and this is a feature.
>> Bitcoin simply does not have a reliable and tested hard forking mechanismŠand
>> a hard fork for such a politically divisive issue will almost certainly lead
>> to a lack of cooperation and refusal to work together out of spite. All of us
>> would like to be able to process more transactions on the network. It¹s not a
>> matter of whether we think higher capacity is a bad thing - it¹s more that
>> some of us are concerned that Bitcoin is not sufficiently mature to be able
>> to handle such a schism with so much hostility.
>> 
>> Let¹s face it, folks - from a PR standpoint, the block size issue is
>> irrelevant. Nobody really understands it except for a handful of people -
>> I¹ve tried to explain it, I¹ve even written articles about it - but most
>> people just don¹t get it. Most people don¹t really get scalability either -
>> they seem to think that scalability is just doing the same thing you¹ve
>> always done manyfold.
>> 
>> Block size is an especially dangerous issue politically because it¹s one of
>> those that requires deep understanding yet superficially sounds really
>> simple. It¹s perfect Dunning-Kruger bait.
>> 
>> So let¹s be a little smarter about this.
> 
> 
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> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
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