Miles were different too, and quite a number of other standards.
Our disagreement seems based when and whether consensus is more important than quality, and the difference between and standards and protocols. I'd aver that it is quality which creates consensus in protocols.
This debate is not over what makes a standard unit of measurement. I'll suggest to you that we are not designing a standard, it is a protocol, which is an entirely different thing. A megabyte will still be a megabyte, and a block will still be a block.
Where an authority may deem a standard, it ought not deem a protocol.
This is why the connections I have made are so significant. Szabo's seamless comparison of software and the Wealth of Nations, allows us to completely bridge the "data" from our economic history and we are then clearly able to see the connection of things such as the arising of pyramids as a product of a secure society. We ask "how can they be built so accurate", when the reality is they could NOT have been so secure and wealthy without such accuracy (again trying not to suggest which is the cause and which the effect).
And so also is important that "what is ideal money?" to which John Nash has extensively explained and extrapolated for us (and I seemingly am by far the most read in the world on this issue (and would love to meet someone to the otherwise)), and then there is THIS poster that is the most knowledgeable on the concept of "ideal poker" (the evolution of "skilled games").
But you allude to a disconnection of words, and or language, or in other words when it comes to protocol you refer to what is "ideal dialogue", and this too have been extensively explained, by Dr. David Bohm (where both bohm and nash have interesting connections to einstein):
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/chaos-complexity/dialogue.pdfAnd so rather than your point about the differences between protocol and measurement standing, I think rather our point of the similarity between these things is more "relevant", or deserves to be relevated, or needs relevation. In other words
the pyramids being the bedrock of the civilization was the necessary measuring device or basepoint for all aspects which include language (basis of protocol/communiciation). Clearly we didn't forget this, but we didn't understated their relations in the first place (or for a very long time). It cannot be irrelevant we lost our understanding of any of this as well as the actual Egyptian language itself up until 150 or so years ago.
Bribe me with a solution that will not have to be revisited again in the future.
One that is not based on a prediction of the future but that adjusts with the needs of the future automatically.
Give me blocks that are as big as needed but not bigger, and protect us from rogue miners that may want to knock lower bandwidth miners out or increase the storage costs for everyone running a full node by loading up blocks with massive transaction bloat.
There have been such proposals made, they are not as simple as Gavin's. If we have a solution that provides good confidence that we never have to have this discussion again, that is a bribe I would accept. Why go from one wrong number to another?
Yes exactly and this we must understand is part of the problem (and so arises the solution), because clearly in the future such a consensus may in fact be impossible, but we must also understand as well, it seems that in choosing the bedrock unit for society that will come out of the block size decision, we have only the very little empirical evidence that was needed to be gathered since block-chain genesis.
And so gavin's best guess, is by far the most logical best guess available. There cannot be a better extrapolation from the future (at this time), and so the ideal here becomes the consensus that is closest to the architects suggestion.
