Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Israeli Bitcoin Association Statement about Hashrate Attacks
by
DooMAD
on 22/04/2017, 10:29:29 UTC
But just to clarify, are you supporting the "might makes right" argument?  Or just commenting that it's a distinctly possible occurrence in a permissionless system?

Both are the same statement.  In a trustless, totally free, permissionless system, what happens, happens.  There's no "morality", because moral rules are orthogonal to trustless, permissionless freedom.

As such:
Quote
 Even if such actions can't be prevented, they can still be publicly condemned.  Poor form and low blows should always be reprimanded.  People might see cryptoland as a sort of "wild west", but (I hope) we're not savages.  It can, and should, be done cleanly.

is against the first principle.  But of course, "condemning publicly" is just as well a free act, which can be used in the game of might.  "freedom, trustlessness and permissionlessness" is exactly, I would think, the DEFINITION of "wild west" and "savages".  From the moment you introduce morality, and rules of good behaviour, you killed freedom, permissionlessness, and you'll need trust to say what are the rules now, and who is going to judge those that do not follow them, so trustlessness is out of the window too.

At "best" you get a kind of representative democracy, and we're back to square one.

I see.  So while we might ask everyone politely to play nice, any attempt to enforce "nice" behaviour would be detrimental to the system because such power could be abused.  We can still hope for an amicable split, but should equally prepare for anarchy/chaos/mayhem to the extent that the code allows. 

Get ready to buy the dip, I guess.