Yes I do believe that it could. I believe that a major or even near-total (much less total) collapse of decentralization is a technical failure, and is a possible (and not outrageously implausible) outcome of BIP 101.
I agree that a major or near-total collapse of decentralization would be a technical failure.
I guess we just assign very different probabilities to that happening under BIP101.
I never stated probabilities. Unless you believe you can support that the probabilities are "outrageously implausible" (and if so based on what???) we don't necessarily disagree at all.
Furthermore, getting back to your original post, I don't agree that we "are no longer making progress". Just a few days ago you released a paper that was insightful, comprehensive on the matter of fee markets over the next 10-20 years (though to be clear that is only a portion of the overall block size debate), generally well-received, and raised new questions for follow up research. How can you say that with a major step forward having occurred only a few days ago, there is no longer any progress? Could the same be said a week or two ago, before you paper was released?
I can only imagine this perspective comes from the hubris of thinking that now that
your paper is out, everyone should just shut up and get in line behind your conclusions.
I now agree that when I said "we are no longer making progress," that I was being rhetorical. It can be difficult to catch one's self doing this; for example, a reviewer edited out rhetoric in the proof for my paper which I didn't initially even see until it was pointed out to me.
That being said, I stand by my claims that:
1. The debate is mostly
ideological at this point.
2. Whether we moved forward with BIP100, BIP101, BIP102, etc., the
technical risk would be very low in all cases.
I'm defining the threshold for "low technical risk" to mean that in my opinion the chance that Bitcoin fails for another reason (e.g., lack of adoption due to a reduced block size limit) is significantly greater than the risk of a technical failure (again, based on my own assessment of the probabilities).
All things considered, I see BIP101 as the lowest risk option (and much lower risk than doing nothing), if I factor in all failure modes.