Delegated is not the same as decentralized.
Nor is it necessarily an antithetical concept. Delegated can be decentralized and effectively as trustless as Satoshi's design is (with some differing assumptions that have differing tradeoffs).
No one said that it was antithetical. The point is they are not the same.
Guns and bullets are not the same, but they don't preclude working together. If your point is that delegation does not necessarily imply decentralization, then so what. Satoshi's white paper
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System doesn't have the word decentralized in the name. The title of my white paper emphasizes the key feature of the design. That omission of word in the title doesn't insinuate that it isn't decentralized nor trustless.
Come on I don't want to get into silly tit'for'tat noise.
Trying to claim a system like DPoS isn't decentralized and saying PoW Bitcoin is, is the biggest red herring in the room. It's trading one set of pros and cons for another, then you weigh what you gained and what you lost and find the winner. If Bitcoin's current implementation with PoW was buzz word "decentralized", then it would have never hit 50% or more hash rate at Ghash, and Peter Todd wouldn't have sold half his Bitcoin when it happened...
Very well stated. Thanks. I am not too clear yet on the DPoS design and its tradeoffs. I will look into it.