I think I've heard all the arguments, but I still cannot understand the opposition to increasing the blocksize.
I don't have an (maybe I should say:
a valid) opinion on the block size debate. I would prefer to err on the side of decentralization, but at this point I'm not even sure what that is. I think magic numbers are a poor solution (but I'm sure they are sometimes necessary).
I'm not afraid of forks, like most people seem to be. I think that everyone should be prepared for how they will deal with possible forks in the future.
What I do know is that after spending a lot of time reading about Bitcoin for the past several years, and getting a feel for some of the people involved, I would prefer to stay far, far away from anything that is related to Mike Hearn. For the life of me, I can't even understand why someone like him is interested in Bitcoin (unless it's to change it into something else entirely). I'm thankful that he has barely touched Bitcoin Core.
So I oppose BitcoinXT, but not necessarily a block size increase.
Disclaimer: I use Mycelium for convenience from time to time and do not know whether or not that is based on any of Hearn's BitcoinJ.
Thanks for commenting, Holliday. I've always valued your opinion.
Yes, what exactly does it mean for bitcoin to be decentralized? In my opinion, the more people using and holding Bitcoin, the more robust the network becomes. For this reason, we should try our best to allow bitcoin to grow. DeathAndTaxes also explains
here how absurdly small 1MB is in any sort of success case for bitcoin, and how permanently keeping the 1MB restriction would actually be centralizing.
I now see full-node count as a red herring; the number of full nodes is dropping because
we don't need that many full nodes. There's a huge gap between running bitcoin on a raspberry pie and "only the Googles of the world will be able to run bitcoin." According to all my analysis, we are so far away from bitcoin being runnable by "only a few mega corporations," that the "don't-increase-the-blocksize-because-centralization-arguments" come across as hyperbole to me.