Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Looking through this list of negotiating tactics, it seems Core/BS is using quite a few of them:

Control the Agenda: And hence what is discussed. [Scaling conferences, "Bitcoin dev" meetings, limiting allowable range of debate on forums, etc.]

Delays: Buying time and building tension. [Self-explanatory]

Doomsday: paint an overly black picture. [Big block doomsday scenarios]

Empty Promises: Make promises that you know you will not keep. ["We'll decide at the Scaling Conf."]

Escalating Demand: the more you get the more you require. [Smaller and smaller blocksize limit]

Fair Criteria: Set decisions criteria such that is is perceived as fair. ["Consensus"]

Invoke Rules: Bring up standards they should follow. ["Consensus"]

It'll be Alright on the Night: Promise future success. [LN, Sidechains]

Linking: Connect benefit and cost, strong and weak. ["Full node count has fallen precipitously as blocksize has grown!"]

Make a Mountain out of a Molehill: Amplify small things. [Miners dancing on heads of a pin]

Misleading Information: Lead them up the wrong path. [Feel like this has happened, intentionally or not. Let people debate some misunderstood point, then ride in from on high and say, "This isn't even my final form."]

New Issue: Introduce a new key issue during the negotiation. [Endlessly.]

Nibbling: constant adding of small requirements. [Seems so for node running standards, or maybe it just appears that way because the arguments are so fluid.]

Overwhelm: Cover them in requests or information. [Gmax's giant posts, often peppered with irrelevant details]

Phasing: Offer to phase in/out the unpleasant bits. ["Don't worry, it's opt-in!" "Don't worry, it's only temporary!"]

Reducing Choice: Offering a limited set of options. [A bevy of blocksize proposals, all of them TINY]

 

[awemany]

@Zangelbert Bingledack :

@OIFRBF: The rushed way that they committed it points into this direction, yes!

@Debate tactics: Maybe worth a reddit post, too

 

[cypherdoc]

AnonobreadlII desperately trying to justify a fee mkt. it's clear that he and the others want to force fees higher so that tx's get pushed onto SC's & LN:

 

[VeritasSapere]

Gmax responds to @VeritasSapere in the #REKT thread:
What a weak answer! He doesn't even understand that people criticize Core devs for the lack of economic understanding they demonstrate over and over again, and for the pervasive silence on things like BTC price and other economic considerations in their incentive design discussions. Not for assumptions, but because those conversant in economics see that lack of understanding very clearly.

Gavin and Mike, although not exactly economics powerhouses, have each individually shown more economic understanding than I've ever seen from Greg, Adam, Mark, Luke, and Pieter put together. Jeff Garzik is the only active Core committer I would say has any real understanding of economics, and even his seems only passable.

I am as always impressed by Gmax's ability to make his arguments sound authoritative while piling on the misdirection. (Of course mentioning something waffly like politics is an invitation to obfuscate, and one which he doesn't fail to take up later in his response.)
[doublepost=1448994714,1448993800][/doublepost].

It is indeed very revealing, I am still waiting to see if he responds to my latest post. I will post some of the conversation in here after some more time has past, there are some very interesting parts that deserve to be highlighted, I even asked him some very direct questions. Like whether he would acknowledge the proof of work consensus, he did not directly answer that question and proceeded to argue against the proof of work consensus, which I found shocking that he would even attempt such a line of argument.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

AnonobreadlII desperately trying to justify a fee mkt. it's clear that he and the others want to force fees higher so that tx's get pushed onto SC's & LN:

I can see the logic here, but it shows a lack of imagination and great impatience. Like there's seriously no way you can imagine being able to bid on fees without RBF? They want to go mess with the Bitcoin code before even seeing what kind of other services will pop up to make fee estimation easier, let alone before we even have a fee market in the first place, let alone before we even have reached the economic blocksize maximum? That's messed up three times over.

 

[albin]

I like Vaultoro's logo, it makes me think of those Valcambi bars that Peter Schiff liked to demonstrate a couple years ago.
[doublepost=1449004382][/doublepost]

It seems a little suspicious how much damage control Gmax is doing on opt-in RBF.

Whenever Gmax runs over-the-top damage control, it gets even more gross because he subsequently reverts into complain-brag mode about "how much work he has to do and how much time he spends posting and talking to muggles".

 

[awemany]

It is indeed very revealing, I am still waiting to see if he responds to my latest post. I will post some of the conversation in here after some more time has past, there are some very interesting parts that deserve to be highlighted, I even asked him some very direct questions. Like whether he would acknowledge the proof of work consensus, he did not directly answer that question and proceeded to argue against the proof of work consensus, which I found shocking that he would even attempt such a line of argument.

Would love to see a summary of quotes.

I was just browsing that #REKT thread. Oh my. All these old completely idiotic trolls spewing hate everywhere. Did it get worse since the theymossing, or am I simply spoiled by this nice forum here?

 

[albin]

Is there a way to tell the difference in a mod message on reddit between a permanent and temp ban?

 

[VeritasSapere]

Would love to see a summary of quotes.

I was just browsing that #REKT thread. Oh my. All these old completely idiotic trolls spewing hate everywhere. Did it get worse since the theymossing, or am I simply spoiled by this nice forum here?

I think it might even be getting better believe it or not, there are not as many people claiming that XT is a coup and an altcoin, the conversations have at least become a bit more sophisticated, if you can call it that.

This forum really has been a breath of fresh air for me compared to that toxic place.

