Note: Admins have access to far more evidence than I do. My goal here is to build a case to the level of probable cause or higher, such as I believe warrants administrative investigation. I believe I have done that; and I continue to investigate.
Splitting quote of DooMAD out of order, to facilitate a more organized reply:
This means nothing. Troll sockpuppets oftentimes do talk to each other. Indeed, that is why they are called “sockpuppets”: The origin of that term on the Internet is an observation of how trolls make multiple alt accounts for their own puppet shows involving multiple characters. Usually, the socks support each other—but with more sophisticated trolls, sometimes their socks even argue with each other.
I also emphasize: As noted in my OP, the very first Dev & Tech post by “RNC” replied as if on behalf of “dinofelis”; whereafter “dinofelis” seems to have melted away. The moment I saw that, I questioned whether “RNC” was a new “dinofelis” alt—it was my first impression of “RNC”! Although not conclusive evidence in itself, that is suggestive; and it adds to all the other paralles between the accounts in terms of expressed opinions, writing style, punctuation, etc.
Having tangled with all of these aliases at some point or another, I'm definitely left with the impression that dinofelis was the more capable debater compared to Anti-Cen/RNC.
While dinofelis' arguments weren't entirely without fault, there was at least coherent reasoning demonstrated and it felt like I had a challenging opponent when seemingly valid counterpoints were raised to my arguments. I feel like I can actually respect the stance of dinofelis, even when I disagree with it.
Whereas Anti-Cen/RNC, on the other hand, generally just comes across as having a genuine cognitive dysfunction. It was like shooting fish in a barrel because they seemed so utterly dense. The experience just wasn't the same. Personally, I find it unlikely they're the same person.
If you want to see “cognitive dysfunction”, observe the following cringe-worthy posts in which “dinofelis” says, in essence, that he’s too smart to write concise, readable posts instead of long “wall of text” rambles filled with disorganized thinking.
“dinofelis” claims that everybody who has trouble reading his walls of text is simply too stupid, and compares the reading difficulty of his posts to “an exposition of general relativity” (!).
N.b. one example of a space before concluding punctuation; all three accounts inconsistently do this:
“Have you ever read, say, an exposition of general relativity ?”
I already told people: the long version is free, for the short version, you'll have to pay. I didn't have time to be short.
Your inability to concisely convey anything severely reduces the number of people reading it. I usually get halfway through the first paragraph of your posts before coming to the conclusion that my time would be better spent elsewhere. Forums are a place for discussions not monologues. Have you considered blogging? It seems more suited to your style.
It is not my "inability". It is my lack of desire to waste time on being succinct. I can be, but it takes time and effort I don't want to spend on a forum. I already spend too much time on it, I cannot spend 2 or 3 times more. I don't want to be "read". I don't want to tell the world. I want to find out if my thinking is correct, if there are intelligent counter arguments to my thinking. For that, I want to give all elements that led to my argument. That takes room. It would take less room if I reworked it, but that's too much of an effort. If someone doesn't have the attention span to read me, he probably won't be able to give me a counter argument either that is valuable to me. I may of course push off the true expert that could point out an error by the walls of text I produce. But a true expert may not be put off to read a page of text. But the casual reader that is put off by long arguments, won't be useful to me, so I don't care he doesn't read.
I certainly don't want to blog, because I have nothing to "tell the world", and certainly not for free. I want to learn from the world. My walls of text, spread all over the place in a disorganized fashion will also make it essentially impossible to steal anything useful from it, if ever I decided to sell something of it.
On the contrary to the rest of your statement, I think many of the most knowledgeable people here have got far more important things to do with there time than trying to decipher your "text walls" to see if there is anything vaguely resembling coherent thinking hidden in there somewhere.
Have you ever read, say, an exposition of general relativity ? How many pages do you have to acquire, follow explanations, fill in gaps the author left, think through what the author is saying, not being quite sure that you're with him, before you actually start understanding the argument ? Compared to that level of difficulty, "working through my walls of text" is leisure in a blink of an eye. People not capable of doing this, can probably not reason on a sophisticated enough level to even start being useful. Usually, in texts like that, the problem is rather that the text is too concise, and that one has to fill in too many gaps. I err probably on the other side, I'm too verbose, too explicit, too much in simple details that could be filled in, in what I say.
