Its not the merits of core vs 2x thread. As i said in OP, I am curious as to how this might play out. When will we know how many are "locked in" to either side? Will the fork happen regardless and we wont know until after how many miners support each or is it possible that the fork will not happen due to overwhelming support for either side?
As long as there are miners supporting either side a hardfork is inevitable and will occur as soon as the first SegWit block will be mined that is to large for core. Which side will see more long-term support and thus have more mining power is anyone's guess.
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Your right hardforks have risks, I "feel" though that not hard forking can have risks of stultification. I wonder if some sort of dynamic scaling would allay your hard for concerns.
Thanks for your considered opinions by the way. I like it when you address point by point.
To be honest, after the BCH split of I see hardforks as having merits of their own. Given that there is a proper 2-way replay protection. Dynamic scaling leads to yet a different set of challenges, but I didn't follow that discourse too deeply.