Topic: Have we reached peak tribalism? (Read 1341 times)

Divide and conquer. Bitcoin x and bitcoin y go seperate ways and they either both continue or one fails. It seems like the only option at this point. There's no other way to go about it because everyone is dick-measuring and assuming they have the best solution because they came up with it.

Well that is really sad, but you also have to limit some of the trashy ideas too. You can't just allow every stupid person to come up with ideas.

Maybe we need a decentralized developing software to fix this, but seriously, we need this.

A sort of decentralized Github, where everyone can submit proposals, but they all need to pass a certain voting treshold to pass.

put it this way..

if B was not a problem then we wouldnt need blockstream building sidechains..

as for C.. research LN's use of multisig and hubs.. plleeaassee


yes chainwork has meaning.. yes its been in bitcoin since early on..
but most people including satoshi concentrated on blockheight as the measure. but gmaxwell is tweaking things to make the term chainwork to become the popular measure because he has plans for it.

rather than just a variable.. he wants to make it an important buzzword that has big meaning.
bringing less emphasis on block height..
its all part of the twisting sheeps minds into thinking adam backs 'hashcash' was bitcoin 0.0.0.01

you'll soon see it more when blockstream releases some PoW sidechains with a few more buzzwords

Look it starts at the top.  You have to setup and enforce an open unbiased structure of communication.  You leave this to a community and the fact is that people will be people.  It's no secret that, like another poster here mentioned, it's about minds.  You ever hear the saying "You can't teach common sense"?  You also can't change human nature.  Truth is, we kind of take refuge in other people's messes and particularly in some feeling of superiority.  This is why I can't completely get behind the idea of a decentralized-everything as there needs to be some functioning body who's function is to keep the course. 

Now in the case of a forum, this forum.  I wouldn't say peak tribalism, but from what I've seen we're in deep.  It could be worse, don't let it get there.

'ChainWork' was in Satoshi's code while he was still active, so others reusing the term shouldn't really diminish Satoshi's contributions, but rather echo and reinforce them:  

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/3b7cd5d89a226426df9c723d1f9ddfe08b7d1def.patch




I'm not following your meaning, as there wouldn't be much point in even having a sidechain if it wasn't compatible.  Sidechains aren't a bad thing, provided:

a) we don't create a two-tier system, as sidechains should be more of an optional convenience in certain situations, not a new "economy class"
b) people are not priced off the main chain or kept waiting too long for space in a block, leaving them with no alternative
c) they remain decentralised and permissionless.  

If those boxes are all ticked, then I'm looking forward to sidechains and the possibilities they can offer.

his 'chainwork' is him just buzzwording terms to make it sound less like satoshi designed bitcoin and all the variables are words he decided on.
secondly its to do with bringing the buzzwords inline with his future sidechains that use the same variable so they are all 'compatible'

You should all leave him alone. Greg Maxwell just wants to get the band back together again.



On IRC, I've witnessed him posting the most unusual response to a question about IBD using chainwork instead of height and not using the header timestamp. He just seemed to start singing, "Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen. Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer. Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy, hair".

No one really understood what he was talking about.

lol... i know what your getting at. but now your doing the teenage drama of you speculating that im speculating..and we can end up tumbling down the hill you are saying we should avoid..
however i have actually spoke to him at length and do know their motives.

so knowing why they want commercial services actually adds to the point of should we allow commercial services as the end goal of "scaling" or try to highlight to the community to only treat it as a voluntary side service and real scaling still needs to be sorted.

but as i said which we can both agree on. code most important.. then knowledge of actual reasons for code
(not 6th party rumour-mill / chinese whispers hearsay speculation, but first hand) helps understand the consequences of the future impact.

but not going as far as yapping about what if someone stood up during a national anthem or their hair grooming or body weight.

See, I'm not convinced and I see two problems.  Firstly, do you know gmaxwell personally?  Are you close?  Have you spoken at length with them about this matter?  Or, more likely, is this merely conjecture or theory on your part?  If you don't know someone well enough to comment on what they might "want", then you aren't in a position to comment.  Secondly, there's then the issue of the response it invites.  The natural reply someone will then give to what I've quoted, is that some other boogeyman from the opposite camp is plotting something equally nefarious and the whole thing goes round in circles forever. 

If you simply focus on the concern you have, which is "code that doesnt end in everyone forced to use commercial hubs of permissioned contracts. or new features that bypass consensus" and maybe don't place emphasis on what you speculate someone's motives might be for creating it, then it doesn't invite the same cyclical and perpetual character assassinations.  Less speculation of motive, more weighing up pros and cons.  Then, the natural response is for others to reply in terms of pros and cons, not their own speculations.

Because this problem is a function of human nature, it is fairly intractable. You could "fix" the issue of changes being slow in coming by creating a more centralized authority with fewer roadblocks to implementation of changes, but then this would run the risk of buggy or otherwise harmful changes being implemented.

The solution is... free market competition. There are hundreds of altcoins out there angling to take bitcoin down. So far none have gained real traction, but every day brings new features and techniques in one altcoin or another, while bitcoin remains mired between warring camps.