I'll ask you: how many lines of explanation would you need to understand, from scratch, say, Pollard's rho attack on a Diffie-Hellman key exchange ? Suppose that this was an unknown thing, and that someone posted this here for the first time, somewhat hesitant maybe in the fluidity of his wordings. Would you also complain that there are "walls of text" if someone would try to give an argument explaining how it could be done in a page or two ? Do you think that your comments would be of any use ?
If you tell me that the few people capable of seeing that, are elsewhere, then one must conclude that the amount of brain power here is too low to be of any sensible use in the development of any form of advanced argument. That's also a possibility of course.
Now, really: If I were to remove the name, could you distinguish the following from any of the longer “Anti-Cen” posts? I pick this example only because it was just upthread from the above two, and in the same context. It’s far from his worst.
The only argument was that someone said that I didn't understand the principles. "you're wrong because he said you're wrong".
You really should go back and read the answers you've been given in this thread again. You seem to have missed all the times you have been corrected.
I haven't been. There has not been a single technical argument here, where mine is taken step by step and shown how things work differently than what I say. In fact, the onus of proof is on the claim that, contrary to what Satoshi said, contrary to what Gavin said, contrary to what I'm saying, non-mining nodes "do keep miners in check".
In as far as an argument has been presented, it goes even against itself: the so-called UASF threat.
What needs to be demonstrated, in order to deny my claim "non-mining nodes don't influence the functioning of the system" ? One needs to consider two different cases, one where non-mining nodes WANT something, and act, and one,
all else equal, they DON'T act, and show that it makes a difference.
First example: "non mining nodes keep miners in check". Note that we are NOT arguing how "exchanges keep miners in check" or how "other miners keep miners in check".
So we agree that all miners, and all exchanges, act together, and that it is the sole presence of a lot of non-mining nodes, that keeps them in check. If this can be argued, you won. Non-mining nodes keep miners in check in that case.
A: there are not many non-mining nodes. All miners, and all exchanges, have decided upon a protocol change. They do so. The protocol change happens.
B: a lot of non-mining full nodes don't want this protocol change. Tell me how they prevent it ? Suppose that out of the 10 000 non-mining nodes, 9000 of them are opposed to this protocol change. What happens ? Miners apply the protocol change. 9000 nodes do not agree, and don't accept the N+1 block. They wait for ever. The "good" N+1 block never arrives. They don't transmit the "bad" N+x blocks.
Users, initially connecting to these nodes, don't see their transactions. They look for other nodes, until they stumble on one of the 1000 agreeing nodes, on an exchange node, or on a miner node. They see that the chain is way further now, and they can see that the other nodes fell behind and stopped at N. They disconnect from them, and connect to the updating minority of nodes (from miners, exchanges, and a few enthusiasts).
==> the large majority of non mining nodes, not agreeing with the protocol change, didn't keep the miners in check, did they ?
B-bis: suppose that 9990 nodes are opposed, but suppose that miners and exchanges, agreeing on the protocol change, "sybil" and install 200000 new nodes. Now, the "node count" in favour of the protocol change is huge. What is that small minority complaining ? They are disconnected from the network, because they fall behind.
==> the large initial majority of non mining nodes can be sybiled away. They didn't, after all, keep the miners in check, did they ?
Conclusion case 1: whatever the non-mining nodes do, if miners and exchanges have agreed upon a protocol change, that protocol change happens, all else equal.
Second example: nodes want a protocol change, miners and exchanges want to keep the old protocolThis is the UASF.
A) only a small minority of non-mining nodes wants the protocol change. No miner makes their blocks, so they stop.
B) 9000 out of 10 000 non mining nodes want the protocol change. They stop their old client (so they remove themselves from the network) and they install the new client, that doesn't find new blocks according to their desires. They fall behind while the miners continue to make the old chain. ==> same scenario as 1 B.
But suppose that somehow, I'm wrong here. Suppose that a large majority of non-mining nodes COULD impose a protocol change.
C) now, imagine that none of the honest non-mining nodes wants a protocol change, but evil Joe does. He makes a UASF node, and launches 200000 of them. He has now clear UASF majority on the node network. In as much as UASF could work (it doesn't, see 2.B, but suppose), then just any evil Joe can impose a protocol change with a sybil attack with UASF nodes.
QED.
