Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 113. (Read 2032248 times)

That's an ad hoc (IE non-generalizable) mish-mash of random observations, not an objective definition.

"Complaints on Reddit?"

Oh dear sweet Jahbulon, please have mercy on those you have cursed with intelligence...  

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

that's the stupidest characterization of what i said.  you clearly don't get it.

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

I like that one because it is objective.

What is your definition?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are defining actual congestion as "zero/low fee tx not being sufficiently subsidized by block size."

Please correct my blindness, good doctor.

you and the other Cripplecoiner's are blind fools to what is happening right now as a result of the 1MB choke you are inflicting on Bitcoin.  you don't have the vision to determine when there is urgency.

And the hits keep coming for the dangerous experiment of maintaining artificially constrained blocks. From 2009-14 Bitcoin functioned with no effective block size limit and mining decentralization post-ASIC was improving. Now, in 2015, that this latent piece of software is allowed to take effect the unintended consequences rear up:
(my bold emphasis below)

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain.  Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.


OK now we are yelling.  The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB.  Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud).  I do not need to repeat these. 

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?


Is there ANYONE out there who is:
1. not a miner
2. does not have mining investments
3. is not affiliated with Blockstrem
And
4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

OUR CURRENT ALTERNATIVES SUCK
I refer to our conversation / information alternatives: /r/bitcoin, mailing lists, and chatrooms. They don’t work and their problems will deepen as BTC becomes more popular and more valuable (threatening).

The Basics

Let’s breeze through the currently known problems with the alternatives, mainly r/bitcoin: that those who seek expertise can’t validate (or even identify) what they read, those with expertise report frustration at having their views de-emphasized or misrepresented, bias goes undetected (or over-detected), conversations are duplicated (or misplaced), falling signal-to-noise ratios invite a septic futility into each stultified conversation. Almost no one is polite, and, in fact, everyone generally behaves in a way that would drive off any Thinking Person (but if they weren’t so critical, things might even be worse).

The Do-er Alone Learneth

OK, let’s take it to the next level. After all, this is the governance of Bitcoin we’re talking about.

On the subreddit/mailing-list a few people write, and many people read.

Socrates
The (spoken) thoughts of Socrates on the written word are worth mentioning:

“For this invention [writing] … You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. … He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him-who-knows the matter about which they are written.” –(Socrates, Phaedrus 274c-275b, emphasis added)

Occasionally, reddit is used to enable a dialogue (the “AMA”). In such cases, everyone who asked a question would probably merit Socrates’ approval. On mailing lists, the Q&A are seemingly the only relevant sections of the entire discussion (other than to state mind-numbing tautologies like “we must be careful” or “Bitcoin won’t scale the way it is configured right now”).

My personal opinion is that, from the entire blocksize “discussion” thus far, I have (reliably) learned almost nothing. If anything, I have only learned about who, individually, I dislike (which does not really help with the underlying blocksize question). The state of the debate seems to reflect no technical info whatsoever, instead merely the ratio of BigBlock-Users (users who pay transaction fees, but do not run nodes) to SmallBlock-Users (those who run full nodes, but do not pay transaction fees), and who was friends with who before the conversation started.

The Internet is Not Representative

Haven’t you noticed a big difference between arguments experienced in real life, and arguments experienced on the internet? While the real-life arguments ultimately produce the phenomenon of “agreement”, netizens seem more contentious.

InternetWrong

I think that this is because of “free exit”: those who learn the answer leave the conversation (and do so without altering the conversation’s state: no having to admit that they were wrong, no feeling obligated to go back and convince others, etc). Say a website has 10,000,000 viewers, of which 5,000 agree with a given statement, and 5 disagree. What will the public see in the comments section? 1 principal dissenter arguing with 1 principal endorser (9,999,998 free-exits)…until? If one arguer drops out, another is likely to take his place. Observers will have no easy way to tell when (if) the debate has concluded, or what the conclusion was. On the internet, no one can tell how many people agree with something.

....

For example, almost every technical person has given up on Proof of Stake, to the point where it is openly laughed at and ridiculed at conferences. But you wouldn’t know it from The Internet, where it seems like “pro-PoS” and “anti-PoS” are each one of two equally-endorsed points of view. The technical elite are simply tired of repeating themselves.

Yet the voice of The Market speaks tirelessly. The PoS holdouts struggle to obtain 1/250th of Bitcoin’s marketcap, and –even more telling for an upstart– command almost none of the space’s VC funding / capital investment. They consistently lose to completely-valueless Copycoins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

I had not seen this comment until it was pointed out to me today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhy7kk?context=1

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

Specifically for the risk of sidechains replacing the main chain: do you think that the bitcoin economy would move their coins to a chain controlled by a single company? They'd be idiots if they did.

And if there is a specific issue where you think I (or anyone else) is being partial because of a conflict of interest: please yell.

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

Funny.
He really predicted a lot of funny things:

Prediction April 2013:

Slovenia will collapse from a spending spree, not because it invested in Euro bonds.
(...)
It is true that Slovenia is not Cyprus. It is worse.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/10720


Reality 2014:

Slovenians are smart people. The could the exact opposite of the British. You don't see much binge drinking in Ljubljana, and when the Brits are big spenders, the Slovenians are big savers. They're the people who make you believe in Europe. If there ware only Germans, Slovenians, Estonians and people like that in the EU, it would rule the world. Unfortunately, people like the Greeks or the French are wrecking it.

There are a few prerequisites needed before people can start producing economic surplus.

Tribal people in rain forests haven't yet figured out how to not routinely murder each other, so learning how to not respect property is still a ways off.

The idea of private property is a meme, it all starts when one can justify denying land to some but not others with the use of a moral code, it is effectively enforced through force, the effectiveness of the meme, is those who are deprived very often understand the meme better than they the natural order of property.

It sounds like you agree they do have a conflict of interest.  

I too believe they are being genuine in their concerns; and I believe they really think that increasing the block size limit would be bad.  I disagree with them, but I don't think they have malicious intentions.  

They do have a conflict of interest though.  And it's not even a big deal provided they openly acknowledge that fact!

Fair enough, but the whitepaper was launched along with this blog post : https://www.blockstream.com/2014/10/23/why-we-are-co-founders-of-blockstream/. Other than missing the "conflict of interest" disclaimer I find it transparent and public enough. Other than that you're kind of moving the goal posts