Quote from: TheFascistMind on October 04, 2014, 12:03:03 PM

Mathematically can't get exponential growth of mixing without exponential growth of overlap, unless the supply of transaction outputs is also growing exponentially. know.

It is exponential spreading, not growth, and only up to the point where the count of active outputs is approached. Each output is being mixed with an exponentially-declining share of an exponentially greater number outputs. This doesn't require arbitrary growth of overlap, in fact you can't even have arbitrarily high overlap in general because the amount of overlap is exactly equal to the amount of mixing in the aggregate. What may be required to protect against failure is to ensure that overlap is not excessively concentrated (if that even occurs with significant probability).

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Quote from: smooth on October 04, 2014, 11:25:54 AM

attempting to impose some tracing-based blacklist becomes equivalent to to a coin ban.

No only a ring > 1 input ban, i.e. ban on anonymity.

Okay, authorities may ban anonymity. Thank you for pointing that out.

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I never heard of dedicated and concerned developers that expected everything to be handed to them on a silver platter in completely polished form so they don't have to do any work.

I expect nothing. I'm simply pointing out that if you want to be listened to by people with any real technical competence (as opposed to others who don't have the background to even tell the difference between valid and invalid claims), you need to focus your comments in a way that rises above the noise floor of many vague and poorly supported claims (yours and others'). Especially here, where frankly a lot of people are either ignorant, full or shit, or have a hidden agenda (or perhaps all of these). It is up to you whether you want that or not.

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If XMR had responded to BCX's points about the quick difficulty readjustment and 20% discard with a whitepaper about such issues and the Cryptonote solution, then I would be more impressed

We can't and won't respond with a whitepaper to every vague claim of "there might be a flaw" that is posted on bitcointalk whether that is from you or BCX or anyone else. We can and do produce whitepapers, notes, etc. when we have some interesting and competently performed and presented analysis to share. We will likewise read and pay close attention to such competently performed and presented analysis that comes from others.

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You keep repeating your point that authorities won't blacklist because it blacklists the entire coin. And I keep making the point that they don't care. If you fuck with their control over money, they will do anything they can effectively do, even probably taking us to nuclear war if it will achieve their aims. Rather you have to think more in terms of what they can and can't do operatively, not what you think they can't do because you think it is unreasonable.

That is misrepresenting my point. They won't blacklist because it is ineffective: 1) because the output may have already been spent (and it is unknowable whether that is the case); and 2) because downstream blacklisting will be ignored by anyone using the coin at all. And if they do, it won't accomplish much, because, well, it is ineffective (or effective only insofar as a ban is effective).

They might resort to nuclear war. I take no position on that, only that blacklisting given intractability and non-transparent spending is ineffective.

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Quote from: smooth on October 04, 2014, 11:25:54 AM

If I had to guess I would speculate something to do with the signal-to-noise issue I referenced earlier.

I could claim similarly about your posts. I think it is the nature of debate.

If you were trying to "debate" with gmaxwell in place of providing meaningful detail about whatever it is you think was some important point about blockchain design, then I'm not surprised that he ignored or disagreed with your points, whether or not they may even be correct, as I frequently do, and as will virtually any serious practitioner. You don't effectively convey technical information with debate, you do so with technical writing, simulations, implementations (code), math, etc.