I believe a system should by secure by-design and not by anything else. It is true that a system may have some weaknesses and yet practically be quite safe, but this is not preferable. Fortunately for most of the problems we do have simple solutions, and as long as a solution causes no further problem I think it should be implemented.
If it was the case that there is not possible secure modification of the PoW structure which is suitable to current ASICs, then maybe we better put with the weakness (there are other ways to counter block discarding attacks, such as my "fork punishment" proposal). As far as I'm concerned, Bitcoin ASICs' designs are not open source so neither me and you can know for sure whether a concrete modification is applicable or not. Yet I think that ASIC machine has a unique set of op-codes (such as SHA-256 compression function) and can be programed to run different codes. Do you know that Sony Playstation machines have been used to run cryptanalysis programs? Dedicated hardware can be very flexible!
I have no intention to argue about off-topic issues that have been thoroughly discussed in other threads, yet I will just note that there is an incentive for selfish mining: increased mining profits. Such an attack will most probably not cause the total destruction of the system (it will just cause some honest miners to earn less, and the dev team to implement proposals like mine's). Moreover, I dont think we should make any assumptions about the attacker intentions and incentives: the attacker may theoretically want to harm the system (say if it is a terror organization, the Chinese government, or more likely the NSA).
I will say it again: a system should be secure by design and not by anything else!
One last thing: it is OK to criticize academy, just please remember that Bitcoin is built upon cryptographic elements that were all invented by the academy. We dont know who Nakamoto is, but I am quite sure he is an academician. Nevertheless I absolutely agree with you that academicians should not say "Bitcoin is broken" whenever a new weakness have been found.
Lear