Re: [bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT

From: Dave Scotese <dscotese@litmocracy•com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 21:37:44 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAGLBAhe-xUqVoW9peVEXQhutj6HkkTR3cn4w1ci3bW51G991kw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CF039F20-89F1-41E9-97EB-053E7BDF056F@gmail.com>

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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 heard…but only on the
> condition that we make a good effort to avoid misrepresentation and
> misreading of the other side’s 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 don’t think what theymos did is very constructive.I understand his
> position…but 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 Mike’s 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 we’ve never done a
> hard fork before, not even for things some other devs have wanted…and not
> due to any malice on anyone’s part but because simply that’s just the
> nature of decentralized consensus with well-defined settlement
> guarantees…this is the problem - Mike and Gavin think they’re 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 Bitcoin’s 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 Mike’s hand, and that’s the problem.
>
> The whole block size thing is too nuanced and too easily spun
> simplistically. It’s 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 “obstructionism” and it’s too
> easy to spin bigger blocks as “scalability” because most of the people
> can’t tell the fucking difference.
>
> The fact is most of the people don’t 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. It’s 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 treatment…Bitcoin
> 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
> mechanism…and 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. It’s not a matter of whether we think higher capacity is a bad
> thing - it’s 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.
>
> Let’s face it, folks - from a PR standpoint, the block size issue is
> irrelevant. Nobody really understands it except for a handful of people -
> I’ve tried to explain it, I’ve even written articles about it - but most
> people just don’t get it. Most people don’t really get scalability either -
> they seem to think that scalability is just doing the same thing you’ve
> always done manyfold.
>
> Block size is an especially dangerous issue politically because it’s one
> of those that requires deep understanding yet superficially sounds really
> simple. It’s perfect Dunning-Kruger bait.
>
> So let’s be a little smarter about this.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>

-- 
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