This:
Look, all I'm saying is that ghash.io figured it out and does fairly well with over 4 times the hash rate of BTCGuild. mmpool.org figured it out with even more coins.
and this:
Yes, I am currently mining here because it is the most stable pool there is.
are contradicting themselves, no?
There is no contradiction whatsoever in those statements. If anything it is a validation of what eleuthria said about stability here. I have always attributed the stability of BTCGuild to eleuthria's skills as an operator and suspect that if he were running ghash.io it would be more stable. I still think that is the case, but I also believe him when he says that keeping merged mining simple is a significant reason for that stability here.
The marketing message to newer or less informed miners is that ghash.io has more value because of its lower variance and merged mining. It doesn't matter if that reason should not be significant, it only matters that the marketing works. People believe it and mine there.
Just sad to see the industrialization of mining. I am nostalgic for the time when it took effort and thought instead of just capital to get involved.