Topic: How do you feel about control versus freedom in Bitcoin? - page 2. (Read 640 times)

What part of IT'S NOT A VOTE doesn't make sense to you?  You can't "fake" a vote if there is no vote.  The more you talk about voting, the more you make it abundantly clear that you do not understand Bitcoin.  



No.  There is no vote.  Voting is for people who like to pretend democracy isn't corrupt and practically worthless.



Based on every conversation we've ever had, surely you must be able to see why that's a stupid question to ask me, right?  It's not up to me what devs do.  Why are you asking what I'm "willing to let devs do" when it's not up to me what they do?  They can do anything they like.  And more importantly, you know (because I've said it often enough) that it's not the devs who make the decisions when it comes to consensus.  Those securing the chain do that.  Devs do not decide consensus.  Devs make decisions about what goes into their code.  Those securing the chain decide whether to run it or not.  How can I make this any clearer for you?  If I don't agree with what a dev team are doing, I won't run their code.  If I ever find myself in a position where I don't agree with what the majority of users on this network are doing or what code they are running, I'll consider finding another network where I do agree with what the users are doing.  But the fact that I'm here on this chain means I do agree.  I don't have any problems with what the devs are doing.  I don't have any problems with the code the majority are running.  I am happy with Bitcoin as it is today.  

I love freedom, which means I ardently believe people can do what they want.  I honestly don't see how you can have such a problem with what is clearly a perfectly reasonable stance.  Everyone does what they want.  That's Bitcoin.  

But every time you say something that indicates you would willingly restrict someone's freedom, I will tell you why I believe you're wrong.  

Every time you try to cram some bullshit voting nonsense down our throats.  
Every time you say developers shouldn't be allowed to code something.
Every time you insist users shouldn't be allowed to disconnect other clients.
Every time you claim everyone has to agree before anything can change.
Every time you say we have to wait for a feature to activate before deciding.
Every time you forget how huge your ego is and mistakenly believe anyone needs your permission or consent when they clearly fucking don't.

All of that is covered by freedom.  It's up to each individual how they choose to act.  Not you.  Are you anywhere close to comprehending this yet?

me uncivil??
if 'flip flop' is uncivil, then look at your own insults.

my authoritarian??
sorry but you mean you and cores authoritarian
show some code i wrote that changed the network
show a brand/client software i wrote
show a brand which i own that has the same command/control of the network to do inflight upgrades and consensus bypasses that core done...
(hint you wont find any)

you really have no clue

1. CORE done some immoral and consensus bypassing practices. not me
2. you first said you 'didnt agree' but then said you agreed (hence flip flop)
3. again writing code anyone can do it. writing it on github, writing it on the thigh of a blonde woman, write it on a napkin
BUT thats where you get pedantic with your chosen wording. because:
a. when what they wrote is not a feature upgrade that uses consensus. but a network split to remove opposition to a future vote of an upgrade... thus faking that future vote... thts a whole different story

b. they didnt just write it. they implemented it in such a way that it didnt need the network to agree to it
c. you say it didnt need a vote. then say 'users are free to use it and it wont do anything unless user agreement'... yet reality is the DEVS didnt need users for the network split (pre feature vote). they just needed fibre and dns seeds(which they controlled.. not the community)
d. if you think a dev should have enough control to change a network without the community consent then you have already denounced decentralisation. already denounced the whole point of blockchains, byzantine generals solution, denounced
user indepeendance

so
if you think its ok for a dev to implement code through their commercial team of fibre, dns seeds and NYA.. imagine the event happened the same method. but the future vote after the apartheid (controversial fork of opposition) was a feature that would ruin bitcoin. such as code that makes UTXO time out after 2 days and give funds to mining pools. or changed the block reward. or to make block 'gigabytes by midnight'

would you be so willing to let devs just kick opposition off the network to activate such features after by faking consnsus agreement vote of those features.

also
if your ok saying the community dont get a say/vote/choice. and shouldnt.. and how you will defend devs control.
then your saying you will defend thee shepherd because the network is just sheep

I asked you to keep it civil, but clearly that's beyond your capability.  As with every other time you've spouted your moronic flip flop catchphrase, there is no flip flop.  Either you are deliberately conflating unrelated concepts, or you simply don't understand written English very well.  My words were as follows:


