Quote from: btcusury on January 08, 2016, 02:42:40 PM

Quote from: sgbett on January 07, 2016, 08:04:47 PM

Quote from: btcusury on January 07, 2016, 06:24:00 PM

[Just for the lulz of it and out of trolliosity, lets start *another* pointless thread attacking other people for having a different opinion]

There are people that want to watch the world burn and they are on both sides, fanning flames. Like you just did. Your motives?

The lady doth protest too much.

I don't know how much technical blockchain understanding you have or how much research you've done into centralized "authority"-based systems of control, or how much you have been paying attention to the goings-on... but I don't think you really know what you're talking about here, if you think this thread is about "attacking other people for having a different opinion".

If it was clear what was right there wouldn't be a debate. If you were half as smart as you try to make yourself look in your post you would understand that it isn't as cut and dried as you try to make out in your first post.

So when you say 'inexplicably blindly support clearly-unsafe big blocks' the only thing that is clearly demonstrated is that it is in fact you who are blind.

There are solid arguments as to why the blocksize limit should remain as it is, there are solid arguments as to why there should be no limit at all. There are pros and cons to each, and the significance of the pros and cons is highly correlated to personal philosophy.

I am as guilty as anyone of posting strong opinions on this debate which are fundamentally grounded in where I stand philosophically on the matter. The relative merits of either extreme can easily be argued for and against if you take a certain philosophical view point.

If however you cannot accept that other people think differently to you, then you will start to invent circumstances to try and rationalise their behaviour some other way. Such as that they are out to destroy bitcoin, or that they are being paid, or some other such nonsense.

The thing is that works both ways. Any big blocker that cannot understand why the small blockers believe what they believe (e.g. they have different underlying philosophical belief) might naturally assume foul play. However it is more likely that actually it just a difference of opinion.

Then finally you get the people who are so convinced that even when presented with the truth, are still so pig headed and arrogant to believe that nothing exists outside their own world view that they will go so far as to try and deny that any other view exists, by dismissing this truth as 'philosophical mumbo jumbo'.

That I am posting this because there is some overwhelming body of technical evidence that proves that there is only one true way, and that because this conflicts with my point of view that I am just appealing to emotion.

Well there might be some truth in that. I am appealing to emotion, humans are emotional beings, in the absence of an overwhelming body of technical evidence one way or the other then all we have are the beliefs that underpin the arguments, because the arguments themselves are inconclusive.

In an uncertain universe all you have are probabilities. I think the common ground we all (assuming good faith) share is that we want bitcoin not to fail catastrophically. (What constitutes success can be so widely disagreed on that we don't even all share this). Even then catastrophic could be interpreted differently. (Lets say something that causes it to become worthless e.g. < $0.01 per bitcoin)

I think centralisation is possibly the biggest threat in this regard. Second only to it being broken. The thing is 'centralisation' can't easily be defined. Again its what is acceptable. Where is the limit? On person could say technically "2 nodes" is not centralised. "Ah, but collusion" someone else might say, so what then 10 nodes, 100, 1000? perhaps 6000 is already too centralised for some. "A node in every home!" people might say.

What degree of centralisation causes bitcoin to fail catastrophically? How does increasing blocksize correlate to node count? How does technological progress impact on the barrier to entry of running a node?

You don't know, I don't know, its all forecasting and estimation.

Whats the probability that raising the blocksize limit to 8MB cases bitcoin to fail catastrophically.
Whats the probability that keeping the 1MB blocksize limit causes bitcoin to fail catastrophically.

I think in both cases its 'low' in both scenarios there is an increase in factors pushing bitcoin towards catastrophic failure (blocks too big, nodes to expensive, increased centralisation vs blocks too small, confirmation times too long, fees to high, drives users away)

In neither case is it fatal though, and in both cases the proponents for each have decided that benefit outweighs risk.

Segwit vs 8MB blocks is even harder to pull apart. Everyone loves segwit on both sides, but segwit is a more complex solution, complex solutions have higher risks. Could segwit break bitcoin, unlikely, but its a risk. A risk that seemingly most are willing to overlook for potential 3-4 x increase in throughput. Plus some other cool stuff. The blocksize limit does not change, but suddenly bigger blocks are OK!

8MB blocks is a simple change, less risk involved in terms of code change. Throughput increase in the same order of magnitude. Requires hard fork.

The risk profiles of these tow respective options don't seem that different, but one is a hero and the other is the ugly duckling. Tell me humans are entirely logical and don't argue based on emotion!!!

Prologue

I run a few nodes. I can't say I am over the moon with how much it costs right now to keep them running, but if I was in it for the money then I'd seek out one of these companies hiring astroturfers so I at least got paid for arguing Wink

I'm even less impressed that the cost of running these nodes is likely to increase with bigger blocks. The light at the end of this tunnel though, is that whilst ever the cost of of running a node keeps rising, it means bitcoin adoption is increasing. That's something I'm really excited about.

I don't know if anyone has ever posted this yet, but I see the bitcoin network evolving into something akin to the internet itself. You have your massive peering companies, your telcos, your ISPs etc.

Maybe thats how bitcoin goes. Several massive pools doing all the mining, your payment processors next step down with node farms (perhaps this is what banks/credit cards end up becoming) potentially making money providing bitcoin services (bank accounts, but bitcoin) down to your local commerce that may run their own node to handle local transactions. Perhaps lightning sits in here somewhere, or other vendor specific coins that you can exchange into/from.

Just as all the people that make up the internet speak TCP/IP. All the people that make up the blockchain network speak bitcoin.

You see there is that philosophy thing again. I am convinced it can run all the way through the system, and I think its the only real way that the current global financial system can be superseded.

In the same way one does not consider the internet centralised, so would you not consider bitcoin centralised. The transparency of the blockchain is what is magic. There are no curtains for the wizard to hide behind. The emperor is naked. At some point you have to have some faith in humanity and what better better way to foster that than through openness and accountability. Its all the rage thesedays!

For bitcoin to reach its true potential, you are going to have to let it go. I've realised I can't have my cake and eat it. Maybe its this blue pill the doc gave me, they are usually red? Srsly though. Destroying all fiat currency and switching the whole world to a deflationary digital cryptocurrency. Wouldn't be a bad result for v1.0