Most of my crypto investment is in bitcoin, and I want it to succeed. But more and more I'm hedging my bets with coins like Dash and Zcash because at some point the technological advantage is going to overwhelm the network effect advantage of bitcoin. All the people driving old Model T's (bitcoin) are going to keep noticing the shiny new sportscar altcoins, and more and more will jump ship, or at least hedge their bets.

As the market caps of one or more contenders rise to being a real alternative to bitcoin, bitcoin will have its moment of truth: Either the warring factions will come to the table and figure out what to do to remain competitive, or they will keep shouting at each other, the moment will be lost, and bitcoin will fade until it is a footnote in the economic history books - the forgotten first example of the new asset class of cryptocurrencies.

this is where lack of knowledge fails.. people start speculating

non-core devs want consensus (one chain) agreement..

its actually blockstream employees that want dominance via intentional splits (bilateral fork).


yep other implementations disagreed to a intentional split.. and only gmaxwell proposed intentional splits.

you would have learned this if you read the code of non-core implementations and understood..
or
if you looked at peoples real motives by researching them.
but instead you followed the teenage drama of accusations about things unrelated to code. and then made your mind up from misinformation handed to you by the teenage drama creators

as mentioning doing a talk with the CIA. there are video's of it, so there are no secrets of what was discussed. but what about blockstreams closed door roundtable events with the bankers this month... oh wait you will downplay that teenage drama..

Well then Satoshi definitely failed because bitcoin requires trust. Sending non-reversible money to a business without the ability to pull the money back from a fraudulent business requires trust.  Money / power / greed / jealousy / anger / fear =/= trust

i agree about things like that.
where talking about "is trumps hair real" having nothing to do with the politics and laws he may introduce
where talking about "is trump a sexual harasser" having nothing to do with the if he will fix the world debt problem

but when he introduces a new law.. reading it takes priority, understanding the law takes priority. but knowing why he introduced it and his intentions of using it reveals HOW it will be used.

EG
a law that allows tax offices to view peoples bank accounts.
thats it. thats all a law code mentions..

reading the lawcode alone can cause speculation, exaggerations, doomsdays and hysterics.

but knowing if it would be good by only being used to find the richguys screwing tax.. or the poor... also matters

for instance
personal attacks like "gmaxwell has a beard, ewww.. and he is fat" is just nonsense teenage drama that has no merit. and should not be the debate
but...
personal attacks like "gmaxwell wants to bilateral fork the network to get his commercial services accepted to repay his debt to bankers" has merit. because it impacts other people financially and intentionally

I'm not saying we shouldn't check the code before we run it, I assumed that was a given, heh.  But clearly discussing the code and, more importantly, the effects of the code, would be a vast improvement over the current speculations and accusations about a person's supposed intent that seems to pervade most threads lately.  Talk about good and bad code, not good and bad people or companies.

the only issue is that the code does not create itself. devs create the code. so understanding the code they create is a priority. but understanding the motives of why they code that code instead of another code also has consequences.

EG dont just sit on your hand accepting whatever code is put infront of you. find out why. and choose the code that doesnt end in everyone forced to use commercial hubs of permissioned contracts. or new features that bypass consensus. because thats just letting dominance occur by "trusting" code.

thinking code is better than man, is blindly trusting the person that wrote it.. code is only as good as the person that wrote it

I've seen people throw the quote around: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people" when someone else starts using their chosen boogeymen as a punching bag in an attempt to make their point.  So I suppose one possible solution to the issue is to create a hostile environment for the tribalist mindset to operate in. 

Others have opted to take a more moderate stance and point out that "it's not about the people and what they might do, but about the code and what it does".  You don't need to trust people, just trust consensus to enforce the code that provides the greatest benefit to the network as a whole.  Vested minority interests can't prevail, because Bitcoin was specifically designed to prevent hostile takeovers. 

Would these two approaches be things we can try?  They should both keep the focus on ideas and not on the possible motives or agendas of certain individuals or groups.

We may not be able to fix it this time, we're all divided. Money is such powerful and we can't even trust who and what will happen later.
People are opposing new ideas because every one is already knowledgeable of what effect it could do and motives drives. Things were never the same again, i use to believe the idea of opensource is to give back to the community but its now being abused by cloning and compete. 

I want to agree with you, but when I look back at some of the sneaky stuff that were done, I have to say most of us have reasons not to trust

any new suggestions or implementations. If we just blindly accepted XP, we would have had code with malicious backdoors. {Thanks to Mike

Hearn} .... Now we have the Blockstream guys deliberately slowing down scaling to pave the way for SegWit and LN. WTF, is there nobody

with good intentions anymore? 

Totally understand this and the Op is right every new idea is seen with suspicion, even before it can be decided it's good or bad it is rejected why cause it's a new idea, it won't be good. Our brains have been wired through the years to reject all the ideas that are new thinking it won't work. I hope after reading op post people will change and consider new ideas.

I've read quite a bit about Bitcoin, and I happen to believe that SegWit will be beneficial. Of course, I may be wrong, but I gather there are many others who have the same opinion. For the first time ever, I have reported a forum member for abusive posting towards me, it seems he doesn't agree about SegWit. His attitude just makes me feel that I am right about SegWit, and it's opponents have to resort to verbal abuse, rather than reasoned logic.