In what conceivable way does that have anything to do with my agreement of disconnecting incompatible nodes?  Just because someone is free to code it and I will defend their right to code it, that doesn't mean any user on this network is under any obligation whatsoever to accept a connection to one of those nodes if they don't want to.  Learn freedom.  It's completely irrelevant when 2x was due to activate because it's not a vote.  It was never a vote.  You do not understand Bitcoin if you think it was a vote.  You can code an activation date if you like but no one has to pay the slightest bit of attention to it if they don't want to.  Who the hell do you think you are telling us we have to wait until a certain date before we can draw our own conclusions?  You can't force anyone to wait for it to activate before deciding.  They can decide whenever they like.  It's not your decision.  The only things you have control over are your private keys, the software you choose to run, any software you choose to create and the blockchain(s) you choose to transact on.  That's it.  Nothing else.  So stay out of other peoples' business, you authoritarian sack of shit.  Why is freedom such an ongoing issue for you?  How is it beyond your decidedly limited comprehension that users on this network don't have to play nice if they don't want to.  Life isn't fair.  I would have thought your parents might have taught you that, but at this stage I'll have to assume they abandoned you as a child due to how much of a colossal disappointment they somehow knew you'd turn out to be.

in a different topic doomad show admiration for mandatory dated bans and was very loudly proud of their attempts to kill off 2x


mmhmm.. u agreed that nodes should be disconnected 3 months BEFORE an activation of those nodes bips
mmhmm.. u agreed that nodes should disconnect BTC1  (Segwit2x) nodes 3 months before segwit2x activates

anyway. im done trying to translate ur flip flops. might be worth u doing some research on what bitcoin is all about and how bitcoin was invented to stay away from needing a "core"
and then maybe finally you can decide if ur a flip or a flop. and atleast stick with one narrative

..
as for writing code..
anyone can write code. they can write it on a napkin, a thigh of a blonde prostitute, write it in github. nothing stops anyon writing code.

but if those writing code have access to certain things where their code can cause network wide changes without the networks consent. then thats a different matter.

take the august 2017 events. it did not require 95% of the community to agree using a true open consensus.. it just required mattblue to add it to his fibre, thus the blocks that got relayed beyond fibre would all be missing old flags, thus faking agreement by simply not letting the mainnet community of nodes get opposing blocks
and as for node bans. adding certain stuff to the DNS seeds thus when nodes make connections they wont get a list of opposing nodes, thus have nothing to need to manually/individually disconnect

and if you want to deny that august first event didnt happen. check the IMMUTABLE blockchain
and if you want to deny that core struck first on august first. check the IMMUTABLE blockchain

core changed block flag/format at a certain block. and it wasnt for like 5 hours did the opposition react by getting their first block to start their own chain after cores actions

again core wrote the code. not some bitcoin AI. so please dont try now suggesting that some AI was involved or random users wrote the code or that the code just sprung out of nowhere. core wrote it. thy knew how to implement it and they used it to get segwit1x activated
and again it was not a case of ~9500 nodes agreeing.

My initial draft of this thread did have a question about flag-day activations, but since there were already so many questions posed, I didn't want to have too much stuff in there.  But since you raised the point about 148/UASF, I suppose we'll add it into the mix.

For the record, I wasn't a fan of UASF either.  But with the way it was coded, with an arbitrary date to activate, it's not something that you can really preempt.  It's just a case of waiting to see who does or doesn't run it.  Do people feel this is a somewhat reckless approach to consensus?  Or is it again something that boils down to freedom?  There's currently no way to prevent someone from coding something with an activation date.  And, personally, I don't think that I could ever be convinced that it was right to prevent someone from doing it, even if it were possible.  Even if I don't agree with the code, it's not my place to tell someone they can't/shouldn't make it.  

I'm glad that's not the route we took, but if something similar happened again, I'd still defend their right to do it, even if I was simultaneously saying it was a terrible idea.

In the end, there is no REAL freedom in the human society which requires regulation and consensus. Something will be always done at someone's expense and in the way they don't like. Same with Bitcoin. Same with its integration into the mainstream and whatever govermnets choose to do with it.