I will get around to creating a summery of the conversation I had with Gmaxwelll on there, will give it a bit more time in case he still responds to my last post. That way the good people here will not need to hurt their brains by wading through all of the crap on that thread, it is pretty terrible I know, there are a few gems among the BS though lol. I will definitely create a nice highlight for the thread here in next few days.

 

[awemany]

I will get around to creating a summery of the conversation I had with Gmaxwelll on there, will give it a bit more time in case he still responds to my last post. That way the good people here will not need to hurt their brains by wading through all of the crap on that thread, it is pretty terrible I know, there are a few gems among the BS though lol. I will definitely create a nice highlight for the thread here in next few days.

When we finally fork, I think a pretty big book can be written about the blocksize argument. There's so much repetition also, because it is hard now to collect arguments together. At some point, I want(ed) to make a Wiki/Post collecting info, but I didn't get around to do that yet.

That XT/BIP101 gets more reasonable exposure is curious, I had the impression that theymos was successful in shifting the opinion (by driving the reasonable people away). Are the trolls starting to think over there, too?

 

[VeritasSapere]

Agreed, I think this is a time where we are coming to understand these things, a very formative time for Bitcoin, this period might even be studied in the future as being very significant in its history.

I started writing an article attempting to encompass all of the issues involved but that has now also become outdated I feel, there is just so much to all of this. Was planning to go back and rewrite the article with all of the new arguments. theZerg suggested that I should post it on this forum once it is finished, so I will most likely end up doing that.

That will just be a short paper though, I do agree that entire books can be written on this subject and most likely will be written in the future if Bitcoin will become as important as I think it will. It certainly is an exiting time to live.

 

[cypherdoc]

time for bragging rights:

www.bitcoinunlimited.info/software

[doublepost=1449009066][/doublepost]

Would love to see a summary of quotes.

I was just browsing that #REKT thread. Oh my. All these old completely idiotic trolls spewing hate everywhere. Did it get worse since the theymossing, or am I simply spoiled by this nice forum here?

our friend brg444 constantly views this thread but is too afraid to stop in.

 

[theZerg]

One response to the idea of a "star blockchain, with sidechains and overlays around it?" is yes but Bitcoin does not have to be and should not be the smallest, slowest chain. What bitcoin HAS going for it is adoption. What it doesn't have is fancy features.

So some other sidechain can be the 1MB or 100KB setttlement network between banks.

 

[cypherdoc]

here's the URL to Bitcoin Unlimited for anyone wanting to run it:
www.bitcoinunlimited.info/software

 

[_mr_e]

This is so damn exciting! From all of us peons, thank you so much! You are gonna save bitcoin, I can feel it!

 

[cypherdoc]

what did i say about Bitcoin Bears? gmax, back, corrallo, todd, & luke-dialup-jr:

 

[albin]

Like there's seriously no way you can imagine being able to bid on fees without RBF? They want to go mess with the Bitcoin code before even seeing what kind of other services will pop up to make fee estimation easier, let alone before we even have a fee market in the first place, let alone before we even have reached the economic blocksize maximum? That's messed up three times over.

I've always felt that fee estimation should not be in the reference client whatsoever, it should be up to wallet developers to figure out the best practices amoungst themselves, as fee estimation is completely performed out of band anyway. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination in the technical particulars, but it seems to me that fee estimation is a fairly sophisticated study in analytics that there can't possibly be one obvious right way to do.

 

[Mengerian]

There are two groups in Bitcoin pursuing two irreconcilable goals:

* Everybody in the world should be able to transact on the blockchain.
* Everyone in the world should be able to fully and independently validate the blockchain.

No matter what happens, somebody is not going to get all of what they want.

Another dichotomy that I think explains much of the difference in perspective is what I'll call 'programmer' mindset and 'economist' mindset.

In the 'programmer' mindset, people tend to view the system as fragile, and any change as risky. In programming, any sloppiness can add bugs, from simple mistakes like misplacing a comma, or subtle conceptual flaws in algorithms. To combat these problems, they want to understand all possible edge-cases and failure modes, and engineer the behaviour of the system to be predictable. This leads to a view of Bitcoin as a closed system whose parameters need to be carefully tweaked by skilled system architects.

People with the 'economist' mindset tend to view the system in terms of interactions of agents motivated by individual incentives. They view Bitcoin as an open-ended system, where the future is not completely predictable, and the system might develop unexpected emergent properties from bottom-up behaviours. They also understand the risk of unintended consequences that arise from 'central planning' and attempts to circumvent individual incentives. From this point of view, allowing diversity, experimentation, and freedom for individual participants in the system will help build anti-fragility and attempts to at top-down control create risk and hinder progress.

Both of these mindsets are valid and useful in their respective spheres. Bitcoin is a strange beast that resides at the intersection of economics and computer science, so it is not surprising that this clash of worldview is taking place here.

 

[cypherdoc]

i'm not the only one noticing all the negativity:

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Mengerian

It also explains why XT can be called an attack, Mark Friedenbach can say development doesn't happen on reddit, prominent people have stated that Bitcoin is not antifragile (LukeJr?), Greg and Adam seem like perpetual bears just hoping to salvage something from the chaos, Greg says Bitcoin would be a "smoking hole in the ground" if 1MB blocks had been allowed earlier, insistence on the need for "bug-for-bug compatibility," rejection of the idea of multiple competing implementations (presumably this immediately conjures up an intractable coordination problem in the programmer mindset), and many other curiosities.

This should be a powerful dichotomy to draw from in illustrating various points. Two lenses through which to view every problem, both of which should be consulted and the considerations of each clearly understood before coming to a conclusion.