right and if 75% of miners went to some fork probably 99.9% would come join them shortly after and then who cares about anything else?
[snipity snip]
The Vote is = The longest
valid PoW chain, with an emphasis on valid and only nodes deciding what is and isn't valid.
The miners can hash all they want on an invalid chain , but they won't be necessarily following the nodes or economic majority. This matters because when you look at how the hardforks are rolled out they are not polling the nodes but miners for an rough and indirect means of determining node support. There very well could be a dangerous situation where 75% of miners decide to fork , but over 75% of nodes and the economic consensus decides not to which would be very dangerous. This is why I recommend that all hardforks have at least 95% consensus of blocks within the last 1k to activate a countdown. Luckily Bitcoin classic still has time to change their minds from 75% to 95% as they have yet to release code.
What,
exactly, are the nodes going to accept as valid
except what the miners create? They (miners) crack the puzzle, then put the block together and publish it - the others then build on this.. Nodes then follow the longest one.
What you are saying makes no sense.
but over 75% of nodes and the economic consensus decides not to which would be very dangerous
No its not - if they choose to follow anything other than the longest, valid chain then they are no longer following bitcoin. If they want their coins, however, they will.