That being said, Bitcoin's limited supply and other specifications make it "free" in a democratic sense and protect it from centralized abuse

I want to say about the control. The control is one important quality of bitcoin. It gives you the liberty to financially carry your obligation without any third party or checking from anywhere. You can only trace an address but can't locate the owner physically with FBI  

In most cases, Bitcoin is free as much as you are free in your country.
It is like cash, you are also free to have it. Also no one will probably regulate BTC but if someone will implement any regulations then they will be probably forced against crypto accepting businesses. Bitcoin can hardly be considered free is you won't be able  to buy something for it.

I will say here that I cannot really answer many of the questions. I am only a user of Bitcoin for over a year, maybe you can say two years if you count everything in. And probably I will not know more than I do now. I am interested purely as a user of a new technology that lets me control the money I spend without trusting anyone.

So that is the freedom I like. I guess I wish I had even more control. Like, I want to send it faster sometimes, and not wait 30 minutes for a new block and maybe even more if my fee was not enough. Things like that. I hope my small answer helps.

To clarify, the "6% veto" is something that naturally results from requiring 95% consensus to approve a change.  You can't have a high activation threshold without effectively granting more power to those who might oppose change.  Say if 94% of the network wanted to active a feature, but 6% wanted to block it, then the feature would not activate.  Those who resist changes have an easier job.

Would that not stagnate technological progress and create constant deadlocks where improvements to the protocol could not be made?  That's why I'm interested in hearing different views on that particular point.  

Freedom is a vital component of bitcoin, given that the very nature of the said network is decentralized. Everyone gets the job done and does what everyone needs to do without the need to look at what everyone else is doing while reaching a consensus at some point if the community needs to decide for an important matter. In a real-world society setup, the ruling party doesn't always ensure that everyone is happy and everyone agrees.


Knowing that the whole setup is completely decentralized and not everyone is being affected by a single party, I believe it's okay to hardfork at a 95% agreement, 6% to veto the process if and only if the whole network is fully decentralized. If it isn't, I wouldn't be okay with that as anyone with a large number of miners can simply do as they please and halt progress that the majority of the community wants to have. As for softforks, so long as they are still following the general protocol, it's fine if they don't want to upgrade as again, freedom is a vital part of bitcoin.


Going back to real-world scenarios, you don't expect a 100% vote onto something as other people will still have different opinions and POVs regarding a very important matter. Bitcoin is a decentralized network, and not one single party can ever urge the whole network to vote for their agenda no matter how 'perfect' and how well-planned that agenda is. The majority rule in a decentralized network, I believe, is the perfect approach for consensus, and the 95% agreement 6% veto setup is already fair enough for the whole community.


It isn't immoral, IMO as it's just preserving the integrity of the data being stored, transferred, and relayed within the network. That's why consensus should be reached first before moving forward towards a new different client (if that's the case). Freedom is a vital component of the bitcoin network but then again, it is not the only component that makes the network strong.


I cannot speak for this as I don't and won't have a plan to setup a full node unless I have my own miners and a large array of spare hard drives and computers in my arsenal.


At times, yes, I believe that Core dev team is somewhat in control of what happens in the bitcoin network. People have the options to go around and explore what version of bitcoin do they think will be beneficial to them, but since bitcoin is where the money's at and where most people dwell, the question of who controls what in the code somewhat became political, up to an extent that it's not about bitcoin anymore but rather about who should be in control of making code changes. If bitcoin never reached this big, I wonder if we will still be having some questions on who replaces what on the code or whether we'll have a talk on who the devs are, at all.

Whether we want to admit it or not there are groups that have major control over bitcoin.  The majority of hashrate is coming from China, there are only a few asic manufacturers, and most bitcoins are in just a few wallets.

ok, but what method do you propose to us in order to determine who is a "weirdo" and who is not so that we can ignore those? what if those "weirdos" also found you a "weirdo" and considered what you support to not be the ay to go?

you see, that is the problem when you bring "who" in instead of "what and how many".

Since I'm not sure about the other questions, I'll respond only to this one. I think that it should matter WHO disagrees, not HOW MANY of them do. If these are some random weirdos that some some reason don't want changes, then to hell with them, a soft fork is okay. If among these 5% there are people who've been really contributing to the development and adoption of Bitcoin significantly as well as if these people hold really big amounts of Bitcoin, I think a hard fork is more appropriate. I choose so not only because it seems fair, but because we clearly made a mistake in the past. Segwit was a soft fork which led immediately to Bitcoin cash hard fork and rather suddenly at the end of 2018 to Craid Wright's 'restoration' of the original bitcoin. I am not sure how many new Craig Wrights bitcoin network can handle. So maybe from now on significant changes that have strong opposers should be performed via hard fork only.

bitcoin users already agree to bitcoin's consensus rules.

backward compatible soft forks are compatible with the consensus, which all users already agree with. so based on node behavior alone, any arguments claiming that eg people didn't agree with segwit are bullshit on their face. if you didn't agree with segwit, go ahead and fork yourself off the bitcoin network cuz you apparently didn't agree with bitcoin's consensus rules to begin with.

hard forks are not compatible with the consensus. there is no possible way to measure "consensus" for a hard fork because by definition, it means leaving the current network/consensus. the idea that you could get affirmative agreement from every single one of the millions of bitcoin users to leave the bitcoin network and start running a hard fork is ridiculous. any hard fork proponent claiming they represent all bitcoin users is a straight up liar. and using hash rate as a measure of "support" from bitcoin users is insulting to everyone's intelligence. miners represent a tiny, tiny portion of bitcoin users.

for me, the room for hard forks is very, very small. if ECDSA or SHA-256 get broken, based on incentives i think we could justify a hard fork. but for controversial things? good luck![/list]

I think freedom should be above all else. The openness of Bitcoin encourages it, and there's no way to make everybody happy anyway.

If that much consensus is necessary, I don't think the community can go anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, everyone can hard fork all they want; the community can support whichever aligns with their ideals the best. There are going to be a lot of fractures, but it's better than staying in an unhappy marriage right? You also get to measure real consensus this way, from actual end users. Forcing people to agree to whatever compromise just to keep the community together feels a little too much like government to me.

People who choose not to upgrade in cases of soft forks can't really complain because it's their choice at the end of the day. They can't force individuals with different ideals who want different things to grant them anything more than backwards compatibility.

Majority always wins and majority must always win! This is how the democracy works and this is how it should be! To stay within a civilized society, it is more important that majority agrees to one point. It is impossible to reach 100% consensus everytime so I will keep it as "majority agrees"! Freedom follows when we follow the path of democracy!

I will again prefer to stay with the "majority" and don't agree with the veto power either. Veto is always harmful where a certain group can turn the tide of the game if anything isn't going according to their wish. Just take a recent example of China. While all permanent members of the Security Council of UN agreed to declare "Masud Azhar" as a global Terrorist, China exercised Veto against that decision to support their friend Pakistan and to maintain the border tension between India and Pakistan. So Veto power is harmful to a great extent.

Rather softfork is little more acceptable! If a certain percentage of users want to make their own way, they can softfork their way out and seclude themselves from the main network. However, it is also not great in long run, because then the network will be divided in thousands of small groups with different opinions and visions which will effectively weaken the network for their own good.

In my opinion, hardfork at 95% agreement without the power of exercising veto is the strongest network structure we can observe! Because this is how the majority will win for the greater good!

No! It indicates a civil war within the network and shows a weak side of decentralization. It enforces the rule of muscle power!

My points are simple! Decentralization has its own pros and cons as nothing can be flawless in the world. So a rule of "majority wins" should be enforced within the algorithm because that's how today's democracy works and it is one of the near perfect formulas to run things smoothly! I am not getting into any technical discussion because I don't know how to code and I am unable to decipher the meaning of any code. But to have a peaceful solution of almost everything needs a rule of "majority wins". This is how the network ensures that the majority is happy and that's what matters the most![/list]

Freedom is the most important quality of Bitcoin and Devs should prioritize this and have a single consensus. You can't make everyone happy, but with freedom, everyone will be.

For me,trying to make everyone happy and always pushing forward to a 100% consensus is the worst possible case scenario/business model.
People are free to choose wether or not to use or mine bitcoin.If they are unhappy with bitcoin core,they could split the blockchain with a fork,or they could just leave bitcoin and choose one of the altcoins.If you make a sertain choice,you have to take some sort of responsibility and follow sertain rules.Freedom=responsibility.

The freedom of bitcoin is actually having a rules of control system.. And those every users are only follow on what the price status or price level of bitcoin.. We the people are having limitation of freedom that defends on the system which provided by the bitcoin management.